Duplicity Collection

Part 1 · Jan 1, 1978

Duplicity I

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."

Part 2 · Jan 1, 1978

Duplicity II

This, the second film of the continuing autobiographical Duplicity series, is composed of superimpositions much as the mind "dupes" remembered experience into some semblance of, say, composed surety rather than imbalanced accuracy - as thought may even warp "scene" into symmetry, or "face" into multitudinous mask. What will have been becomes what will be being. I've tried to "give the lie" to this genesis of all white-lying.

Part 3 · Jan 1, 1980

Duplicity III

The final Duplicity film does seem at resolve with the term. All previous visual manifestations have been extended to their limits, through four-roll superimpositions. Obvious costumes and masks. Drama as an ultimate bid for truth, and totemic recognition of human and animal life-on-earth dominate all the evasions a duplicity otherwise affords.