An Evening with Stephen Broomer
Please join us for a one-night screening event of eighteen experimental short films by Stephen Broomer projected in 16mm. The director will attend to introduce his films and conduct a post-screening Q&A.
- Screening Date: Tuesday, August 25th, 2015 / 6:00pm
- Venue: The Mason O. Damon Auditorium at Buffalo Central Library
- Specifications: 2010-2014 / ~70 minutes / silent and sound / Black & White and Color
- Director(s): Stephen Broomer
- Print: 16mm prints supplied by the artist
- Tickets: Free and Open to the Public
- Deal: Stop in early for a FREE Breadhive soft pretzel while supplies last!
- Extra: Cyclists are welcome to join Cultivate Cinema Circle and GO Bike Buffalo for a group ride to Hydraulic Hearth afterwards for discounted drinks with proof of admission. Here is the map:
Summer 2015 Season Sponsor:
Event Sponsors:
Venue Information:
1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY 14203
(please use Clinton St entrance for Mason O. Damon Auditorium)
Schedule
Reel 1: The Spirits Series (29 minutes)
- Christ Church – Saint James [2011] (7 minutes) – colour/sound
- Brébeuf [2012] (10 minutes) – colour/sound
- Spirits in Season [2013] (12 minutes) – colour/sound
Reel 2: Shorts (41 minutes)
- Manor Road [2010] (3.5 minutes) – colour/silent
- Queen’s Quay [2012] (1 minute) – colour/sound
- Bridge 1A [2015] (1.5 minutes) – colour/silent
- Memory Worked by Mirrors [2011] (2.5 minutes) – b&w/silent
- Balinese Rebar [2011] (3.5 minutes) – colour/sound
- Wastewater [2014] (1 minute) – colour/sound
- Conservatory [2013] (3.5 minutes) – colour/silent
- Snakegrass [2012] (1 minute) – colour/sound
- Bridge 1B [2015] (1.5 minutes) – colour/silent
- Serena Gundy [2014] (3.5 minutes) – b&w/silent
- Wild Currents [2015] (6.5 minutes) – colour/sound
- Landform 1 [2015] (3 minutes) – colour/silent
- Bridge 1C [2015] (1 minute) – colour/silent
- Order of Ideas at the Leslie Street Spit [2012] (3.5 minutes) – colour/sound
- Gulls at Gibraltar [2015] (3.5 minutes) – b&w/silent
The Transformable Moment
The moment is an indefinite measure of time into which almost all experience falls. It is the conclusive present and it permeates all written past. It forms in our vision and consciousness. History enters as the moment fleeting, but the moment, in and out of time, the present moment, is our epiphany, when eternity reaches into our time and into us. Eternity carves its expression into us. It comes to us to build.
Film has allowed the artist to tame the moment, to record and possess it, to suspend it in a representation that pretends to permanence. The moment, as inscribed on film, becomes an elastic interval. In this raw form, it opens onto the many possibilities for further creation, be they achieved by distortion and obscurity, by the heightened clarity that comes in the movement study, by the divergent gestures of alternating patterns, and by other operations played on the visual field. Our mastery over the moment and its contents invites us deeper inside the instant and eternity. That moment of insight, formed in the improvisatory gesture or tempered and realized by later contemplation, might be transformed to damn out old motions, to make them new; to give polyrhythmic integrity to both moment and memory itself; to reach for the essential energy of experience. Transformations reveal a composition as a field of individual and endlessly renewed meanings and energies. But the epiphany is rare and ultimate.
Every moment possesses the power to transform itself. In its stagnant chronology, its fixed coordinate, it changes. By memory and by history, time transforms itself. We use film to alter the moment, to cradle the moment, to annihilate the moment, or at least its impression, and by these operations, the image bears out the mystical associations of consciousness. The transformable moment is the moment turning into both its opposite and its other, and meaning arises in the gap between opposition and otherness. By this transformation, the moment departs from the assurances of memory and becomes a breathing passage.
— Stephen Broomer
Filmography:
- Fat Chance (2021)
- Phantom Ride (2019)
- Fountains Of Paris (2018) (Short)
- Residence Inn (2017) (Short)
- Mills (2016) (Short)
- Carousel Study (2016) (Short)
- The Bow and the Cloud (2016) (Short)
- Variations on a Theme by Michael Snow (2015) (Short)
- Wild Currents (2015) (Short)
- Gulls at Gibraltar (2015) (Short)
- Landform 1 (2015) (Short)
- Dominion (2014) (Short)
- Wastewater (2014) (Short)
- Jenny Haniver (2014) (Short)
- Serena Gundy (2014) (Short)
- The Season Word (2014) (Short)
- Zerah’s Gift (2013) (Short)
- Pepper’s Ghost (2013) (Short)
- Conservatory (2013) (Short)
- Spirits in Season (2013) (Short)
- Queen’s Quay (2013) (Short)
- Christ Church – Saint James (2010) (Short)
Links
Here is a curated selection of links shared on our Facebook page for additional insight/information:
- 8/10/15 – We will be hosting filmmaker Stephen Broomer to present a series of his experimental films on 16mm at the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library – Central Library’s Mason O. Damon Auditorium for FREE! Prior to the event be sure to read this excellent interview in Incite Journal with Mr. Broomer by Clint Enns. – link
- 8/13/15 – If you’re unfamiliar with the filmmaker Stephen Broomer, who will be here on August 25th to present a series of 16mm experimental films, here is a short titled Wastewater which he produced last year. – link
- 12/18/15 – Cultivate Cinema Circle alum Stephen Broomer has been included in this new limited edition compilation DVD of experimental works! His film Spirits in Season, which we screened earlier this year in among the excellent works included in this set. – link
- 10/30/16 – Stephen Broomer, friend and alum of CCC, has launched Black Zero, a new multimedia publisher specializing in historical works of experimental cinema with an emphasis on Canadian underground filmmaking of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s! – link