Mothlight

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.

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.

It's rather tricky to rate and review a 4 minute film but I'm gonna try anyway. From the very beginning so called "experimental film" has dealt with the material of the film as such and there is a whole tradition of films made without the help of a camera. You can scribble on it, you can scratch it or as it was done here, you can glue two dimensional and transparent objects to it, then sandwich the negative onto it and let it run past a light source in order to expose it. Some people still think that film depicts reality, whereas all it really does is depict a reproduction of reality. But surely there must be another reality than what Hollywood is trying to sell us and Brakhage's approach is as simple as it is beautiful. In Mothlight wings of insects and thin leaves flutter over the screen and since each frame has no relation to it's preceding image, the outcome is rather fidgety. However, if you relax and stay focused at the same time you will realise that watching Mothlight is like staring at a bright light that is surrounded by moths. When I watched it for the first time, I thought the effect was rather impressive. You might argue that you don't go to the movies to watch moths flutter around bright lights but there is so much more to it. Experimantal film has always questioned our way of perceiving the world and Mothlight is no exception. Only it's also very beautiful and thus very entertaining.

Brakhage was intimate with his camera and with the world seen by his camera from the very beginning. And from a certain moment on he felt the camera was of no more use between him and the world. He started to put the world directly on the film, either by painting it, scratching it, or by physically gluing the world there, like in this 4 minute movie from 1963, Mothlight. It could sound crazy to you, but Brakhage collected patiently hundreds of moth wings from the inside of lamps and windows, added parts of leaves and other detritus and sandwiched them between two filmstrips. The outcome was the life of a moth, from birth to death: a dance of patterns on the wings, of psychedelic beauty. The world of butterflies, as seen by the light bulb; or the fascination in the eyes of butterflies deadly attracted by the light bulb; or the fascination of us in watching the screen.

You could ask, is this the real world? Of course not, this is the world created by the imagination of Brakhage. An artist creates universes on his own, he is some kind of God (or Frankenstein, matter of perspective), and the only criteria for us to judge should be the consistency of the world we see on the screen, on the canvas, in a book (or the world we listen to when in a concert hall).

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.