Sincerity I

1973 • Directed by

Stan Brakhage

This, the first completed reel of work-in-progress, draws on autobiographical energies and images which reflect the first 20 years of my living. I have three definitions of the word Sincerity to sustain my working along these lines of thought with this autobiographical material: (1) Ezra Pound's marvelous mistranslation of a Chinese ideogram – Sincerity... the sun's lance coming to rest on the precise spot verbally...(of which I would change, for my purposes, the last word to visually), (2) Robert Creeley's trace-of-the-word for me on the back of a Buffalo restaurant menu Sym-keros... same-growth (Ceres) CREATE... of the same growth, and (3) Hollis Frampton's track-of-it to 'the greek', viz – 'a glazed pot (i. e. one which will hold water).' This film might best be seen, then, as a graph of light equivalent to autobiographical thought process.