Appreciation of Welles by the avant-garde

[K Dobry]

I’ve been re-reading volume 4 of Scott MacDonald’s wonderful (and essential) series A Critical Cinema (made up of interviews with independant and experimental filmmakers like Peter Watkins and Stan Brakhage), and was pleasantly surprised to find several appreciative references to Welles' work that I had forgotten about.
Actually, it’s not so surprising, for, as the late Gary Graver once said in an interview, Welles was “the foremost experimental filmmaker we have in this country.”

Just a couple of the more interesting mentions:

Shirin Neshat:
“In Rapture, I filmed in the fortress city of Essaouira, because this space was a relevant location for my concept.[...]Another reason this fort was attractive to me is that Orson Welles shot some scenes of his Othello there. Orson Welles spent a lot of time in Essaouria; he is very much loved by the local people.”

Stan Brakhage:
“I remember a compelling moment when I saw Orson Welles on the Tom Snyder Tomorrow show, back in the early seventies I think it was, being asked about film, and he said, ‘It has destroyed my life. It has absolutely destroyed my life.’ Of course, he had other things he could do, so I couldn’t say exactly what he says.”