Mothlight

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.

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.

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.

The comments already listed for this film are perfect, but I just wanted to add is that this isn't so much a film as much as it is functional art. If the definition of "art film" can roughly be put as anything on film that breaks the traditional Hollywood narrative (clearly defined protagonist with clear-cut goals and every scene of the film relating to the obtaining of / confinement of those goals), then this film is pretty much the benchmark for how broad that definition is. Not exactly a "must see," but important because it gives us language with which to talk about "art film" in general.

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.