James Broughton

James Broughton (November 10 1913, Modesto, California, USA –May 17, 1999, Port Townsend, Washington, USA) was a poet and poetic filmmaker, in the tradition of Rumi, Hafez, William Blake, and other ecstatic, Divine Trickster poets who trick readers and viewers into a direct, playful, and wondrous relationship with life, God, nature, and each other. He’s been called the father of the West Coast experimental film movement in the wake of World War II, was part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a literary movement that included Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others. He was an early bard of the Radical Faeries.Infobox Writer
James Broughton

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imagesize = 106px
birthdate = birth date|1913|11|10|=mf=y
birthplace = Modesto, California
occupation = Poet, Memoirist, Playwright, Film maker
nationality = American
influences =Robert Duncan, Keneth Rexroth, Pauline Kael, Jonathan Williams,John Keats, Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein

Early Bio

Born to wealthy parents in Modesto, California, he lost his father early to the 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, which he describes in his autobiography, Coming Unbuttoned:

quote|I remember waking in the dark and hearing my parents arguing in the next room. But a more persistent sound, a kind of whirring whistle, spun a light across the ceiling. I stood up in my crib and looked into the backyard. Over a neighbor’s palm tree a pulsing headlamp came whistling directly toward me. When it had whirled right up to my window, out of its radiance stepped a naked boy. He was at least three years older than I but he looked all ages at once. He had no wings, but I knew he was angel-sent: his laughing beauty illuminated the night and his melodious voice enraptured my ears….

He insisted I would always be a poet even if I tried not to be….Despite what I might hear to the contrary the world was not a miserable prison, it was a playground for a nonstop tournament between stupidity and imagination. If I followed the game sharply enough I could be a useful spokesman for Big Joy.

He was briefly involved with the notable film critic Pauline Kael and they had daughter Gina born in 1949.

About his 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.

quote|This is Itand I am Itand You are Itand so is That

and He is Itand She is Itand It is Itand That is That|"This is It"

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 1950’s, 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.

quote|Come forth unabashedCome out unbuttonedBury belligerenceResurrect frolicOnly through body canyou clasp the divineOnly through body canyou dance with the godIn every man’s handthe gift of compassionIn every man’s handthe beloved connectionTrust one anotheror drown|"Shaman Psalm"

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:

quote|Had my soul tottered off to sleeptaking my potency with it?Had they both retired before I couldleaving me a classroom somnambulist?Why else should I at sixty-onefeel myself shriveling into fadeout?|"Wondrous The Merge"

As 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:

quote|Then on a cold seminar MondayIn walked an unannounced redeemerDisguised as a taciturn studentBrisk and resolute in scruffy muftiHe set down his backpack shook his hairAnd offered me unequivocal devotion

He dismissed my rebuffs and ultimatumsHe scoffed at suggestions of disasterHe insisted he had been given authorityTo provide my future happinessWas it possible he had been sent From some utopian headquarters?|"Wondrous The Merge"

Life with 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."

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 phallic gravestone in a Port Townsend cemetery reads, "Adventure – not predicament."

A selected collection of his work, "All: A James Broughton Reader", edited by Jack Foley, was released in 2007 by White Crane Books.

[http://www.independentfilmquarterly.com/ifq/reviews/facets-films-of-james-broughton.htm "The Selected Films of James Broughton"] is a DVD compilation of seventeen films on 3 discs, released in 2006 by Facets Multimedia.

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 Peterson) 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) 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

Bibliography

* "Songs for Certain Children" (1947) San Francisco: Centaur Press
* "The Playground" (1949) San Francisco: Centaur Press
* "Musical Chairs" (1950) San Francisco: Centaur Press
* "An Almanac for Amorists" (1955) Paris: Collection Merlin
* "True & False Unicorn" (1957) New York: Grove Press
* "The Right Playmate" (1964) San Francisco: Pearce & Bennett
* "Tidings" (1965) San Francisco: Pterodactyl Press
* "High Kukus" (1969) New York: Jargon Society
* "A Long Undressing" (1971) New York: Jargon Society
* "Seeing the Light" (1977) San Francisco: City Lights Books
* "Odes for Odd Occasions" (1977) San Francisco: Manroot Press
* "The Androgyne Journal" (1977) Oakland, CA: Scrimshaw Press
* "Hymns to Hermes" (1979) San Francisco: Manroot Press
* "Graffiti for the Johns of Heaven" (1982) Mill Valley, CA: Syzygy Press
* "Ecstasies" (1983) Mill Valley, CA: Syzygy Press
* "A to Z" (1986) Mill Valley, CA: Syzygy Press
* "Hooplas" (1988) San Francisco: Pennywhistle Press
* "75 Life Lines" (1988) Winston-Salem, NC: Jargon Society
* "Special Deliveries: Selected Poems" (1990) Seattle, WA: Broken Moon Press
* "Coming Unbuttoned" (1993) San Francisco: City Lights Press
* "Little Sermons of the Big Joy" (1994) Port Townsend, WA: Syzygy Press
* "Little Prayers to Big Joy's Mother" (1995) Port Townsend, WA: Syzygy Press
* "Packing Up for Paradise: Selected Poems 1946-1996" (1997) Santa Barbara, CA & Ann Arbor, MI: Black Sparrow Press
* "ALL: A James Broughton Reader" (2007) edited by Jack Foley, Brooklyn, NY: White Crane Books

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112687/ James Broughton at IMDB]
*Morris, Gary. [http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/27/broughton.html "Laughing Pan James Broughton"] "Bright Lights Film Journal", Issue 27 (2000)