Product Description

For the first time on DVD, the best films of avant-garde pioneer James Broughton have been assembled for this magnificent three-disc set. A poet, author, and filmmaker, Broughton, who was christened the "great and wise master of the American avant-garde" by critic Amos Vogel, attempted to use cinema as kind of poetic statement. He took as his subject matter love, sex, the human body, and dream imagery, rendered with a playful, whimsical, and sometimes erotic touch. Featuring such seminal titles as MOTHER’S DAY (1948), DREAMWOOD (1972), and TESTAMENT(1974), this three-disc set organizes 17 of Broughton’s films into three distinct eras to capture the breadth and evolution of his themes and subject matter. Disc 1: THE EARLY YEARS Disc 1: THE EARLY YEARSBroughton’s first films focused on the themes of romantic love and human behavior. A highlight in this collection includes THE PLEASURE GARDEN, which was named Best Fantastic-Poetic Film at the Cannes Film Festival. This group of black and white shorts include: MOTHER’S DAY(1948), LOONY TOM (1951), FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON (1951), and THE PLEASURE GARDEN (1953). Disc 2: A MIDDLE PERIOD During the 1960s and 1970s, Broughton’s imagery became more erotic while his subject matter explored the landscape of dream and the mysteries of Zen poetry. A highlight in this collection is TESTAMENT, a self-portrait that depicts Broughton’s life as a pageant of personal imagery. This group of color films include: THE BED (1968), THE GOLDEN POSITIONS(1970), This Is It (1971), DREAMWOOD (1972), HIGH KUKUS (1973), TESTAMENT (1974), THE WATER CIRCLE (1975), and EROGENY.Disc 3: FINALE: THE FILMS WITH JOEL SINGER In the last era of his life and career, Broughton teamed with partner Joel Singer to produce a series of films on the nature of intimacy and personal relationships. Films include: SONGS OF THE GODBOY (1977), HERMES BIRD (1979), THE GARDENER OF EDEN (1981), DEVOTIONS (1983), and SCATTERED REMAINS (1988), a portrait of Broughton by Singer in which the artist acts out his poetry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85356 in DVD
• Brand: FACETS HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2006-10-31
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Dimensions: .60 pounds
• Running time: 290 minutes

Features

• Spanning a decades-long artistic career, the collected films of James Broughton represent a remarkable body of work by a leading avant-garde American filmmaker--an undisputed master of the fusion of spoken poetry with moving images. A poet and dramatist as well as a filmmaker, Broughton has transformed all three of these forms into what Stan Brakhage called "an art of lifelong montage." Seventeen

Customer Reviews

Body/Physicality as Liberatory Force and as Frontier
Born in 1913 James Broughton was a late-blooming San Francisco poet and filmmaker as well as beatnik, hippie, and gay activist whose work spans the latter three decades of his life (1950's, 1960's and 1970's). His innovation was to blend his spoken word poetry with avant-garde film imagery. Most of his films feature Broughton reading his poetry which has a nursery rhyme playfulness and a be here now zen simplicity that is very much of its time. Many of Broughton's works are whimsical odes to the body. His black and white 1950's films are mainly about free-spirited people who seek liberation through contact with art and nature and each other confronting those who would contain these impulses. These themes reach fruition in his first early success "The Pleasure Garden" for which he won an award at Cannes (presented to him by none other than Jean Cocteau who admired the film). His color 1960's films are populated by lots of nude bodies in motion and are celebratory in spirit. One of the best in this category would be "The Bed" which features a succession of nude individuals, couples, and groups (most of them bohemian) lying on, dancing 'round, and jumping over a bed situated in the bright California outdoors with the calmly luxuriant California Sierras visible in the background. Although Broughton's masterpiece of this middle period would be "Dreamwood" which is a much moodier and trippier piece about a hippie who leaves behind the industrial wastleland of urban Cal and journeys to a mysterious island where he seeks sensual and psychic liberation/release/enlightenment among the fauna and flora and body-spirits of the place. It's an extraordinary trance film (which has affinities with Satyricon and Zabriskie Point).

The trajectory of Broughton's career is the trajectory of his own burgeoning sensuality. Though he seems to have practiced a kind of pan sexuality for much of his life (he had one child with film critic Pauline Kael and another with his wife, Stan Brakhage filmed the wedding) from the mid-seventies onward he made films about male-male culture, relationships, and sensuality. These later films are perhaps more personal (and more graphic) but as a result less accessible to some viewers.