Unconscious London Strata1982

This film, photographed in London in 1979, finished in January of 1982, is an exploration into the depths of unconscious reactions. Having been in London with Stan when he photographed it, I find this a deeply accurate memory piece. Not 'That's how it looked to me' but 'That's how it felt!' There are many new techniques in this film, new grammar. It is a very rich lode. – Jane Brakhage While visiting London, England (dream of my youth) and wishing to be simply camera-tourist (taking pics. of exotic architectural arrangements imagined since earliest Dickens, etc.) I found myself forced, yes forced!, to photograph, rather, the nearest equivalent to the NON-pictorial workings of my mind which these London scenes, before my eyes and camera lens, would afford – each scenic possibility distorted from any easily identifiable picture to some laborious reconstruction of the mind's eye at the borders of the unconscious. It was two years before I could even begin to edit; and then some visual-song of all of England's history began to move thru this material, fashioning it in some way akin to that music of Pierre Boulez which is at one with the poetry of Rene Char – this plus the English "round," song and dance ... only (as is true to my thought process then, in England, and now in memory) the rounds are within rounds, round and around, all (as many as seven interspersed thoughts continuing the orders of shots) interwoven.