Prelude: Dog Star Man

I think the "Ugh, nobody could watch this, it just gives people a headache" argument died with MTV.

This avant-garde approach to film-making certainly isn't popular, even among cineastes who take film seriously. However, it's still an effective film, even if neither hide nor hair could truly be reaped from it. It tends to annoy people when something isn't supposed to make sense (even when it follows a narrative like 2001: A Space Odyssey), but it's not ABOUT making sense much less than it TRIES NOT to make sense.

You're supposed to sit back and watch, and that's all the work you do. If you can't handle that, then I'm confused as to what you get out of film.

But enough about you, let's talk about this movie. According to Brakhage, it's supposed to tire your eyes, make them exercise, work them "to see with one's own eyes", to relearn how to see, all that wonderful philosophical stuff. However, jabbingly quick editing and barely synthesized flashes of color are actually the mainstream of cinema now (think stuff like Domino), thus that appeal is quickly lowering. Instead, it's becoming... *gasp!* relaxing! to watch this film. It helps that this, the prelude, has no sound. Instead it's just a flow of flashes, a realm of color easy to get lost in.

--PolarisDiB

yeah yeah.

so you dont sit down and watch the dog star man series. can we move past this now? its still beautiful and worth every penny of your pocket if you can track it down. i recommend putting some music on in the background though- something like william bakinski or aphex twin's select ambient II or my bloody valentine or what have you. and, you know, do whatever you have to do chemically to your body to.

brahkage is itself an experience. visually, you will never run into anything quite like what he constructs in the way he constructs it unless you are seeing something that generously takes from him. its a totally now construction.you wont confine or condition anything from his films to memory apart from the overall breadth a brahkagian work in motion.

When you climb a mountain and come down the other side, you're in a different place. When we saw Prelude: Dog Star Man in 1963, after it was over we were in a new world. My college roommate Bob and I ran a film series - the last night was this masterpiece. Brakhage had just finished editing it. He sent us the 16mm print in a can. (There were a few bits of popcorn in the can too.) The print even had some last-minute splices in it. I couldn't imagine him sending it out with splices. But that was his generosity. Watching the film with a hundred students who, like almost everyone else on Earth, had never seen a movie remotely like this one, was a thrilling experience. They loved it. I certainly did - two years later, my film school thesis was about the complete version, which Brakhage had titled The Art of Vision. He passed away last year - perhaps the cancer was caused by the toxic pigments he used to diligently paint his cinematic creations, particularly his later, completely abstract works. But the mountain remains - the mountain of his film output, the mountain of the legacy of a life dedicated to Vision.

I should note right at the top that it seems unfair to give this a rating or a vote based on anything to do with story. My praise for this piece of art film - and that is what it is, no ifs ands or buts about that - comes from the cinematography, the special lighting effects, and naturally the editing. This is so far beyond the scope of what many in the world seek out to watch as this is the definition of 'experimental' in cinema, and yet for those who find it or somehow it comes to them (via a small revival house or from the Criterion collection set) it's a wonder to behold.

Funny though to think that, not intentionally I assume, when the "MTV Generation" of directors would make their videos (and still do, but I mean when they were regularly shown on TV) they were decried by critics for being cut too fast. This really goes back to Brakhage here, though of course his intentions were not to promote some band with the rapid-fire cuts and the stream-of-consciousness flow of images and colors and warped contours folding into one another. That's why it's kind of hard to write any kind of appraisal of this aside from 'well, watch it for yourself, and if you make it past the first few minutes there's... more of these wonders to behold!'

I think because of the way my mind works I watch something like the Prelude to Dog Star Man (the whole "film" is in four parts), and I do try to find some semblance of a story. My mind is still on the experimental, transgression and consciousness-expanding wavelength, but I think that if you look for at least some kind of scenario there's the slightest, most subtle touches going on. You can see the shots of the sun, which are shot via help from an observatory, and also a naked woman (her breasts and public hair are there to see), but unlike Brakhage's Window Water Baby Moving you don't get a clear sense of a woman giving birth.

There IS a sexual component, however, something to do with the flesh and lots of moving parts with it and blood that flows underneath - red is always a potent color, the kind that vibrates and you (or I at least) can feel something that has to do with blood, life force, something that goes back to a time before we can remember. Or... maybe it's all simply a bunch of images meant to conjure in the viewer anything he or she is looking for or identifies with. It's an adventure in... stuff, in colors, in mountains, in driving on a road, in a bearded guy playing with a kid, with things that are happening and in motion (and, at times, kind of akin to what we see if we close our eyes in dreams).

No other filmmaker has made or will make a work quite like this, and even at 25 minutes it feels like an epic and so 'out there' in a pre-psychedelic sense that it makes the Jupiter & the Beyond the Infinite in 2001 look like a conventional effects trail.

Stan Brakhage may,or may not have been a visionary with his view on cinema (there were other early experimental film makers that implemented various experiments on film,i.e. painting on the film,abstract editing,etc.),but he was one of the most well known,as his films were getting attention about the same time as his contemporaries,such as Jonas Mekas,Andy Warhol,Jack Smith,and others (plus Mekas had his cinema in the East Village that screened those experimental/underground films in the early to late 1960's/early 1970's). Brakhage's 'Prelude:Dog Star Man',as well as the subsequent segments over the next few years is a film to be experienced (preferably in it's entirety,in one screening). It is a series of abstract images,that convey a lyrical feel to them. I had the rare open window of opportunity a few years back to see it,all together in one screening,with a live sound track by an ensemble of musicians (including Lee Renaldo,from Sonic Youth,and master percussionist William Hooker)at Real Art Ways,in Hartford,Connecticut a few years back,and was blown out of my shoes by it. Don't try to make any kind of sense out of it (just sit back & be dazzled by it's use of random images). Obviously not rated by the MPAA,but does contain a few images that could be unsettling to some.