Mothlight

No camera was used to make this dazzling short movie: legs, wings and other parts of butterflies were glued directly on the filmstrip, thus creating a shifting pattern of unsurpassed beauty. The way Brakhage extents the possibilities of his medium is typical of 1960's experimental film-making.

This is not a fun film-it has no story or characters-but it is undeniably innovative. The method used to turn insects into a film was certainly novel and unique for its time. In that sense, it should be understood as both a methodological innovation and an art installation. It's always difficult to judge this kind of experimentation decades later, but putting yourself in the shoes of a director in the early 1960s, this is certainly not an idea most would conceive of, let alone execute. As someone who appreciates butterflies and moths, I do enjoy some of the patterns we catch glimpses of here.

Mothlight (1968)

*** (out of 4)

Here's a director I had never heard of until reading some of Martin's reviews so I did a little searching and came across this film, which is a strange one to say the least and even after watching it I had to read other reviews just to understand what I had seen. From what I gathered, the director didn't use a camera but instead used parts of a butterfly, taped them to a film strip and that's the entire movie. The film runs just under three minutes and we see all sorts of strange things that my writing talent wouldn't allow me to do justice to. Since this was my first film by the director I can't say I totally understood what he was trying to do but I enjoyed what I was watching. The various images, shapes and creations the director comes up with was very entertaining.

We see the world through butterfly wings. Every millisecond another colorful wing passes before us. It isn't long before we want to go outside and get some fresh air. It's just not that interesting because there is no real center.

I've just watched 'Mothlight (1963)' - my first film from the Stan Brakhage - twice in a row, and I'm no closer to working it out. Experimental filmmakers usually have some purpose in mind with their work, some aesthetic or thematic goal to which they are aspiring. What the case may be with 'Mothlight' is beyond me. I've heard some critics venture that it represents the world as experienced through a moth's eyes, but how this is achieved by gluing plants and dead insects onto celluloid is another matter. Certainly the most interesting facet of this four-minute short is that it was produced entirely without a camera, Brakhage having attached the organic fragments directly to the filmstrip. Is there beauty in these images? To a certain degree, I think, but each frame darts by so incredibly quickly that its difficult to appreciate what you are seeing. Every jarring movement is like being awakened from a dream, several times a second, such that you end up not getting any dreaming done at all.

I've probably committed a mortal sin by adding music to a film that is presumably supposed to be silent, but I thought that Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" actually brought an agreeable rhythm to the continuous stream of shifting images. This result, now that I think of it, is probably the antithesis of what Brakhage had intended, for, viewed alone, his animation (which effectively re-animates the dead, as one author put it) has a jarring feel about it, as though you're driving and insects keep splatting against your windscreen, bringing your vehicle to a standstill at every jolt. Film is a medium that relies upon light for its existence, and its light-created images often have the power to captivate and entrance us – just as a moth is drawn instinctively towards the glow of a lantern. In a way, I suppose, it is the audience that is the moth in this case, seated in the darkness, our attention lured towards the images of light on the cinema screen. Heck, I already feel like I'm reading too far into it.