Re: overpriced Brakhage on eBay?

From: Madison Brookshire (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Oct 01 2007 - 08:12:25 PDT


Just to reiterate what Fred and others have already said, those
disappearing print stocks mean more than just the end of 16mm being a
viable option for new work. There is a Kodachrome print of Harry
Smith's Early Abstractions at Filmmakers' Co-op that is pretty beat
up--it must be coaxed through the projector--but it all seems worth it
to to be saturated in the evanescent stained glass of Harry Smith's
hand-painted masterpieces. Ditto for Kodachrome prints of Brakhage's
Window Water Baby Moving and Anticipation of the Night. The stock is
part of the art, a choice in materials. No one would ever confuse
ultramarine with cobalt blue, but we are asked to forgive differences
between Eastmancolor and Vision all the time.

Mark Toscano beautifully restored Bruce Baillie's Castro Street to
Vision Premier print stock, which is fantastic stuff. Unfortunately,
since then they stopped manufacturing Vision Premier for 16mm. The
best print from an internegative that I could manage had to be flashed
20%, an expensive and imperfect science. We lost some of the contrast
in the reversal original, but the final product looks less like an
acid trip and more like a movie.

And, of course, the disappearance of black and white reversal print
stock is a regrettable reality much lamented on this listserv, so I
won't continue to cry in our collective beer. Let's just say that it's
hard to imagine Study of a River from an internegative, but we will do
more than imagine soon enough.

Madison
Los Angeles

On 10/1/07, Fred Camper <email suppressed> wrote:
> Saul, sorry, I should have seen your irony. The point about video
> formats and film printing formats is a good one, of course. Many
> filmmakers (including Brakhage in the 60s) printed their color films
> directly from the camera original to 7387 ("Kodachrome") print stock
> before Kodak stopped making it in the 80s. This had a unique look, real
> solid intensity to the colors, and I know of no way to get the "look" of
> those prints today.

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