Anticipation of the Night (Stan Brakhage, 1958) (Patreon)

It's another InRO special, this time permitting me to go long, and hopefully deep, on one of Brakhage's first definitive works. Here's a sample:

"It may be reductive to compare Schoenberg’s break with tonality with Brakhage’s development of a radically new cinematic language, one that largely abandoned such fundamentals as narrative, character, and coherent spatial orientation. But there is a connection between the two artists in the sense that, following the precepts of high modernism, these men were exploring potentials they both believed were inherent in their chosen medium. For Brakhage, this meant treating the camera as an extension of the filmmaker’s eye and body, organizing his films according to private, even idiosyncratic leaps in memory, gesture, and impressionistic light. And of course, the artistic paradigms  “overturned” by both Schoenberg and Brakhage have continued unabated, since the consequences of their invention could not be accommodated to dominant aesthetic preferences."

Have at!