James Broughton
Encyclopedia
James Broughton was an American
poet, and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance
. He was an early bard of the Radical Faeries
as well as a charter member of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence serving her community as Sister Sermonetta.
A selected collection of his work, All: A James Broughton Reader, edited by Jack Foley, was released in 2007 by White Crane Books.
"The Selected Films of James Broughton" is a DVD compilation of seventeen films on 3 discs, released in 2006 by Facets Multimedia.
Before he was three, "Sunny Jim" experienced a transformational visit from his muse, Hermy, which he describes in his autobiography, Coming Unbuttoned (1993):
In the book, Broughton remarks on his love affairs with both men and women. Among his male lovers was gay activist Harry Hay
.
He briefly lived with the film critic Pauline Kael
and they had a daughter Gina, born in 1948.
His work is quintessentially Californian – exploring and engaging the polar frontiers of wildness and civility, male and female, body and spirit—with the crash of Pacific Ocean waves echoing throughout. "Ultimately I have learned more about poetry / from music and magic than from literature," he wrote.
Broughton was kicked out of military school for having an affair with a classmate, dropped out of Stanford before graduating, and spent time in Europe during the 1950s, where he received an award in Cannes from Jean Cocteau for the "poetic fantasy" of his film The Pleasure Garden, made in England with partner Kermit Sheets
.
"Cinema saved me from suicide when I was 32 by revealing to me a wondrous reality: the love between fellow artists," Broughton wrote. This theme carried him through his 85 years. "It was as important to live poetically as to write poems."
Despite many creative love affairs during the San Francisco Beat Scene
, Broughton put off marriage until age 49, when, steeped in his explorations of Jungian psychology, he married Susanna Hart in a three-day ceremony on the Pacific coast documented by his friend, the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage
. Susanna’s theatrical background and personality made for a great playmate; they had two children. And they built a great community among the creative spirits of Alan Watts
, Michael McClure
, Anna Halprin
, and Imogen Cunningham
.
In 1967’s "summer of love," Broughton made a film, The Bed, a celebration of the dance of life which broke taboos against frontal nudity and won prizes at many film festivals. It rekindled Broughton’s filmmaking and led to more tributes to the human body (The Golden Positions), the eternal child (This Is It), the eternal return (The Water Circle), the eternal moment (High Kukus), and the eternal feminine (Dreamwood). "These eternalities praised the beauty of humans, the surprises of soul, and the necessity of merriment," Broughton wrote.
Indeed, Broughton repeatedly explored the temple of the human body – the "Godbody" – as a taproot for healing and peace, both for the individual and society.
He developed a great following, especially among students at the San Francisco Art Institute
, where he taught film (and wrote Seeing the Light, a book about filmmaking) and artistic ritual.
Despite his poetic and cinematic explorations throughout his career, Broughton was drowning in his own unresolved mother-issues, which translated into impotence:
As poet Jack Foley
puts it in All: A James Broughton Reader, "In Broughton’s moment of need, Hermy appeared again in the person of a twenty-five-year-old Canadian film student named Joel Singer:
Broughton’s meeting with Singer was a life-changing, life-determining moment that animated his consciousness with a power that lasted until his death." In 2004, Singer wrote of their long relationship and collaboration in White Crane.
In fact, Broughton explored death deeply throughout his life. He died in May, 1999 with champagne on his lips, in the house in Port Townsend, Washington where he and Joel lived for 10 years. Before he died, he said, "My creeping decrepitude has crept me all the way to the crypt." His gravestone in a Port Townsend cemetery reads, "Adventure – not predicament."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poet, and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance
San Francisco Renaissance
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range...
. He was an early bard of the Radical Faeries
Radical Faeries
The Radical Faeries are a loosely-affiliated, worldwide network and counter-cultural movement seeking to reject hetero-imitation and redefine queer identity through spirituality. The Radical Faerie movement started in the United States among gay men during the 1970s sexual and counterculture...
as well as a charter member of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence serving her community as Sister Sermonetta.
A selected collection of his work, All: A James Broughton Reader, edited by Jack Foley, was released in 2007 by White Crane Books.
"The Selected Films of James Broughton" is a DVD compilation of seventeen films on 3 discs, released in 2006 by Facets Multimedia.
Biography
Born to wealthy parents, he lost his father early to the 1918 influenza epidemic and spent the rest of his life getting over his high-strung, overbearing mother.Before he was three, "Sunny Jim" experienced a transformational visit from his muse, Hermy, which he describes in his autobiography, Coming Unbuttoned (1993):
In the book, Broughton remarks on his love affairs with both men and women. Among his male lovers was gay activist Harry Hay
Harry Hay
Henry "Harry" Hay, Jr. was a labor advocate, teacher and early leader in the American LGBT rights movement. He is known for his roles in helping to found several gay organizations, including the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States.Hay was exposed early in...
.
He briefly lived with the film critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
and they had a daughter Gina, born in 1948.
Works
That meeting with "Hermy" prefigured the cavalcade of mystery, imagination, sexuality, danger, humor, and transformation that would mark the 23 books and 23 films Broughton produced in a life laced with travel, teaching, self-analysis, and rich and prickly friendships.His work is quintessentially Californian – exploring and engaging the polar frontiers of wildness and civility, male and female, body and spirit—with the crash of Pacific Ocean waves echoing throughout. "Ultimately I have learned more about poetry / from music and magic than from literature," he wrote.
Broughton was kicked out of military school for having an affair with a classmate, dropped out of Stanford before graduating, and spent time in Europe during the 1950s, where he received an award in Cannes from Jean Cocteau for the "poetic fantasy" of his film The Pleasure Garden, made in England with partner Kermit Sheets
Kermit Sheets
Louis Kermit Sheets was an actor, director, playwright and an artistic partner with poet James Broughton.-World War II:...
.
"Cinema saved me from suicide when I was 32 by revealing to me a wondrous reality: the love between fellow artists," Broughton wrote. This theme carried him through his 85 years. "It was as important to live poetically as to write poems."
Despite many creative love affairs during the San Francisco Beat Scene
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
, Broughton put off marriage until age 49, when, steeped in his explorations of Jungian psychology, he married Susanna Hart in a three-day ceremony on the Pacific coast documented by his friend, the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage
Stan Brakhage
James Stanley Brakhage , better known as Stan Brakhage, was an American non-narrative filmmaker who is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th century experimental film....
. Susanna’s theatrical background and personality made for a great playmate; they had two children. And they built a great community among the creative spirits of Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Watts was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York...
, Michael McClure
Michael McClure
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...
, Anna Halprin
Anna Halprin
Anna Halprin helped pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to herself as the breaker of modern dance. Halprin, along with her contemporaries such as Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, and Robert Morris, collaborated and built a community based...
, and Imogen Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham was an American photographer known for her photography of botanicals, nudes and industry.-Life and career:...
.
In 1967’s "summer of love," Broughton made a film, The Bed, a celebration of the dance of life which broke taboos against frontal nudity and won prizes at many film festivals. It rekindled Broughton’s filmmaking and led to more tributes to the human body (The Golden Positions), the eternal child (This Is It), the eternal return (The Water Circle), the eternal moment (High Kukus), and the eternal feminine (Dreamwood). "These eternalities praised the beauty of humans, the surprises of soul, and the necessity of merriment," Broughton wrote.
Indeed, Broughton repeatedly explored the temple of the human body – the "Godbody" – as a taproot for healing and peace, both for the individual and society.
He developed a great following, especially among students at the San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
, where he taught film (and wrote Seeing the Light, a book about filmmaking) and artistic ritual.
Despite his poetic and cinematic explorations throughout his career, Broughton was drowning in his own unresolved mother-issues, which translated into impotence:
As poet Jack Foley
Jack Foley (poet)
Jack Foley is an American poet living in Oakland, California.-Biography:Jack Foley is a widely-published San Francisco poet and critic. Born in Neptune, New Jersey , raised in Port Chester, New York, and educated at Cornell University, Foley moved to California in 1963 to attend U. C. Berkeley...
puts it in All: A James Broughton Reader, "In Broughton’s moment of need, Hermy appeared again in the person of a twenty-five-year-old Canadian film student named Joel Singer:
Broughton’s meeting with Singer was a life-changing, life-determining moment that animated his consciousness with a power that lasted until his death." In 2004, Singer wrote of their long relationship and collaboration in White Crane.
Life with Joel Singer
With Singer, Broughton traveled and made more films – Hermes Bird (1979), a slow-motion look at an erection shot with the camera developed to photograph atomic bomb explosions, The Gardener of Eden (1981), filmed when they lived in Sri Lanka, Devotions (1983), which takes delight in friendly things men can do together from the odd to the rapturous, and Scattered Remains (1988), a cheerfully death-obsessed tribute to Broughton’s poetry and filmmaking.In fact, Broughton explored death deeply throughout his life. He died in May, 1999 with champagne on his lips, in the house in Port Townsend, Washington where he and Joel lived for 10 years. Before he died, he said, "My creeping decrepitude has crept me all the way to the crypt." His gravestone in a Port Townsend cemetery reads, "Adventure – not predicament."
Filmography
- Adventures of Jimmy (1950) 11 min 16 mm
- The Bed (1968) 20 min 16 mm
- Devotions (with Joel Singer) (1983) 22 min 16 mm
- Dreamwood (1972) 45 min 16 mm
- Erogeny (1976) 6 min 16 mm
- Four in the Afternoon (1951) 15 min 16 mm
- The Gardener of Eden (with Joel Singer) (1981) 8.5 min 16 mm
- The Golden Positions (1970) 16 mm
- Hermes Bird (1979) 11 min 16 mm
- High Kukus (1973) 3 min 16 mm
- Loony Tom, The Happy Lover (1951) 10.5 min 16 mm
- Mother's Day (1948) 16 mm
- Nuptiae (1969) 14 min 16 mm
- The Pleasure Garden (1953) 38 min 16 mm
- The Potted Psalm (with Sidney PetersonSidney PetersonSidney Peterson was an American author, artist, and avant-garde filmmaker. He attended UC Berkeley, worked as a newspaper reporter in Monterey, and spent time as a practicing painter and sculptor in France in the 1920s and 1930s...
) (1946) 25 min - Scattered Remains (with Joel Singer) (1988) 14 min 16 mm
- Shaman Psalm (with Joel Singer) (1981) 7 min 16 mm
- Song of the Godbody (with Joel Singer) (1977) 11 min 16 mm
- Testament (1974) 20 min 16 mm
- This Is It (1971) 10 min 16 mm
- Together (with Joel Singer) (1976) 3 min 16 mm
- The Water Circle (1975) 3 min 16 mm
- Windowmobile (with Joel Singer) (1977) 8 min 16 mm
External links
- James Broughton at IMDB
- Morris, Gary. "Laughing Pan James Broughton" Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 27 (2000)
- The Big Joy Project, a documentary about Broughton in production