Mothlight
Stan Brakhage
3 minutes and 24 seconds, color, silent, 16mm
USA 1963
Mothlight was created without the use of a camera. “Brakhage collected dead moths, flowers, leaves, and seeds. By placing them between two layers of Mylar editing tape, a transparent, thin strip of 16mm celluloid with sprocket holes and glue on one side, he made Mothlight, ‘as a moth might see from birth to death if black were white.’ The passing of light through, rather than reflecting off, the plants and moth wings reveals a fascinating and sometimes terrifying intricacy of veins and netlike structures, which replaces the sense of depth in the film with an elaborate lateral complexity, flashing by at the extreme speed of almost one natural object to each frame of the three-minute film.” (Sitney 1979: 157–158)
Stan Brakhage, born 1933 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, died 2003 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Video
Reference
P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film. The American Avant-Garde 1943–1978 (Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1979).