Sleep, Sirius. The work of Stan Breckhadge, considered one of the founding fathers of abstractionism in cinema, is not a khukhra mukhra. It seems to me that it will be extremely difficult and boring for an unprepared viewer (just like me) to watch the minimalist and plotless Brakhage developments, because this is not cinema as such, but a completely different product, the value of which for modern art was and will be comprehended by far not everyone and apparently only a select few. Add to this the fact that the vast majority of these creatives with the light conceptual hand of their creator are mute (deprived of any sounds or musical fragments) and as a result we get strange and incomprehensible in their incomprehensible, refined and ageless uniqueness samples of creativity at the intersection of video shooting and real painting.
Sirius Remembered, which hooked me half a century ago, is one of Brakhage’s early creatives, as realistic as possible, down to earth in the literal sense of the word, and for this reason is quite uncharacteristic for the author. In principle, Brakhage dedicated this work to his deceased dog (Sirius is, I understand, his nickname), but, being an extraordinary creator, he expressed his love for a departed animal. Stan put a dog corpse in the forest, and then for six months carefully visited him, capturing the natural process of decomposition of the corpse on camera. Subsequently, a solid pile of footage shot during that period was mounted in a short video.
Yes, it does not sound too pleasant, but what happened in the end is truly fascinating. Strange, viscous, authentic work, rather gloomy, but completely devoid of unnecessary naturalistic details (perhaps due to the quality of the picture). A fatalistic quintessence of light sadness, ideally symbolizing the finiteness of any life and, to the credit of the author, focusing not so much on gloomy dog remains as on the surrounding backgrounds. There is nothing special in the frame - branches, snow, sky, earth, branches again, but due to the wild editing and overlay of frames, Brakhage managed to make the picture very vivid and apply an almost physical sense of time to the picture. The present-past and static-dynamics are perhaps two key relations that the author tries to fuse together, thereby forming a kind of memory image for himself. It seems that this strange and at first tense twitching, interspersed with brief moments of calm and smoothness, is what Brakhage is trying to give a concrete visual form to such an abstract and intangible thing as memories.
In general, a very interesting thing to observe and incredibly heavy for any comment, made clearly not for everyone and everyone (as well as any other Brakhage work). This is probably for the best.
8 out of 10