Mothlight

Brakhage made this piece by physically placing moth wings and other things to white leader and fixing them in place with splicing tape. interesting to watch this because it reminds us how trained we are to look for narrative and pattern in everything we see. i found myself searching for redundancies, trying to "figure out" what was going on. I then allowed myself to just sit back and let myself be transported by the material. Made me feel like I'ma little insect zipping through the grass in a field. Like Brakhage's other works, it is very much a collage projected versus what we traditionally call a film. Not unlike more static visual arts like painting and photography where we allow ourselves to get to the meaning alone as opposed to being given the meaning by the author.

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.

Finding Brakhage was an accident, but when I did stumble upon his world, I shut the door to the "Hollywood" world, and I sat down in the dark, to watch Brakhage. MOTHLIGHT was the first one I saw, and MOTHLIGHT was all I needed to see in the beginning before I wanted to get into experimental film. It traps you and doesn't let you go. Those who have seen it, know what I'm talking about. It's something amazing, and something everyone needs to experience at least once. **** four stars.

When I just started watching this movie, I only had two balls, one of them defunct. However, while the movie played, my balls started undergoing a cloning process just like the cells of the moth wings that I could definitely see due to the EXPERT videography.

Edit: I just found out from my doctor when I did my last physical that I have testicular cancer and that the ball I thought I developed is actually a HUGE FKING tumor. Apparently the doctor said it was "inoperable" and that "he was sorry". Well, the only person he should be sorry for is himself for missing out on watching this masterpiece of a movie.

Edit 2: I was just informed that I was in "Stage 3" now, which is a good thing right? I heard that that is usually the last stage that cancer patients try to beat. In the meantime, this movie has endless room for interpretation that I can transform into my 1000 page book "Mothlight, Testicular Cancer, and Me: How I fell in love with pieces of dead-moth wings, dirt, and roots"

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.