Experimental film screening series Lightstruck presents its first ever artist-in-person retrospective with School of Film/Video faculty Betzy Bromberg, with the next installment taking place Thursday, Nov. 14 at 2220 Arts + Archives in Los Angeles.
The three-show retrospective screenings—which began Nov. 7 and run weekly through Nov. 21—are followed by conversations with Bromberg. Viewers can chronologically follow nearly 20 years of Bromberg’s filmography, which, per Lightstruck, “reaffirm Bromberg’s status as a film artist of exquisite sensorial ingenuity, uncommon empathic intimacy, and as one of the great alchemist-poets of the medium.”
Radiating Space is the second program in the trio, which includes screenings of three 16mm films from 1981 to 1987. More from Lightstruck:
Responding in part to the alien landscape of her new West Coast home and the looming ideologies of Reagan-era America, Bromberg further activates the film medium through the use of radical image and sound manipulation that expresses an anxious, dark psychedelia. A heightened material subjectivity marks the two films in this program, exploring the fraught imbalance between humans and the natural world that heals/harms us, palpably under the shadowy threat of ecological and nuclear peril.
The lineup closes with Bromberg’s “lush and pyrotechnic” promotional film for Tom Waits’ song “Temptation.”
Wrapping up the retrospective on Thursday, Nov. 21 is an 8 pm screening of Divinity Gratis. A work seven years in the making (1989-1996), Bromberg’s “audiovisually daring and unabashedly sensual” debut feature film sees her filmic passions and interests in their fullest expression.
Divinity Gratis tackles no less than the cosmic history of human existence through a funhouse mirror of prismatic associations, vividly tinted by the hopes and fears of the atomic age …. Divinity Gratis is both a culmination of Bromberg’s earlier explorations and a thrilling gateway to the elemental mysticism of her current cinematic journey.
Find tickets in the event details below.
Bromberg has enjoyed retrospectives of her works at the historic Anthology Film Archives in New York City (2018) and the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI) in 2017. Her films have been screened extensively at museums, festivals, and cultural venues across the globe, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Cinematheque, the Harvard Film Archives (Cambridge), Anthology Film Archives (New York City), the National Film Theater (London), The Vootrum Centrum (Belgium), and the Centre Georges Pompidou (France).
