Stan Brakhage is Dead...

"Stan Brakhage is Dead..." is filmmaker Carson Wang's eulogy for the avant-garde. It belongs in the tradition of structural film, a movement which includes many avant-garde classics. It made the physical apparatus of cinema its subject, but the apparatus structural films dealt with is obsolete; most people today have no knowledge of optical printers, splicers, or flatbed editors. If a cinematic form defines itself by reference to its apparatus, can the form remain relevant if the apparatus is disappearing? What will happen to our memory of the avant-garde artists of previous generations? "Stan Brakhage is Dead..." explores these questions by applying the concerns of structural film to the digital apparatus. A small, handheld digital camera was placed in a nighttime location, referencing how digital cameras work well in low light. A single take comprises the entire film, never using zooms or pans, although the filmmaker was free to use other in-camera effects like racking focus and changing the exposure. A non-linear editor was used to reorganize the film into sections with matching visual forms and patterns akin to abstract art; only with the technology of a non-linear editor could such a drastic destruction/reconstruction be so clean and precise. The audio was digitally altered; no audio was added. "Stan Brakhage is Dead..." traverses the strange gap between a linearly-structured narrative and completely non-narrative abstraction.