Updated Reaction Paper

Jennifer Thomas
Professor peter Hartnik
Understanding Media Studies
19 October 2009
Brakhage’s Inspiration: In His Own Words
In “Stan Brakhage and the Long beach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film”, the author, John Pruitt, argues for the case that the visionary filmmaker’s immediate predecessor was the “mother” of avant-garde film, Maya Deren (1). His main argument does not have to do with comparing the content and techniques used in their films, but by the fact that unlike other contemporaries of the era, both Deren and Brakhage took to writing their own theoretical viewpoints on film. Pruitt seems to acknowledge the fact that Deren’s writings are actually contradictory to Brakhage’s films. Deren likens abstract films to have more of an aura of a painting, while realistic films that portray a story have the aura of a photograph ( Deren, 155). Brakhage’s essays on film and speeches on film, have to do more with art in general, and likens his films to music and painting (Rich).
According to Maya Deren’s viewpoint, “nothing can be achieved in film until its form is understood” (Pruitt). However, what is the point of experimental film? The very name means that it is experimental. Deren’s approach to filmmaking was one that was methodical, planned out, and her essays were often referred to as classical (Pruitt). Pruitt sites P. Adams Sitney, the first scholar to analyze Deren’s work after her death. In Sitney’s Visionary Film, he breaks down the avant-garde film, and its filmmakers into various categories. (5) Deren is placed in the poetic film category and Brakhage in the lyrical film category. Pruitt claims that this should be treated as evidence that Deren is Brakhage’s predecessor, because for him, Brakhage is thought of as choosing this particular classification, and thus rejecting Deren’s “insistence that filmmaking must begin with a respect for the conventional means of the photographic image.” However, although Deren was a friend, Brakhage sites many other influences that seem to take precedence over Deren’s theoretical writings.
If one actually listens to Brakhage’s own writings and words; ideas and influences, to see where his films originate from he does not mention Deren as an influence or predecessor (Rich). However, he does name many other artists as influential to him such as, Orson Welles, Jean Cocteau, Rossellini, and Kurosawa. But these directors do not tell the whole story of the influences to Brakhage’s films. Brakhage was also very much influenced by painting, music, and poetry. Deren was also seen to be influenced by poetry, which becomes a sore spot for Brakhage as he has been fighting off this very notion the two are linked through their own writing and poetry.
Pruitt also seems to take the stance that because Deren and Brakhage’s films are so different, and the fact that the two both had these opposing theoretical viewpoints that Brakhage’s films are a denial of Maya Deren’s writings, thus he has been influenced by her and therefore he is her student. In a sense Pruitt is saying that his films are based on a need to prove Deren wrong. Brakhage’s first film, Anticipation of the Night was seen as a combination of both the trance film and the “graphic” film (Faller). As time has gone on Brakhage’s later works move even further from the aesthetics and psycho-drama of the trance film, and move further into the category of the graphic approach, which” featured animated, abstract images often hand-applied directly onto the film”(Sitney).
Not only were their theoretical viewpoints often in contrast but also so were the way they went about filmmaking. For Maya, filmmaking was vey much a collaborative art. She worked with her friends, husbands and lovers. Brakhage on the other hand saw filmmaking and art in general as either borrowing from other sources and influences, or being one’s own complete creation. In an interview with B. Ruby, Brakhage sees his work as the work of a singular artist, more along the lines of certain Renaissance artists, such as Michelangelo, who single handedly constructed the sithstene Chapel . Brakhage even went so far as to call Meshes of the Afternoon, “Hammid’s film”, Deren’s husband and cinematographer at the time. In her dissertation, Sullivan quotes Brakhage directly from Brakhage Scrapbook :
When I was young, the then director of the MOMA film department, Richard Griffith, said my films were “imitative of Maya Deren.” I had, at the time, only seen Meshes of the Afternoon once; but he was picking up on the tilt-wall sequence (a conscious steal) and dismissing not only In Between , Desistfilm (made before any knowledge of Deren) The Way to Shadow Garden, and even Interim…and…me because that slight use of Deren’s effect gave him the excuse to do so.
Although the argument that Deren is the mother of avant-garde filmmaking, to then call Brakhage her son does not make sense since their art is theoretically and visually unrelated. Avant-garde filmmaking is in its very essence experimental, and Brakhage strove to define a new type of film that had the rhythm of music and the aesthetics of a painting. Deren has been seen as a classical avant-garde filmmaker, while Brakhage has stated that each film comes out of not knowing what he will do next. Brakhage and Deren is both visionary filmmaker in their own respect, and even though they were part of the same movement, their visions are diametrically different.

Works Cited
Brakhage, Stan. Brakhage Scrapbook. New York: Documentext, 1982. Print.
Deren, Maya. “Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality”. The Art of Cinema: Selected Essays. Ed. Gyorgy Kepes. New York: Arno Press, 1972. 154-171. Print.
Faller, George C. “Anticipation of the Night”. Filmreference.com. Film Reference, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2009.
In the Mirror of Maya Deren. Dir. Martina Kudlacek. Zeitgeist Video, 2002. DVD.
Pruitt, John. "Stan Brakhage and the Long Beach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film." Chicago Review 47/48.4/1 (2001): 116-20. Print.
Rich, B. Ruby. Stan Brakhage: The Appreciation of the Art. Video Data Bank on Art and Artists. Chicago: Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997. VHS.
Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film, The American Avant Garde 1943-1978. New York: Oxford University press, 1974. Print.
Sullivan, Moira. “An Anagram of the Ideas of Filmmaker Maya Deren”. Diss. Stockholm University, 1997. Print.