Stan Brakhage

Stan Brakhage was an American experimental filmmaker and a central figure in 20th-century experimental cinema, with a body of work spanning five decades. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he grew up in Denver, Colorado, and made his first film, Interim, at 19 after briefly attending Dartmouth College. He moved to New York City in 1954, where he met Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas and John Cage, and used Cage's music for In Between, his first color film. Early screenings drew derision, but the 1960s brought recognition, including awards from Film Culture, and the five-film Dog Star Man cycle (1965). His mostly silent films, often hand-painted or scratched directly onto celluloid, explored birth, mortality and innocence. Later he taught at the University of Colorado, received the Edward MacDowell Medal in 1989, and continued to make hand-painted works. He died in 2003; Trey Parker and Matt Stone, his former students, featured him in Cannibal! The Musical (1993).