Panels for the Walls of Heaven2002

"The one work made with a movie camera, Max, grew out of Brakhage's desire to create a record of his cat. After several attempts, he was finally satisfied with a single roll, edited in camera. He used to complain that viewers didn't understand that he had a sense of humor, but often his humor is subtle, revolving around individual oddities, whether of humans or animals - a body or face or eye that stands out from a more even field of light. Because for Brakhage light stands for the energy underlying all things, sometimes it seems that locking it into a recognizable or namable shape is too restrictive. Max jokes about this issue by making the cat's individuality seem odd, as its bright eyes occasionally peer out from a mass of soft-focus fur, markers of a being that almost seems to understand its own insignificance." -Fred Camper