MothlightSe7en
Scratched film opens a blockbuster
Kyle Cooper's twitching, hand-scratched opening titles for Se7en drew on the hand-worked film strips Brakhage spent his life making.
Hand-made film
Films made by working the film strip by hand: painting, scratching, collaging or processing it yourself.
Instead of treating film as a window, hand-made filmmakers treat it as a surface. Stan Brakhage made Mothlight with no camera at all, pressing moth wings and leaves between strips of clear tape, and spent much of his later career painting directly onto the frames.
The approach overlaps with direct animation, which goes back to Len Lye and Norman McLaren in the 1930s. It lives on in artist-run film labs, where filmmakers develop and tint their own film.
Films to start with
In the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Where it led
Lines from these films into work you may already know.
MothlightNearby
Movements, forms and techniques that share filmmakers or methods with this one.
Direct animation
Animation made straight onto the film strip, painted or scratched frame by frame, with no camera involved.
Photochemical film
Films made with the physical materials of film, its emulsion, chemistry and printers, rather than digital tools.
Lyrical film
Films in which the camera becomes the filmmaker's eye, and the screen fills with how they see.