P. Adams Sitney on the Film Theories of Gilles Deleuze and Stan Brakhage

An error in Gilles Deleuze's description of George Landow's Bardo Follies becomes a key to the nature of his use of secondary critical texts and his system building in his two books on cinema. P. Adams Sitney will show how the metaphysical underpinning of Deleuze's theory (derived from Henri Bergson) corresponds to the theory and practice of Stan Brakhage, whose films Deleuze discusses without ever having seen. Sitney will then attempt to show that Deleuze 'corrected' Bergon's insights with an adaptation of semiological categories from C. S. Peirce to support the positions formulated by André Bazin and promoted by the Cahiers du cinéma.

P. Adams Sitney taught cinema and "great books" for fifty years at Yale, Bard, NYU, Middlebury, Cooper Union, School of Visual Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and above all, Princeton University, from which he escaped three years ago, after thirty-five years, as professor emeritus. He is the author of Visionary Film, Modernist Montage, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema, Eyes Upside Down, The Cinema of Poetry, and dozens of essays nobody reads.

Image: Bardo Follies. Directed by George Landow, 1967 (top). Reflections on Black. Directed by Stan Brakhage, 1955.

—

VISITOR INFORMATION: Oshman Hall is located in the McMurtry Building on the Stanford campus at 355 Roth Way. Visitor parking is free after 4 p.m. on weekdays, except by the Oval. Alternatively, take the Caltrain to Palo Alto Transit Center and ride the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle.

Subscribe to receive announcements from the Department of Art & Art History.