A Darkness Swallowed
2006 · 78 min · ★ 8.0 · Drama, Music, Documentary
“A Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over, Bromberg references a past event, one that will forever haunt her although it occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both the body and the Earth. Noises – of clanging metal, bells, heartbeats and jazz music, to name only a few – combine to create a dense sound environment, a seemingly immense, three-dimensional space for contemplation." – Holly Willis, L.A . Weekly
Directed by Betzy Bromberg · Written by Betzy Bromberg
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Divinity Gratis · 1997Divinity Gratis
★ 10.01997
Movie
"DIVINITY GRATIS explores time and space, starting at the beginning of the world, with molten rock and water in sequences that are exquisite in their sensuousness. Bromberg’s ability to meld ideas and images is perhaps best exemplified in this work, which is truly breathtaking in its conceptual sweep. One line seems to unify the film – a voice repeats on the soundtrack, ‘A girl, blind from birth, saw the flash.’ The flash references an atomic blast, and thus links the film’s beginning section, which is all about origins, and the film’s suggestion of apocalypse, death and the infinite sweep of time.” –Holly Willis, LA WEEKLY
Split Decision · 1979Split Decision
★ 10.01979
MovieDramaAnimation
This film is a scrambled narrative that illustrates, in soap opera fashion, life of artists in Lower Manhattan and at the same time dramatizes questions about the nature of filmic representation. Split decision is a boxing term used when the judges divide their votes in finding a winner. In this case the fight is between the two heroes of the film who are seen intermittently in a bar, negotiating a pick-up, and at home, breaking up in a domestic quarrel. The fight is also in the telling, between modes of conventional representation and modes of radical representation - between conventional continuity editing, and abstraction created through computer generated grids. The film features an appearance by Carolee Schneemann and digital imaging from before the era of personal computers.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day · 1991Terminator 2: Judgment Day
★ 8.21991
MovieActionThriller
Ten years after the events of the original, a reprogrammed T-800 is sent back in time to protect young John Connor from the shape-shifting T-1000. Together with his mother Sarah, he fights to stop Skynet from triggering a nuclear apocalypse.
My White Baby · 2009My White Baby
★ 7.72009
MovieDocumentary
Me Broni Ba is a lyrical portrait of hair salons in Kumasi, Ghana. The tangled legacy of European colonialism in Africa is evoked through images of women practicing hair braiding on discarded white baby dolls from the West. The film unfolds through a series of vignettes, set against a child's story of migrating from Ghana to the United States. The film uncovers the meaning behind the Akan term of endearment, me broni ba, which means “my white baby.”
Prisms · 2012Prisms
★ 7.02012
Movie
A deep colorful abstract film about marginal light leaking through fragment of transparent structures. Within and outside the time temple, stare at mysteries in the depth of details and trapped lights, the observers went into a profound sub consciousness place, in which, the goddess, the temple and the stairs are haunted images, yet vivid in the deep black cosmos.
Water Spell · 2007Water Spell
★ 6.52007
Movie
"Sandy Ding's WATER SPELL is a bold, abstract journey that takes us into the psychic interior of our very cellular structure... and back. For me, this film is about reincarnation and transformation, on both the spiritual and sub-atomic levels. This is not an easy film, but it is a powerful one."
--Nina Menkes
Glide of Transparency · 2016Glide of Transparency
★ 6.02016
MovieDocumentary
“I am interested in making films that explore intimate places of the interior. For me, the combination of visual and aural abstraction is sublime, a means of forging pathways without a path, journeys devoid of compass bearings, invoking mysterious and unearthly transports. I am interested in making work that has no points of reference, where scale replaces structure and time is experienced rather than counted. Glide of Transparency is a film in three movements, an exploration of color and light. Ultimately, it is a film about love and transcendence.” (bb)
Voluptuous Sleep · 2011Voluptuous Sleep
★ 6.02011
MovieDocumentary
“Betzy Bromberg’s Voluptuous Sleep is a mesmerizing two-part 16mm meditation on the nuances of light, sound and feeling as evoked through the poetic artifices of cinema. Bromberg’s close-up lens becomes a tool of infinite discovery that reveals as much about our bodily sensations as it does the natural world. Combined with intricate and perfectly matched soundtracks, Voluptuous Sleep is a rapturous, re-centring antidote to the fragmentation of modern life and offers a new experience of cinematic time and memory. It is also an emotional tour de force.” -Steve Anker, Redcat
Az iz · 1983Az iz
★ 5.01983
Movie
Sensuously dark and foreboding, Az Iz rouses an ancient and atavistic trance. – Kathleen Brennan-Waits In Az Iz, Bromberg builds what might be considered a jazz opera – it's all saxophone riffs, repetition and fragments, but swells to epic proportions, essaying notions of origins and archetypes. The deepest blues highlight the sky behind three people in the mountains, and later, black-and-white images of twisted and torqued trees resonate with all the mystical glory of Being. Az Iz, with its sense of grandeur and beauty, is downright breathtaking, and the effect is sublime. – Holly Willis, IFilm
The Presence · 1992The Presence
★ 4.21992
MovieHorrorThriller
After their plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean after a storm a group of people scramble to a tropical island. At first the place seems home to palm trees and exotic wildlife but on the discovery of a disused military base they find out the island poses a severe threat to them
Petit Mal · 1977Petit Mal
1977
Movie
"Petit Mal is a kind of double-portrait: both Bromberg and her subject insisting on moving freely, to open up space in an environment that would prefer to constrain and define”. – Vera Brunner-Sung, Millennium Film Journal Vol. No. 67 “Petit Mal is a raw, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink movie: choppy street scenes, a girl clowning, subway sequences enlivened by artless overexposures and split screens. What holds it together is the strong and unobtrusive audio track, a mélange of confessional rapping, nondescript mood music and slyly gratuitous sound effects.” – J. Hoberman, Art Forum
Marasmus · 1981Marasmus
1981
Movie
“Although the title refers to a condition of acute malnutrition in which a child is unable to assimilate food, the film is a robust and sumptuous offering. This is no rough-edged, craft-resistant effort. Rather it is infused with a seductive glamour.” –Janis Crystal Lipzin, ARTWEEK
Soothing the Bruise · 1980Soothing the Bruise
1980
Movie
“A subjective assault, a kind of found cinema, in which the pieces of existence, the pablum pop of Top 40 radio, mix effortlessly with thermonuclear techno-jargon, and stoned-out kids camping around in the buff co-exist in a restless uneasy mix with Times Square strip shows, neon effluvia, lugubrious country-western ballads and Bromberg’s own visceral polemics.” –Brian Lambert, TWIN CITIES READER
Body Politic (God Melts Bad Meat) · 1988Body Politic (God Melts Bad Meat)
1988
Movie
“The body, culture and nature are also at stake in Body Politic, a film that goes to a hospital operating room, research laboratories and a family picnic to outline the issues raised by genetic experimentation. With her typical serious humor, Bromberg explores both the claims of science (we can improve human life) and the claims of religion (God made perfect beings) and implicitly asks the question, “How do we know when we’ve gone too far?’…There’s no voice-over and the argument is made by an athletic juxtaposition of imagery and testimony.” – Helen Knode, L.A. Weekly
Ciao Bella or Fuck Me Dead · 1979Ciao Bella or Fuck Me Dead
1979
Movie
A summer-in-the-city travelogue that mixes verité of Lower East Side Bikers, Times Square topless dancers, and Coney Island crowds to achieve an atmosphere of manic exhibitionism and sexual raunch.
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