Cristina Alberto

Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Fellow in the Humanities

20052006 Forum on Word and Image

Cristina Alberto

Cinema/Visual Studies

College '06

A Way of Seeing What Can Be Seen:" Visual Perception in Avant Garde Cinema

The eye-as-camera analogy is an accepted way of explaining the act and experience of visual perception. How artists exploit this process is directly related to their attitude toward the dominant visual ideology—in most cases, the Hollywood industry. A case in point is the American avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage. How well do his films and manifestoes succeed in providing the alternative, authentic visualization of perception that his texts promote?