Mothlight
Mothlight is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, released in 1963. The film was created without the use of a camera.
Description
Mothlight is a silent "collage film" that incorporates "real world elements." Brakhage produced the film without the use of a camera, using what he then described as "a whole new film technique." Brakhage collected moth wings, flower petals, and blades of grass, and pressed them between two strips of 16mm splicing tape. The resulting assemblage was then contact-printed at a lab to allow projection in a cinema. The objects chosen were required to be thin and translucent, to permit the passage of light. Brakhage reused the technique to produce his later film, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981). Mothlight has been described as boasting a "three-part musical structure."
Production
Brakhage was initially drawn to the idea of using moths in a film when he noticed many of them burning to death in a candle:
After spending some time following live moths with a camera, an exercise that proved fruitless, Brakhage instead turned his attention towards using dead moths:
Reception
Mothlight won awards at the 1964 Brussels International Film Festival, and the 1966 Spoleto Film Festival. James Peterson describes Mothlight as belonging "to a new class of films, those that direct attention away from the screen and to the physical object in the projector." Darragh O'Donoghue, writing for Senses of Cinema, praised the way Brakhage "evokes the moth not through cartoon mimicry, but by the fragile sensation of its movement, batting against the screen, hurtling in descent."
Along with Window Water Baby Moving (1959), Mothlight remains one of Brakhage's best-known works, and his most rented. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection's By Brakhage: An Anthology.