Avant-garde filmmaker and Distinguished Professor Emeritus James S. "Stan" Brakhage of film studies at CU-Boulder died Sunday in Victoria, British Columbia, after an eight-year battle with cancer. He was 70.

Mr. Brakhage was born on Jan. 14, 1933, in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to Denver at age 8.

His foray into the world of avant-garde cinema began in Colorado in the late 1940s and early 1950s at South High School in Denver. He graduated from South High School, but dropped out of Dartmouth College to make films. He went on to make nearly 400 films and was honored with numerous awards.

Before joining the CU-Boulder faculty, he taught at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1969-81. In 1981, he became a tenure-track faculty member at UCB. He received an honorary doctorate from San Francisco Art Institute, and was named a Distinguished Professor by the CU Board of Regents in 1994. He retired from CU-Boulder last summer after a 20-year teaching career.

His 1964 film Dog Star Man was one of the first 10 films to be selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry. In 1986 the American Film Institute awarded Mr. Brakhage its Maya Dean Award. He also received awards from the Denver Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival.

In 1990, he received the prestigious MacDowell Medal, joining previous recipients Robert Frost, Georgia O'Keeffe and Aaron Copland. He was the first film artist to receive the medal.

Mr. Brakhage also received several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, several Rockefeller Scholarships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work also appeared in several retrospectives by the New York Museum of Modern Art. He worked in many abstract forms, including scratching black leader (blank film), collage (gluing objects to film) and hand painting frames of 16 mm film.

Saranjan Ganguly, chair of UCB film studies, said, "Stan will always be for me the supreme artist who lived what he believed in, who maintained the integrity of his vision right to the end. Everything he did was governed by his enormous passion for art, for truth, for the sacredness of life, and he shared it all with us, giving freely, with so much love."

"I am deeply saddened to learn of the death of Stan Brakhage, a brilliant filmmaker and distinguished professor of film studies," said CU-Boulder Chancellor Richard Byyny. "Stan's contributions to the field of film production cannot be measured. We extend our sympathy to his family and friends."

"Stan opened up the world of art to me in a way that I never thought possible," said Don Yannacito, longtime friend and fellow film studies instructor and filmmaker. "The arts -- poetry, painting, film and music -- were an integral part of his life and were at the very core of his being."

Friend Phil Solomon of UCB film studies said, "There is simply no precedent in film history for what Stan Brakhage has done, and I suspect we won't truly understand the nature and importance of his monumental achievement for some time. His abstract art reached right to the core of humanity. If you make film, sooner or later you will run into Stan Brakhage."

Last fall, Mr. Brakhage moved to Victoria, British Columbia with his wife, Marilyn, who survives him. Other survivors include his former wife, Jane Wodening of Denver; three daughters; four sons; and numerous grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 23, in Room 141 of the Sibell Wolle Fine Arts Building on the CU-Boulder campus.

A Stan Brakhage archive is being established by the University libraries at CU-Boulder. Memorial contributions for that archive may be sent to the CU Foundation, P.O. Box 1140, Boulder, CO 80306-1140.



Source: http://newmedia.colorado.edu/silverandgold/messages/1663.html