Breathdeath by Stan Vanderbeek (1963)

Dur­ing the mid-1950s, Stan Van­der­beek began shoot­ing sur­re­al­ist col­lage films that, as NPR put it, “used clip­pings from mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers to cre­ate whim­si­cal but point­ed com­men­tary.” If you think this sounds famil­iar, you’re right. It’s pre­cise­ly this approach that sur­faces lat­er in Ter­ry Gilliam’s own work. And if one film pro­vid­ed par­tic­u­lar inspi­ra­tion, it was Vanderbeek’s 1963 film Breathdeath.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.