Passage Through: A Ritual
Stan Brakhage, 1990, 50 min, 16mm

The Hotel is proud to present Stan Brakhage's late masterpiece Passage Through: A Ritual.

After seeing Brakhage's The Riddle of Lumen one evening at Anthology Film Archives, composer Philip Corner got home and started recording a tape. Corner gave the tape to Brakhage who, in turn decided to make a film based on it:

​“When I received the tape of Philip Corner's Through the Mysterious Barricade, Lumen I (after F. Couperin) he included a note that thanked me for my film The Riddle of Lumen he'd just seen and which had in some way inspired this music. I, in turn, was so moved by the tape he sent I immediately asked his permission to 'set it to film'. It required the most exacting editing process ever, and in the course of that work it occurred to me that I'd originally made The Riddle of Lumen hoping someone would make an 'answering' film and entertain my visual riddle in the manner of the riddling poets of yore. I most expected Hollis Frampton (because of Zorn's Lemma) to pick up the challenge, but he never did. In some sense I think composer Corner has, and now we have this dance of riddles as music and film combine to make 'passage', in every sense of the word, further possible.” – Stan Brakhage

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With thanks to Marilyn Brakhage and Philip Corner

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