Stephen Broomer has been making films and videos in the experimental tradition since 2010. Many of these films are available to view on Vimeo.
Several of Broomer’s films are available on Kinoscope.
Select titles are available from the Film-makers’ Cooperative, Canyon Cinema, LightCone, and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. Bookings can also be arranged directly at stephen.broomer@gmail.com.
FILMOGRAPHY
2022
Boundless Light, 21:41, film-on-digital, colour, sd.
2021
Fat Chance, 1:04:15, film-on-digital, b/w, sd.
2020
Arrival of the Train, 1:36, film-on-digital, col., sd.
Lulu Faustine, 1:04:57, film-on-digital, col., sd., trailer
2019
Phantom Ride, 1:08:45, film-on-digital, col., sd., trailer
Resurrection of the Body, 36:59, film-on-digital, col., sd., trailer
2018
Tondal's Vision, 1:04:50, film-on-digital, col., sd., trailer
Fountains of Paris, 9:00, film-on-digital, col., sd.
2017
Residence Inn, 2:17, 16mm, b/w, sil.
Potamkin, 1:07:22, 16mm, b/w, sd., trailer
2016
Carousel Study, 4:47, digital, col., sd.
The Bow and the Cloud, 8:00, film-on-digital, col., sil.
Mills, 3:32, film-on-digital, col., sil.
2015
Gulls at Gibraltar, 3:32, 16mm, b/w, sil.
Bridge 1C, 1:05, 16mm, col., sil.
Landform 1, 2:26, 16mm, col., sil.
Bridge 1B, 1:18, 16mm, col., sil.
Bridge 1A, 1:45, 16mm, col., sil.
Wild Currents, 6:22, 16mm, col., sd.
Variations on a Theme by Michael Snow, 7:34, digital, col., sd.
2014
The Season Word, 5:20, digital, col., sil.
Dominion, 8:00, digital, col., sil.
Hang Twelve, 24:19, digital, col., sd.
Jenny Haniver, 15:31, 16mm, b/w, sil.
Serena Gundy, 3:32, 16mm, b/w, sil.
Wastewater, 1:18, 16mm, col., sd.
2013
Conservatory, 3:32, 16mm, col., sil.
Zerah's Gift, 7:36, super 8, col., sil.
The Shapes Book, 7:01, super 8, col., sil.
Spirits in Season, 12:17, 16mm, col., sd.
Ravine, 4:31, UltraPan8 (digital), col., sd.
Championship, 21:30, 16mm, b/w, sd.
Pepper's Ghost, 18:31, digital, col., sd., trailer
Blue Guitar, 5:10, UltraPan8 (digital), col., sd.
Apis in Memphis, 1:11, digital, col., sd.
2012
Snakegrass, 1:08, 16mm, col., sd.
The Order of Ideas at the Leslie Street Spit, 3:32, 16mm, col., sd.
Brébeuf, 10:32, 16mm, col., sd.
Queen's Quay, 1:12, 16mm, col., sd.
2011
Foolish Fire, 3:00, super 8, b/w, sil.
Memory Worked by Mirrors, 2:20, 16mm, b/w, sil.
Balinese Rebar, 3:32, 16mm, col., sd.
Christ Church - Saint James, 6:43, 16mm, col., sd.
2010
Manor Road, 3:25, 16mm, col., sil.
SELECTED FILMS (2017-present)
Fat Chance (2021)
“I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong.”
On Laird Cregar, Hollywood heavy, first famous for playing Oscar Wilde on stage, dead at age 31 as a result of a crash diet undertaken to transform him into a matinee idol. The film’s title, Fat Chance, was offered by Cregar as a witty rejoinder to a journalist who asked what the title of his memoirs could be called. His most memorable roles - lovesick murderers, snobs, arrogant criminals, and Jack the Ripper - are surveyed in this film, and followed by an expansion of his final sequence on screen, in Hangover Square, where, as George Harvey Bone, he plays his piano concerto even as a blaze engulfs the theatre.
Image: Stephen Broomer
Sound: Stuart Broomer
Fat Chance (2021)
Lulu Faustine (2020)
Lulu Faustine (2020)
On muses. An adaptation of Adolfo Bioy Casares’s The Invention of Morel.
A miracle happened: summer came ahead of time. To be in love with an image was worse than being in love with a ghost. (I feel as if my tympanum were breaking.) Almost everything, in fact, does have an explanation. (Atmospheric pressure is increasing…). The remaining chapters will hold no surprises. (…and I feel as if my tympanum were breaking.) To be on an island inhabited by artificial ghosts was the most unbearable of nightmares. (12.30 o’clock, respiration is extraordinarily difficult.) I have given you a pleasant eternity! Just me for you and you for me alone. (I am intoxicated with gasoline.) It will be an act of piety.
Image: Stephen Broomer
Sound: Stuart Broomer
Commentary: Mónica Delgado (Desistfilm)
Phantom Ride (2019)
A trip to the great beyond. From a War Bonds rally to a Florida resort beauty pageant, via Monument Valley, the Blue Star Memorial Highway, the Rocky Mountains, as above, so below, a twenty-year drive with a punchline in the heart of it. This land is your land, this land is my land, or, don't you wanna go to heaven when the world's on fire?
Phantom Ride is made from the films of Elwood F. Hoffmann, made available digitally thanks to the Center for Home Movies.
Image: Stephen Broomer
Sound: Stuart Broomer
Commentary: Patrick James Gamble (Kinoscope); Mónica Delgado (Desistfilm); Michael Pattison (Alchemy)
Phantom Ride is available to stream via Kinoscope.
Phantom Ride (2019)
Resurrection of the Body (2019)
In memoriam. Man in pieces. You have the lovers, remade by funhouse mirrors; you have the symmetries, undone, bent and curved; and you have the model, the bag on her head filling with carbon dioxide. Who owns your life? Testimonial and demonstration, a most ominous trade show. An experiment in therapeutic cinema. A speculative sequel and conclusion to John Hofsess's Palace of Pleasure (1967).
Offered in memory of John Hofsess. Full film available below.
Tondal’s Vision (2018)
A fable and immram, sifted from the cloak and rubble of the Comedy, a vision before Dante. The soul of the knight Tondal, stricken by the excesses of his flesh, quits his body to tour the next world. He is guided by an angel through heaven, hell and limbo. What lessons await him here? To every pleasure there is a cost, for poetry is a kind of poison, and even your angels will get you lost. Angel, tell me, for how long was I dead?
Be it true or be it false, it is as the copy was.
Image: Stephen Broomer
Sound: Stuart Broomer
Commentary: Adina Glickstein (Hyperallergic); Chris Dymond (Moving Image Artists); Ben R. Nicholson (MUBI Notebook)
Potamkin (2017)
In 1933, at age 33, Harry Alan Potamkin died of complications related to starvation, at a time when he was one of the world's most respected film critics. In his writings, he advocated for a cinema that would simultaneously embrace the fractures and polyphony of modern life and the equitable social vision of left radical politics. This film-biography is assembled out of distorted fragments of films on which he had written, an impression of erupting consciousness.
At the Odessa steps, trampling gives breath to the child. The bullet miraculously reforms the face. The Cossacks march backwards, retreating unseen into their nothing, the unfired rounds of their rifles restored to their menacing potential. Feet tread backward up the steps as the steps themselves collapse in splintering emulsion. The carriage is set upright.
Image: Stephen Broomer
Sound: Stuart Broomer
Commentary: Dámian Bender (Cine Divergente); Ivonne Sheen (Desistfilm); Brian Wilson (Film International); Ela Bittencourt (MUBI Notebook)
Potamkin is available to stream via DAFilms and Kinoscope.
