Anticipation of the Night
Stan Brakhage, 1958, 40 min, 16mm

Introduced by The Receptionist

The Hotel is pleased to present a rare 16mm projection of Stan Brakhage's magnum opus, Anticipation of the Night.

"By 1958, Brakhage had begun to move toward mythopoeia. He was feeling the limitations of dramatic form, and sensing that film could do more than reveal the personality of an actor/subject. Simultaneous to this was the making of Anticipation of the Night, the first American film about and structured by the nature of the seeing experience; how one encounters a sight, how it is recalled, how it affects later vision, and where it leads the visionary. By making the film he came upon a simple but startling discovery: if vision is the highest value of film, then the camera must allow visions to occur rather than force them (by script) upon subjects." – P. Adams Sitney in Stan Brakhage’s Metaphors on Vision 

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With thanks to Marilyn Brakhage and Light Cone Paris.