Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Brakhage's Childhood recounts the story of visionary American filmmaker Stan Brakhage's (1933-2003) life up to age 12. In 1983 Stan and Jane Brakhage began a series of interviews wherein Stan described his life and Jane took notes. Each session yielded a chapter and each chapter usually a place. After each interview Jane organized, wrote and edited the stories. After two years they had 23 chapters in 100,000 words. -He had the most amazing memory I had ever encountered, - says Jane, who writes: -This is a biography of a child, taken from the memory of that child grown up. I can only assume that we stopped the interviews, stopped the book, stopped the marriage, at exactly the right moment. Stan and I worked together a lot in his medium; this time, we worked together in my medium.- -In the end, - writes Tony Pipolo in the afterword, - Jane] created a masterly fiction about a fiction that reveals undeniable truths, assuming an autobiographical posture at once commanding and equivocal, a chronicle of semi-Dickensian misery offset by plainspoken observations about an American childhood bearing the mark of its author's writing style, demonstrated in books written during and after her life with Stan Brakhage.- Brakhage's Childhood is a remarkable achievement conceptually, intellectually and aesthetically, and provides crucial insight into the early life of one of America's most inspired and complex experimental filmmakers.