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I Take These Truths

Name: I Take These Truths
Director: Stan Brakhage
Released: 1995
Duration: 18 min

Representation Score

0.0/10

Minimal

1995

Director

Stan Brakhage

Runtime

18 minutes

Average Rating

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New Showbiz Analysis

Stan Brakhage’s *I Take These Truths* is a purely formalist, hand-painted avant-garde short. Since it functions as a visual poem rather than a scripted drama, it lacks the traditional identity markers found in narrative cinema. The film’s intentionality is focused on exploring light, color, and the tactile qualities of the celluloid medium through organic shapes and crystalline patterns. Consequently, it does not engage with identity politics or systemic power dynamics. Its disruption of cinematic expectations is purely aesthetic rather than sociopolitical.

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Category Breakdown

Does I Take These Truths have LGBTQ+ representation?

Minimal

The film lacks any depiction of LGBTQ+ identities, relationships, or narratives.

How does I Take These Truths portray gender?

Minimal

The work does not feature any human characters, so it doesn't reinforce or engage with gender roles or hierarchies.

How racially and ethnically diverse is I Take These Truths?

Minimal

The film uses various colors and textures but does not represent racial or ethnic identities.

How does I Take These Truths represent religion and culture?

Minimal

It avoids traditional Western religious or cultural institutions, focusing instead on sensory experiences.

Does I Take These Truths include disability representation?

Minimal

There are no characters depicting disabilities or neurodivergent conditions; the film explores visual perception.

Present on Screen

Presents a wide range of colors and light through stained radiances and multi-colored bars.
Provides a unique, unmediated sensory experience through hand-painted celluloid and organic shapes.

Limited or Absent

Lacks any representation of human identity, gender, or social dynamics due to its abstract nature.
Does not engage with sociopolitical frameworks or the deconstruction of cultural institutions.

Official Synopsis

This film is entirely hand-painted and is composed of such an evolution of variably colored shapes that their inter-action with each other should constitute a purely visual "self-evident" (as prompted by the title). Each frame is printed twice, so that its effective speed (at 24fps) is 12 frames per second. A variety of organic and crystalline painted shapes (painted on clear leader, thus as if brilliantly back-lit in a blazing space of light) are interspersed with very dark (black leader) passages as if etched with scratches of light and stained radiances. There are also some straight, multi-colored, bars which move, diagonally from one side of the film frame to the other. All these "themes" finally give way to clear thick gelatinous effects which resolve themselves in a long passage of hieroglyphic white shapes in a black field, ending on a brief spate of variable coloration.

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