Name: Study in Color and Black and White
Genre: Short
Released: 1993-11-07
Duration: 3 min
Rating: 4.9

'Study in Color and Black and White (1993)' would be my fourteenth Stan Brakhage film to date, and I didn't particularly get anything out of it. In my experience, Brakhage was at his strongest in the 1950s and 60s, when he was using cameras to expose Man as an organism, as in 'Window Water Baby Moving (1959)' and 'Cat's Cradle (1959).' By the 1990s, he had basically abandoned live-action photography (with some notable exceptions, like 'Commingled Containers (1997)'), and his cinematic work became, if possible, even more abstract and inaccessible. So abstract, in fact, that I struggle to find a reason for making something like 'Study in Color and Black and White.' Are Brakhage's motives purely aesthetic? The director himself wrote of this film: "The title is almost the whole of any possible description of this hand-painted and photographically step-printed film, which exhibits variably shaped small areas of color (in a dark field) that explode into full frames of textured color interwoven with white scratch patterns that create a considerable sense of interior depth and three-dimensional movement." I will admit that it was vaguely pleasing to witness a previously-black screen suddenly "explode" with colour, but the film otherwise inspired very little in me. Another abstract, but painless, oddity from Stan Brakhage.

The short form refers to creative works characterized by their brevity and concise storytelling. Unlike full-length feature films, short films have a running time of less than 45 minutes, while TV shorts have a running time of less than 22 minutes.

Benedict Cumberbatch in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023)

An experimental short film by Stan Brakhage in which light, black and white, and color images are contrasted.

Get a closer look at some of Hollywood's perfect pairs.

Hollywood Power Couples

Get a closer look at some of Hollywood&#39;s perfect pairs.

See which big screen releases you can watch from the comfort of your couch.

Theatrical Releases Coming to Streaming

Get a closer look at these actors from their many TV and streaming series roles.

Study in Color and Black and White

Photos

User reviews1

More like this

Related interests

Storyline

Did you know

Top picks

Details

Tech specs

Contribute to this page

More to explore

Recently viewed