Dog Star Man (1964)

A transitional work in avant-garde artist Stan Brakhage's oeuvre, the serial film Dog Star Man (1960-1964) is a culmination of the experiments of his shorter, lyrical films, raising concerns with sexuality, nature, and humanity to the level of ritual and myth. Believing that meaning should be derived as much from the viewer's engagement and imagination as from what the artist intends, Brakhage's multi-layered superimpositions, emulsion scratches, paint splatters, flash cuts, vivid colors, anamorphic adjustments, long takes, focus shifts, color filters, and flares create an astonishing tapestry of visual experience. Influenced by Romanticism and the writings of modernist poet Ezra Pound, and structured according to the cycle of the seasons, the epic struggles of the long-haired Dog Star Man as he contends with a tree, the mountains, and corporeal existence become a metaphor for, as one writer put it, "the birth of the universe." After completing Part 4 of Dog Star Man, Brakhage reassembled the layers of each section individually and in different combinations, removed the titles announcing each part, and retitled the four and a half hour work The Art of Vision (1965). ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide