Testament

Testament

1974 · 20 min · ★ 5.8 · Documentary, Drama

"TESTAMENT is James Broughton's exquisite self-portrait. A major figure in avant-garde filmmaking and poetry since the 1940s, Broughton views his life and life's work with irony, charm, humor, and a combination of joyous self-love and gentle self-depreciation. Scenes from his earlier films mix the elements of humor, magic, slapstick, melodrama, and romance which mark his aesthetic. A plethora of rich personal symbols is woven throughout the film, tied together by verbal games, Zen poems, anecdotes, songs, a child's prayer, dreams, and visions." - Karen Cooper "James Broughton's TESTAMENT is one of the most remarkable films ever produced within the American independent cinema. It is the most moving and most sublimely detached of the recent trend of filmic autobiographies - by Jerome Hill, Jonas Mekas, and Stan Brakhage, to name only the masters, and Broughton's peers." - P. Adams Sitney "A beautiful, important, mysterious work." - Amos Vogel

Directed by James Broughton

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Testament

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Song of the Godbody

Song of the Godbody · 1977

Song of the Godbody

MovieDocumentary

Mapping extreme close-ups of Broughton's body, the camera slowly becomes a tool to reveal the erotic beauty of the body and the sensual pleasure in loving oneself. The ecstasy and power of sexual gratification are celebrated by the camera, as it probes, reveals, and visually caresses. Broughton's song is a praise of his body as divine androgyne, and an acceptance of this higher, sexual power.

Adventures of Jimmy

Adventures of Jimmy · 1951

Adventures of Jimmy

'Adventures of Jimmy' resolves its immature hero’s quest for “playmates” through a tongue-in-cheek narration that juxtaposes ironically with the images. We are told his family left him their whole estate, as we see a shack in the woods. The happy resolution is a joke on monogamy. It’s a straightforward story, the work of someone who wants to entertain with elegance and quiet subversion.

The Pleasure Garden

The Pleasure Garden · 1953

The Pleasure Garden

MovieDramaComedy

People quietly or mischievously pass the time in an overgrown garden full of statues, while a puritanical, funereal gentleman posts bills prohibiting all leisure activities.

Mother's Day

Mother's Day · 1948

Accepting the potentialities of the medium to manipulate both time and space, Broughton brings past and present head-on as he regards with adult feelings his childhood family and friends. Grown-ups romp like children, and by their magnified infantilism playfully underscore such basic traits as sadism, sensuality, arid egocentricity. (Melbourne International Film Festival)

Four in the Afternoon

Four in the Afternoon · 1951

Four in the Afternoon

MovieDramaComedy

Poems narrate four afternoon vignettes; each protagonist is older than the one in the previous sketch.

Scattered Remains

Scattered Remains · 1988

Scattered Remains

Broughton reads his poetry over various images.

Hermes Bird

Hermes Bird · 1979

MovieDocumentary

This 11 minute homage to the male member shows its subject in the various stages of erection. The voice-over poem by James Broughton includes the line "This is the secret that will not stay hidden."

The Gardener of Eden

The Gardener of Eden · 1981

The Gardener of Eden

An old man (artist and landscape architect Bevis Bawa) contemplates the Garden of Eden.

The Potted Psalm

The Potted Psalm · 1946

The Potted Psalm

A soundless mix of story fragments and images. Initially, images of death, a man with a guitar, a soirée. Some images are surreal: an older woman eats a leaf; a headless man pours a cocktail into his body.

High Kukus

High Kukus · 1973

In this homage to Zen poet Basho, the subtle changes of a pond are chronicled on film over a period of time. Broughton recites his cuckoo haikus in the background.

The Golden Positions

The Golden Positions · 1970

The Golden Positions

MovieDramaDocumentary

A lovely, poetic, humorous and crystal investigation of mankind standing, sitting and lying down.

The Bed

The Bed · 1967

James Broughton's counterculture masterpiece about nudity and a bed.

Erogeny

Erogeny · 1976

The film travels in close-up over the mysterious terrains of nude human bodies as they touch and explore one another.

Cinématon

Cinématon · 1978

MovieDocumentary

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

This is It

This is It · 1971

James Broughton's creation myth, THIS IS IT, places a 2-year-old Adam and a bright apple-red balloon in a backyard garden of Eden, and works a small miracle of the ordinary. And since that miracle is what his film is about, he achieves a kind of casual perfection in matching means and ends.

Loony Tom the Happy Lover

Loony Tom the Happy Lover · 1951

Loony Tom the Happy Lover

A short black and white film from James Broughton with Kermit Sheets in a Chaplinesque role.

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