Sincerity: Reel 3
“In the autobiographical tradition of earlier Sincerities, this film takes up the light-threads of our living 14 years ago when the Brakhage family found Home and ‘settled,' like they say, into some sense of permanence. This quality of living in one place tends to destroy most senses of chronology: thus, along lines-of-thought of growing and shifting physicality, events can seem to be occurring simultaneously ... and the memory of such a time IS prompted and sustained by details of living usually overlooked or taken-for-granted (such as Proust's cookie which prompted ‘The Remembrance of Things Past'). Michael McClure's ‘Fleas' and Andrew Noren's The Exquisite Corpse III were additional sources of inspiration for the making of this work.”

-S.B.

• A film by Stan Brakhage. (1978, 35 mins, color, silent, Print Courtesy of Canyon Cinema Cooperative)

Duplicity
“A friend of many years' acquaintance showed me the duplicity of myself. And, midst guilt and anxiety, I came to see that duplicity often shows itself forth in semblance of sincerity. Then a dream informed me that Sincerity IV, which I had just completed, was such a semblance. The dream ended with the word ‘Duplicity' scratched white across the closed eyelids.... I saw that the film in question demonstrated a duplicity of relationship between the Brakhages and animals (Totemism) and environs (especially trees), visiting friends (Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Donald Sutherland, Angleo DiBenedetto and Jerome Hill among them) and people-at-large. I saw that the film shifted its compositions equally along a line of dark shapes as well as light, and that it did not progress (as did earlier Sincerities) but was rather a correlative of Sincerity III. Accordingly I changed the title to Duplicity.”

- S.B.

• A film by Stan Brakhage. (1978, 23 mins, color, silent, Print Courtesy of Canyon Cinema Cooperative)