Continuing the monthly series: Existence is Song: The Films of Stan Brakhage

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While Brakhage was setting up a shot for a portrait film he was making of an old high-school friend, the bellows of the camera lens drooped and focused on an ornate crystal ashtray on his friend's desk. Brakhage was stunned by the refracted world of shimmering and organic light this revealed, and spent the next few weeks filming the ashtray and other glass materials in all possible light conditions. Its unlikely genesis aside, The Text of Light is one of Brakhage's more popular films and a cornerstone of his oeuvre, creating a stunning cosmos of imagery as the beams of light form celestial patterns and lush fields of colour.

Preceded by The Shores of Phos: A Fable, a nature film that captures the play of light across the fur and feathers of Brakhage's farm animals.