JAMES BROUGHTON`S PACKINGS UP FOR "PARADISE" AND TWO MORE CONCEPTUAL TRAVELING STORIES

 ANTHROPOLOGICAL ROOTS OF SOCIAL PATHOLOGY, PERSONAL PSYCHONAUTICAL HEALTH JOURNEYS AND THE RETURN OF IT ALL BACK HOME SYNDROME

(“All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.” -Benjamin Franklin)

Before I elaborate on the basic features of the work of three very important experimental filmmakers to me, I would like to mention once again that during the next three days (European time), from December 3th to December 5th, you can watch (highly recommended) the second part of this season's "Eclectic Visions" recent experimental cinema presentation program (through Dutch web television), curated by David King, award-winning Australian director and one of the maintainers of this blog.

So put aside an hour over 03 – 04 December and get blown away by some of the world’s finest risk-taking filmmakers, streaming internationally from The Screening Room:

www.salto.nl/programma/the-screening-room/

Ok, thanks David for one more great experience, and now I would like to make some reminiscences on my (February 2013.) three Friday terms curating of the legendary "screening roomer" Robert Gardner (1925-2014), master of  modern experimental ethnographic cinema  and and host of a Boston television series during the 1970s-early 1980s on an ABC affiliate showcasing works by independent filmmakers ranging from animation (Caroline Leaf, John and Faith Hubley), experimental (Hollis Frampton, Standish Lawder) and documentary film (Les Blank, Hilary Harris).  

Despite all my efforts to get in touch with Mr. Gardner in order to personally inform him about the screenings of his films in Split, I was unable to achieve my intention. I was indirectly informed that the famous director was in very bad health. The following year I received the news of his death.

Robert Gardner

Within Gardner's cine cycle shown in the split, I have presented the following films:

01.02.2013. Robert Gardner – Dead Birds (1965.)

08.02.2013. Robert Gardner – Forest of Bliss (1986.)

15.02.2013. Robert Gardner – Rivers of Sand (1974.)

Robert Gardner - Dead Birds (1965)

Robert Gardner - Forest of Bliss (1986)

Robert Gardner - Rivers of Sand (1974)

You can watch this one online for free (in two parts) thanks to the "Internet Archive", a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.

Robert Gardner - Rivers of Sand (1974)

During some of our earlier internet conversations Peter Tammer and I discussed ethnographic and ethno-fiction documentaries and Peter introduced me to the works of some of the main Australian authors on that cinema field, while Gardner`s work was the main digression agenda for our chatting and  exchanging emails.  Thanks Peter, I have enjoyed the newfound cinema sensations from the history of Australian documentary films. 

Here`s a few more facts about Robert Gardner copied from Wikipedia: "After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1947, he became an assistant to the founder of the Byzantine Institute of America, Thomas Whittemore at Harvard's Fogg Museum. This led to travels to Anatolia, Fayum and London working with Coptic textiles and restoring Byzantine art Next, he started teaching medieval art and history at the College of Puget Sound in Washington state. Here, he took to writings of anthropologist Ruth Benedict and he ended up post doing MA in anthropology from Harvard. It was during his graduation period that he took part in an expedition on Kalahari Desert Bushmen, for which he took photographs, films and carried out elementary research work. Thereafter he founded The Film Study Center, a production and research unit at the Peabody Museum at Harvard in 1957 where it made documentary films till he left the center in 1997. He lived in Cambridge, MA with wife, Adele Pressman, a psychiatrist, and two children, Caleb and Noah Gardner. He has three other children from his first marriage to Ainslie Anderson: Stewart, Eve, and Luke. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology now gives the Harvard University's 'Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography' worth $US50,000"

The second author I wish to present also was included in my correspondences with David and Peter. During the last few weeks I studied his literary and cinema opus again. It is James Broughton, (1913 - 1999), an American poet and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a precursor to the Beat poets. I was curating his short movies presentation at the Cine Club Split on the 29th of October 2010. Broughton spent a long part of his life in American Institutions for mental health because of his LGBT psychological conflicts, but at the same time lived his life as one "Big Joy" , the title of the biopic about him directed in 2012 by Stephen Silha, Eric Slade and Dawn Logson. While packing for the paradise (hi own term for psychiatric institution) he was writing farewell poems that sounded like oneiric tripping notes from the real globetrotter. 

James Braughtom

Recently I have used one of his poems for one of my latest experimental videos and here is another one collected with much more others in the collected works book "Packing up for Paradise":

The Bliss of With

You have come to me out of the antiquities

We have loved one another for generations

We have loved one another for centuries

You teach me to trust the voices of my voices

You teach me to believe my own believings

You touch the palpability of my possibles

Together we reflect what our mirrors conceal

Together we upgrade the sun in our meridians

We remain open night and day to transcendence

You are incompletely disguised as a mortal

You are the eternal stranger I have always known

I saw your wings this morning

I saw your wings 

And here are some links for his experimental movies. More of them you can find on the web address:

https://www.youtube.com/@JamesBroughtonCinema

James Broughton - Testament (1974)

 James Broughton - Together (1976)

James Broughton - High Kukus (1973)

Broughton had many creative love affairs during the San Francisco Beat Scene. He briefly lived with the film critic Pauline Kael and they had a daughter, Gina, who was born in 1948. Broughton put off marriage until age 49, when he married Suzanna Hart in a three-day ceremony on the Pacific coast, documented by his friend, the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Hart and Broughton had two children, and built a counter-culture community along with friends including Alan Watts, Michael McClure, Anna Halprin, and Imogen Cunningham.

The third author I would like to present on this occasion to the "Friends of the Armchair Traveller" blog I have chosen Ahmed Zir, an independent Algerian director since 1979. He has directed more than 45 films in Super 8 and has received more than 35 national and international awards including in Tunisia, the USA, Belgium and France. Ahmed Zir is defined as an "independent filmmaker and cinephile."  Teacher since 1972, he wrote for the Tunisian film magazine 'The 7th Art' and participated in the Algerian radio show 'Cinerama.'. 

Ahmed Zir

Ahmed Zir shot most of his fascinating, original film work in his immediate surroundings, creating and applying skillful techniques of analog effects. He defined his cinema pieces as universal insights into the complexity of the human universe, even though they were realized inside minimal geographical dimensions with an intention that could be called " Bringing it all back home" syndrome.

Ahmed Zir - Illusion (1983)

Ahmed Zir - Qui suis-je ? (1996)

And for the end of this post I must admit that I am still in love. And I am "letting love to bleed"... So, exclusively for the "Friends of the Armchair Traveller" blog I have prepared my new experimental video after scrubbing my inconsolably bad teeth with a hardest toothbrush until they started to bleed...

Darko Duilo - Love Bleeds (2022)

Banquo:

                    

                    It will rain tonight.

First Murderer: 

                    Let it come down.

                                                                         William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Greetings from rainy Split, Croatia...

Darko Duilo

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