Brakhage in Seattle

Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum is offering a Stan Brakhage showcase tonight. The avant-garde legend’s widow, Marilyn Brakhage, and preservationist Mark Toscano will appear in person to accompany a program of four 16 mm films in Academy Film Archive restorations. Among them is the remarkable short The Wonder Ring (1955), an elegiac silent document of Manhattan’s Third Avenue El train, which was on the verge of being demolished. Commissioned by Joseph Cornell, the film is a wondrous evocation of movement and color. Fred Camper, in his notes for Criterion’s Brakhage collection, writes, “This breakthrough fllm for Brakhage is also an excellent introduction to his work. Previously, the filmmaker had mostly been making anguished, black-and-white, sound psychodramas.” Watch The Wonder Ring below.