David
Brooks

"David Brooks died in an automobile accident in 1969 at the age of 24 with only six completed works to his credit. There is a well-established mode of discourse reserved for film-makers cut down in their prime; praise for what was balanced by mourning for what might have been. This may appear at first an appropirate response, and to some degree it is. The only problem is the way in which it places the film-maker in a kind of artistic limbo. Rather than enjoying continued validity, achievements sit frozen in a state not quite part of, yet not quite removed from, history. Alongside it stand a clutch of aesthetic possibilities - a nether region of unfinished 'dream' projects, unmade masterpieces. With Brooks the situation is doubly difficult, for unlike a Jean Vigo or Ron Rice he received little attention in his own lifetime. To bring up his name is to start from scratch, as it were, only to come up against the unavoidable inscription death has left on his career." - David Ehrenstein "... any inventory of his films is as meaningless as an inventory of a painting by Bonnard. It is through the lyrical flow of his camera, through his intuitive knowledge of the right length of each shot and the natural grafting of one onto another, that his statements on film assume the quality of poetry." - David Curtis [from Anthology Film Archives catalog, July/Aug./Sept. 2006]