The Way to Shadow Garden

The Way to Shadow Garden
The Way to Shadow Garden
Directed by	Stan Brakhage
Release date	1955;
Running time	10 minutes
Country	United States

The Way to Shadow Garden is a 1955 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage.

Synopsis

A man returns home at night. He blinds himself and picks up the lamp, creating shadows on the walls. The image switches to a negative, and the man staggers through a doorway and collapses. He wakes up in a garden full of flowers.^[1]

Production

Brakhage moved from Denver to San Francisco in late 1953, living with poet Robert Duncan and artist Jess Collins. He discovered the Art in Cinema series organized by Frank Stauffacher at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He took odd jobs to finance his filmmaking practice, shooting The Boy and the Sea and The Extraordinary Child.^[2]^[3]

While living in New York, Brakhage was introduced by James Tenney to the music of Edgard Varèse. Brakhage wanted to use a recording of Edgard Varèse's Ionisation for the film's soundtrack. He went to New York to approach Varèse about using it in the film, but his request was rejected because Varèse did not own the copyright to the recording.^[4]^[5] Brakhage ended up spending some time studying under Varèse and learning about "the relationship between music and film".^[6]

Analysis

Critic P. Adams Sitney characterized The Way to Shadow Garden as a trance film.^[7] It is influenced by the psychodramas of Maya Deren, such as Meshes of the Afternoon. The film deals with the subjects of sexual anxiety, masturbation, loneliness, and suicide.^[8]

Release

The Way to Shadow Garden screened at the second Knokke-Le-Zoute Experimental Film Festival [fr] in 1958.^[9] It was released on DVD as part of Kino International's Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928–1954 box set, along with Brakhage's early films Interim, Unglassed Windows Cast a Terrible Reflection, and The Extraordinary Child.^[10]

References

^ Hamlyn, Nicky (2018). "Brakhage's Blacks". In Leslie, Esther; Lori, Marco (eds.). Stan Brakhage the realm buster. Indiana University Press. pp. 11–14.
^ Anker, Steve; Geritz, Kathy; Seid, Steve, eds. (2010). Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000. University of California Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-520-24911-0.
^ Ganguly, Suranjan (2017). Stan Brakhage. University Press of Mississippi. p. 100.
^ Smigel, Eric (2012). "Metaphors on Vision: James Tenney and Stan Brakhage, 1951–1964". American Music. 30 (1): 67. doi:10.5406/americanmusic.30.1.0061.
^ James, David, ed. (2011). Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker. Temple University Press. p. 59. ISBN 1-59213-271-5.
^ MacDonald, Scott (2005). A Critical Cinema 4: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. University of California Press. p. 49.
^ Sitney, P. Adams (2002). Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943–2000. Oxford University Press. p. 157.
^ Anker, Steve; Varela, Willie (2005). "Remembering Stan Brakhage: An E-mail Conversation between Steve Anker and Willie Varela". Journal of Film and Video. 57 (1/2): 14–15.
^ "Program". Film Culture. Vol. 46. October 1968. p. 13.
^ "Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928–1954 (Kino International)". Senses of Cinema. No. 45. Retrieved February 19, 2024.