Responses to Filmmaker Presentations

Stan's presentation on Stan was Stantastic. Embarrassingly, I knew very little about Brakhage prior to last week, aside from having seen his very well-known films such as Mothlight (which, between you and me, I hate). I had heard of Window Water Baby Moving, but I didn't know exactly what it was about. While Brakhage's entire life and many of his works were fascinating to learn about (Stan did a lovely job presenting), I could not stop thinking about the small snippet of WWBM we watched in class. It was so beautiful. As soon as I got home that afternoon I looked up the full film, sat down with my roommate (who had never seen an experimental film, period) and hit play. By the end of the film we had both sunk deep into the couch with our mouths slightly open. We sat in silence for several moments until my roommate said, "I'm never having kids."

I felt...the opposite way? Don't get me wrong, I dislike children as much as, if not more than, the average college student, but this film was really touching to me. It made me respect my mother and everyone else's so much more than I already did. The love they must have for us is incredible for them to have all done something like that for us. It made me want my own little family to be blissfully euphoric about someday. I wiped a little tear off my cheek and responded to my roommate, "I'm going to eat my placenta."

On a completely different note, George Kuchar might be my favorite person in the entire world now?? Christian did a great job capturing his personality and eccentricity and I think I am in love with him. I want to watch everything he has ever created. Probably the best part of Christian's presentation was when she shared all of Kuchar's hilarious, sarcasm-riddled quotes and letters of recommendation. What a guy. I want to marry him and be his best friend and his daughter all at once. I'm sorry, I'm just so excited about how incredible this man was. Does this manic blog post weirdly mimic his filmmaking style? If so, let's pretend that was my intention all along!