Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker (Wide Angle Books)

"Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker" is a collection of essays, photographs, personal statements, and reminiscences about the celebrated avant-garde filmmaker who died in 2003. The director of nearly four hundred short films, including "Dog Star Man, " Parts I-IV, and the "Roman Numeral Series," Brakhage is widely recognized as one of the great artists of the medium. His shorts eschewed traditional narrative structure, and his innovations in fast cutting, hand-held camerawork, and multiple superimpositions created an unprecedentedly rich texture of images that provided the vocabulary for the explosion of independent filmmaking in the 1960s. "Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker "chronicles both the director's personal and formal development. The essays in this bookOCoby historians, filmmakers, and other artistsOCoassess Brakhage's contributions to the aesthetic and political history of filmmaking, from his emergence on the film scene and the establishment of his reputation, to the early-1980s. The result is a remarkable tribute to this lyrical, visionary artist."