In the past half-decade, Toronto-based Stephen Broomer has established himself as one of the most prolific and poetic experimental filmmakers of the day. His works seamlessly traverse the mediums of photochemical film and digital video, exploiting the particularities of each and bringing them together to create densely-layered, highly textural moving canvases. Not content to fall into formulaic practice, he continues to expand upon his cinematic vocabulary with each work, informed by greats such as Brakhage yet distinct in approach and methodology. Balagan and MassArt Film Society are pleased to co-present a near complete retrospective of Stephen Broomer's films to date.
Programme: Part 1: Short Films 2010-2015
- Manor Road (2010), 16mm, silent, 3:25
- Queen’s Quay (2012), 16mm, sound, 1:12
- Bridge 1A (2015), 16mm, colour, silent, 1:45
- Memory Worked by Mirrors (2011), 16mm, silent, 2:20
- Balinese Rebar (2011), 16mm, sound, 3:32
- Conservatory (2013), 16mm, silent, 3:32
- Snakegrass (2012), 16mm, sound, 1:08
- Bridge 1B (2015), 16mm, silent, 1:18
- Serena Gundy (2014), 16mm, silent, 3:32
- Wastewater (2014), 16mm, sound, 1:18
- Landform 1 (2015), 16mm, silent, 2:26
- Wild Currents (2015), 16mm, sound, 6:22
- Bridge 1C (2015), 16mm, silent, 1:05
- Order of Ideas at the Leslie Street Spit (2012), 16mm, sound, 3:32
- Gulls at Gibraltar (2015), 16mm, silent, 3:32
Part 2: "The Spirit Series" and other works
- Jenny Haniver (2014), 16mm, silent, 15:31
- Ravine (2013), video (from Ultrapan-8), sound, 4:31
- Blue Guitar (2013), video (from Ultrapan-8), sound, 5:10
- Dominion (2014), video, silent, 8:00
- The Spirit Series:
- Christ Church - Saint James (2011), 16mm, sound, 6:47
- Brébeuf (2012), 16mm, sound, 10:32
- Spirits in Season (2013), 16mm, sound, 12:17
Total Runtime: 1h43m (with pause)
Bio: Stephen Broomer (b. 1984) is an experimental filmmaker, film preservationist, and independent scholar. His films have screened throughout North America and Europe, at venues such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, the San Francisco Cinematheque, and Lincoln Centre. In 2015, his films were the subject of a retrospective and anthology, The Transformable Moment: The Films of Stephen Broomer (Ottawa: Canadian Film Institute, 2015). His first book, Hamilton Babylon: A History of the McMaster Film Board, will be published in January 2016. He recently completed his PhD on the subject of difficult aesthetics in the origins of the Canadian avant-garde film.
