Three of the Greatest Tasks for Film

By Stan Brakhage

Rolling Stock 6, 1983

Three of the greatest tasks for film in the twentieth century are:

1. To make the epic, that is, to tell the tales of the tribes of the world.
2. To keep it personal, because only in the eccentricities of our personal lives do we have any chance at the truth.
3. To do the dream work; that is to illuminate the borders of the unconscious.

The only film-maker I know that does all these three things equally in every film he makes is Andrei Tarkovsky.

Rolling Stock 6, 1983