Duplicity I

Stan Brakhage
1978-01-01

6
23 min

A friend of many years' acquaintance showed me the duplicity of myself. And, midst guilt and anxiety, I came to see that duplicity often shows itself forth in semblance of sincerity. Then a dream informed me that SINCERITY IV, which I had just completed, was such a semblance. The dream ended with the word "Duplicity" scratched white across the closed eyelids (as the title "The Weir-Falcon Saga" had been given to me). I saw that the film in question demonstrated a duplicity of relationship between the Brakhages and animals (Totemism) and environs (especially trees), visiting friends (Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Donald Sutherland, Angelo DiBenedetto and Jerome Hill among them) and people-at-large. I saw that the film shifted its compositions equally along a line of dark shapes as well as light, and that it did not progress (as did earlier Sincerities) but was rather a correlative of SINCERITY I. Accordingly I changed the title to "Duplicity."