"The idea of Stan Brakhage’s films being transferred to DVD once seemed heretical. The preeminent avant-garde filmmaker of the past half century, Brakhage made hundreds of intense films, many of them silent, that seem to be pure celluloid expression—poetic visual studies based on the play of light, tactile editing, and frame-by-frame editing. He worked mainly in 16 mm, but also made movies that were painstakingly hand-painted onto IMAX-size frames. Yet shortly before his death, Brakhage embraced the idea of a Criterion set, acknowledging the reality of a future (okay, present) where his films were more likely to be seen by an individual, perhaps on a laptop, rather than projected in 16 mm to a small film-society audience. The ability to study Brakhage’s films frame by frame, and to read Fred Camper’s superb commentary, also enhances the experience, easing the bittersweet film nostalgia for die-hard celluloid purists."

"What a strange movie. I had been hearing about this film for years and couldn’t ever find a way to see it, but it finally played at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland. Those film stocks don’t exist anymore—this is 16 mm at its best, and it looks gorgeous. Les Blank was shooting with all this natural light, and it makes for such a great portrait of the South at a certain moment in time with a bunch of total weirdos!"