The Brakhage Lectures

Stan Brakhage gave these lectures as a credit course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the fall and 'early winter of 1970-71. Forty-three films by Méliès, Griffith, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Cocteau and Edwin Porter (which are listed following) were shown in concert with the talks.

Gathering such lectures into bookform is one kind of act of presentation. And preservation. But it cannot really substitute for hearing-and-seeing, no matter how keen the mind's-eye or neutral the memory. Brakhage's introspective views leave one quite stranded if one attempts to adopt them as one's own. Faced immediately by the films themselves, you are forced to your own judgments and toward your own personal vision, spurred, in a sense, by Brakhage's words.

There doesn't appear to be, then, any 'lieu-of' for viewing the films of these four men, but the purely verbal aspects of Brakhage's lectures do convey an artist's insight into art and the ticking of artists' minds. We, at the School, affirm the pleasure of seeing these films with him and, the excitement of hearing his insights. Memorable, all-together.

-- IAN ROBERTSON

Films shown as part of this lecture-course (by meeting, and in order of screening):

(1) Georges M Méliès: The Ballet Master's Dream, The Magical Kingdom of Fairyland, The Witch's Revenge, The Inn Where No Man Rests, The Infernal Cauldron, The Damnation of Faust, Jupiter's Thunderbolt, The Mermaid, The Magic Lantern, Extraordinary Illusions, The Enchanted Well, The Apparition

(2) Méliès: The Bob Kick, The Delphic Oracle, The Art Lesson, A trip to the Moon, The Conquest of the North Pole, Paris to Monte Carlo (handcolored version), Baron Munchausen's Dream; Jean Cocteau: Blood of a Poet

(3) Méliès: an untitled film (handcolored), An Astronomer's Dream (handcolored), A Trip to the Moon (an earlier, handcolored version), Topsy's Dream of Toyland, A Christmas Miracle; Anonymous (School of Méliès): Transformation

(4) David Wark Griffith: The New York Hat, The Lonedale Operator, The Battle of Elderbush Gap, Judith of Bethulia

(5) Edwin Porter: The Great Train Robbery (colored version), Griffith: A Corner in Wheat, The Three Sisters; Edwin Porter: Rescued from the Eagle's Nest

(6) Griffith: The Birth of a Nation

(7), (8) Griffith: Intolerance

(9) Carl Theodore Dreyer: The Passion of Joan of Arc

(10) Dreyer: Day of Wrath

(11) Dreyer: Vampyr

(12) Dreyer: Gertrude

(13) Sergei Eisenstein: The Battleship Potemkin

(14) Eisenstein: Ten Days that Shook the World

(15) Eisenstein: Ivan the Terrible, Part 1

(16) Eisenstein: Ivan the Terrible, Part 2