Lovesong

Stan Brakhage described his film as "a hand-painted visualization of sex in the mind's eye". My mind finds little that could be called erotic, but much that is visually sensuous. In part, that is due to his painting techniques here, as many of the individual images are strongly crackled or impastoed and apparently photographed still wet, so that the paint glistens in the changing light. Additionally, the rate of image change is much slower than usual with him. Rather than the expected 12-24 images per second, here we see 2 or 3 per second and have more time to enjoy the abstract shapes and the rotation of rich colors through the palette. Should some numerically-oriented person ever decide to count the total of individual paintings done by Brakhage in his hundreds of short films, I think we'll find that Picasso was not the most prolific painter of the 20th century after all. "Lovesong" forms a striking and satisfying conclusion to the "By Brakhage" collection.

Stan Brakhage was an experimental filmmaker who spent years making short movies consisting of color mixtures racing across the screen. "Lovesong" was one example. As with the rest of his movies, this is not a narrative film. It's all about the images.

And the title? I guess that the title is a matter of interpretation. Brakhage apparently called the short a hand-painted visualization of sex in the mind's eye". One can make of that what one wants. All in all, an interesting short.