From: Marilyn Brakhage (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Oct 18 2005 - 20:09:39 PDT
On Tuesday, October 18, 2005, at 03:17 PM, Cari Machet wrote:
> although it is really great that they are restoring
> stan's films
> i worry that they will screw them up
>
Well, I'm glad I waited, because Mark really saved me a lot of time!
Cari,
As you can probably tell from Mark's recent lengthy post, Stan's films
are receiving a great deal of care and attention. It was Mark who
first approached me about the possibility of sending Stan's originals
to the Academy (in late 2003). Before making any decision, I asked a
lot of questions and consulted with a number of people who I knew would
care very deeply about the fate of Stan's legacy, and who might have
some insights into various issues that needed to be considered. Some
preservation work had already been done on a few Brakhage titles by
Anthology Film Archives (though I believe they had not gone back to the
originals, as the Academy is now doing.) Also, more than a decade ago,
MoMA had made a new internegative for The Art of Vision, as well as
financing the 35 mm printing of Stan's 12 minute "Interpolations"
(1992). MoMA has a large collection of Brakhage prints, and had also
agreed to store the old internegs (when Western Cine was being
threatened with bankruptcy, and Stan needed somewhere to put them all
as we were packing up and leaving for Canada). However, MoMA's claim
that they were "preserving" Stan's work seemed a bit overstated, as no
preservation work had been done by them in years, and none was under
discussion. (Though they were certainly helping with some
conservation/storage.) . . . The originals, meanwhile, were
languishing in a storage facility in Kansas, and needed to be attended
to in the way in which Mark has described. I don't want to go into all
of the details here, but I just did not end up feeling that MoMA (or
anyone else) was going to be able to do the kind of job that was being
proposed by the Academy, and which I felt was a matter of some urgency
(not knowing the condition of the originals, and being informed by the
lab of variously wearing out internegs.)
I did consult with MoMA during this time, but ultimately concluded that
the best thing would be to send the originals to LA. I had hoped that
a cooperative spirit might prevail, and even felt that having the
internegs and the originals in two different locations might provide
some extra security, as it were. However, it seems that some people at
MoMA were not pleased with my decision, and I was informed that they
"might not want to store the internegs anymore" under these
circumstances. So there was some discussion about where they should be
sent in that case -- possibly back to the lab, or possibly to the
Academy Film Archive. Eventually it was agreed to send them to LA.
But that hasn't happened yet. Why not? When? I don't know, because
MoMA has some very serious communication problems. (Many people have
experienced this, not just me.) And this is only one of several issues
I am trying (so far, unsuccessfully) to straighten out with them.
Meanwhile, Mark has been doing a great job with the films, and has been
very open to consulting with various people, as he mentioned. In fact,
I have always found him very open and accessible in every respect. If
I felt at any time that anyone was "screwing up" the job, I would
certainly move to do something about it. But I have full confidence in
the work that is being done, and in the plan that has been presented to
me.
Marilyn
PS I also think that Stan would have been very pleased by the
acknowledgment given to him at the Academy Awards ceremony. He was not
really "against" Hollywood (though maybe sometimes against some
people's excessive valorization of it). He usually used the analogy of
his work to Hollywood being like poetry is to the novel. (He wasn't
"against" novels, either -- though he did have a special love for
poetry.)
__________________________________________________________________
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