Glyphs I

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.

Broughton reads his poetry over various images.

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

Men in pairs, mostly naked, perform various sensual tasks together.

Contemplative images of rivers, snow, waterfall, mountain and bodies.

A 360 degree pan breaks down as the narrator's memories of the house in which she sits by the fireplace breaks down.

A traffic circle (in North Berkeley). The forcefield around the centre. Single-framed over the course of about 9 months.

“I left the city in 2009. A year later, I returned for a few months and took the ferry out to see Ms. Liberty close up for the first time. On the ferry I recorded the voices of some of my fellow passengers saying ‘Statue of Liberty.’ I spent the next month recording many more people saying the words in a wondrous variety of accents and languages. I was moved by the delight and pleasure that people took in uttering these magical words: words suggesting freedom and hope for millions of immigrants” (Joel Singer).

17 minutes, silent, colour. 1977

Buena Vista Park in San Francisco like you've never seen it. "Playing" my 16mm Beaulieu camera like a musical instrument with extremely rapid zooming and inverted images. The virtuoso musician Peter Plonsky plays his Chromatic Khaen, an ancient Laotian instrument. He had never seen the film. One fourteen minute take, responding directly to the images in the studio.

Images, Joel Singer; Sounds, James Broughton. "The film is shot both through and at a window, superimposing and conjoining, thereby elaborating events on both sides of the glass. Broughton's accompanying poem sings the same song as the images, sounding from an Eden of the golden passing of days: "They were seeing the light every day then ... / They were looking and they were seeing / They were living there in the light at that time." - Robert Lipman, On the Films of Joel Singer

A motion portrait of poet James Broughton, by his long time partner and filmmaker Joel Singer. Original music by Lou Harrison.