Empty Nest: Brakhage’s Tortured Dust
These four reels are just a small sampling of the Coop’s vast Brakhage collection. Many of their Brakhage prints are rarely screened, and many aren’t available anywhere digitally. This screening series highlights the best of this underseen trove of Brakhage’s films.
Tortured Dust is a woefully underseen and underscreened Stan Brakhage feature, split into four distinct reels but always shown together. The final chapter of his Book of the Film cycle, Tortured Dust is a document of the end of Brakhage’s time raising his children with his first wife Jane. By the time Stan got around to editing the film, all of his children had moved out, and the editing was completed soon before he and Jane were divorced. A somber and striking farewell not only to this period of Brakhage’s life, but also to his family.
Tortured Dust (16mm) [1984] dir. Stan Brakhage – 89 min.
Carter Haskins 