Mothlight (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #14 extract: Mothlight (1963)



Mothlight. A simple short film that asks a question that, now we are in the digital age, can't really be asked anymore - at least not in the same manner. Through this short, Brakhage asks "What can be film?". In asking this, he questions the literal material of celluloid and what can go on it. Is light's impact in chemicals the only means through which cinema can communicate? Is cinema only captured with a movie camera? 
Though there hasn't been extensive experimentation in this field, Brakhage's experimental film plays with the plasticity of cinema as an art, providing a non-narrative spectacle of light as filtered through moth wings. This is then a weird 'film' that asks an interesting question and so is certainly worth a watch.

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