Black Ice

Generally speaking, I get more out of Stan Brakhage's "personal" films – like 'Window Water Baby Moving (1959)' or 'I… Dreaming (1988)' – than I do from his more abstract efforts. However, despite 'Black Ice (1994)' falling into the latter category, it was certainly visual striking. Reportedly inspired by a tumble on black ice that required him to receive cataract surgery in both eyes, the film attempts to replicate the sensation of unconsciousness, of being momentarily robbed of one's vision and mental perception. In this sense, Brakhage succeeds: watching 'Black Ice' is a bit like flailing endlessly into a bottomless pit, though my first impression was of falling through outer space, which is probably about the same thing. Whereas many of the director's films, such as 'Mothlight (1963),' appear trapped in a single dimensional plane, this one – utilising the effects of an optical printer – seems to be constructed from two visual planes, one static and another moving towards the camera. The primarily blue and black visuals, flickering like the fractured light from a kaleidoscope, progressively seem to shift past you, layer upon layer of black ice smoothly passing by. Though the blues, blacks and whites are those colours we recall most readily, Brakhage also includes the occasional flittering deep red or orange, representing life and warmth – perhaps the solitary vestiges of consciousness and emotion that remain in this cold, impassive hole of darkness.

'Black Ice' is one of Brakhage's most striking films. An unusual depth of field is attained by melding linear with forward motion; the viewer experiences Brakhage's sumptuous flickers and splatters and explosions of color as if passing through them, rather than, as is more frequently the case in Brakhage's motion painting, as if watching them on a single plane.

An unusual connection will be noticed by viewers with a wide range of cinematic experience: this film shares a startling similarity of cinematic resonance with the V'Ger cloud fly-through in Robert Wise's 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture' (1979). The use of multi-plane visual depth and the frequent recourse to a deep blue color palette combined with flashes of hotter colors (reds and oranges in Brakhage, whites in Wise) links the two sequences visually; the settings (a patch of black ice and the literal fear of loss of vision in Brakhage; the depth of space and the absence of understanding-- metaphorical blindness-- in Wise) supply the unexpected intellectual and emotional link. It's not that the two sequences are identical, of course (Brakhage's sequences are much more rapid, for one), but that they work well together at a deeper level than mere superficial similarities. As it is unlikely that Wise and his collaborators knew Brakhage's work, and improbable that Brakhage was influenced by the earlier film. this stands as an intriguing illustration of the ways in which related aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual questions can independently stimulate related answers.

'Black Ice' is very short, but it has a far greater impact than its length would suggest; it is truly an example of visual poetry, and is well worth seeking out.

I don't know how the effect was achieved, but this is how I imagine a strobed tomographic trip through stained glass would appear. Iridescent colours, mostly blues, fragmented by black, emerge and appear to slowly approach the viewer before fading out to form new patterns. The effect is like an animated Jackson Pollock painting, but more soothing than the analogy might suggest due to the fairly slow progression 'through' whatever is being photographed, and the fact the blocks of light remain on screen for varying lengths of time, meaning that the longer lasting ones serve to anchor the viewer as the others change. Add to this a narrative rhythm that structures the film and there's a strong impression of a story waiting to be read in the phantasmagoria. A dense and dazzling few minutes.

Black Ice is another of the experimental artist and color specialist (what else to call him?) director Stan Brakhage's collages where he has images going by at such an intense pace that if you were to try to break it down shot by shot it would be close to impossible. The difference this time from some of his other shorts is that there is a woozy quality to how some of the colors blend together, how the quickness mostly comes in the last minute and in the first one is mostly in that feeling like (for lack of a better description and I can't think of one) being on drugs. You feel like you're in a black and blue lost space here, and it's wonderful but also kind of terrifying. It's the sensation one may have when cracking one's head and things become distorted; Brakhage made this after falling on ice and losing his eyesight for a time and worked with someone else to get some of the distortion effects. What he and his collaborator got here to represent that in some form or another is incredible.

One of Stan Brakhage's many experimental shorts features a mixture of what looks like blue and black shapes zigzagging across a white background. Like most of Brakhage's works, "Black Ice" isn't a narrative work. It's one step away from an acid trip. I don't know whether or not this counts as art for art's sake. The point is that Brakhage obviously liked to see what he could do with images and sounds, a far cry from the mindless assaults on the senses in Michael Bay's movies. It's nothing profound, but it's an interesting look at what cinema can be in less than two minutes. Available on YouTube.