Now Available: New Digital Files of Nine Films by James Broughton and Joel Singer
Posted June 10th, 2025 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events
Canyon Cinema is thrilled to announce that new digital files of nine films by James Broughton and Joel Singer are now available!
After meeting at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1974, Joel Singer and James Broughton spent the next 25 years together, “sharing fully in art and life.” This new acquisition includes seven Broughton-Singer collaborations made between 1976 and 1988, as well as Broughton’s Hermes Bird (1979), and Singer’s motion portrait of Broughton, Poet in Orbit (1980), which is new to the catalog.
A package of all nine digitizations is available for rent for the special price of $200.
These new digitizations are supported by the Interbay Cinema Society’s Lightpress grant program. Since its inception in 2016, ICS has given over $150,000 in $1000 grants to filmmakers to have their work digitized at Lightpress, a transfer house based in Seattle, which is also home to Interbay Cinema Society.
Scattered Remains (1988, 14 minutes, color, sound, 16mm or digital file)
This is a cinematic performance piece enlivened by its experiments in poetic speech and poetic vision. Joel Singer creates a multi-faceted portrait of poet James Broughton acting out his verses in unlikely situations and surprising camera inventions. In the course of this divertissement the poet probes the puzzlements of mortality, destiny and the magic of language.
Devotions (1983, 22 minutes, color, sound, 16mm or digital file)
Devotions is the vision of a world where men have forsaken rivalry and taken up affection, thereby creating a society that relishes a variety of comradely devotions. The film takes delight in observing the friendly things men can do together, from the odd to the rapturous, from the playful to the passionate. These events appear in a series of cameo duets performed by men of all ages and appetites. The tapestry of changing scenes is strung on a narrative thread: the personal romance of the two makers of the film, as they discover their own affections and interweave them with those of their friends. In the end they assert their hope that loving comradeship may yet be the happy norm for the world. The film was made over a nine month period on locations from Seattle to San Diego, and included the participation of some forty-five couples.
Shaman Psalm (1981, 7 minutes, b&w, sound, 16mm or digital file)
Taste the divine
on the lips of lovers
Savor the divine
on the thighs of friends
Cherish the divinity
that explodes your orgasm
Love one another
and fly.
The love shaman calls for a sexual revolution of the body politic urging mankind into a new love age.
The Gardener of Eden (1981, 8.5 minutes, color, sound, 16mm or digital file)
Filmed on the paradise island of Sri Lanka, this intense poetic work celebrates the eternal dance of nature’s sexuality, and sings of the lost Eden we all search for but do not expect to find. In the midst of his fertile garden, while he awaits Adam’s return, God tries to keep his eye on all the flowering exuberance he has seeded. The film is written and narrated by James Broughton, and photographed by Joel Singer. The music is performed on twin conch shells, and the central actor is in real life the most famous horticulturalist in Ceylon.
Poet in Orbit (1980, 2 minutes, b&w, sound, digital file)
A motion portrait of poet James Broughton, by his long time partner and filmmaker Joel Singer. Original music by Lou Harrison.
“Made in 1980 in our home in Novato with James seated on a swivel chair filmed one frame at a time with James turning the chair ever so slightly from left to right and right to left from ‘zero’ degrees back and forth to complete the 360 degrees. It took most of a week to film the 2 minutes. James got dizzy but we persisted… I showed Lou the silent film and he created the fabulous gamelan soundtrack. The film has been seen by very few people. It was never in distribution and was essentially lost until I discovered it in my digital files. James and I used a brief excerpt of the film in our film Scattered Remains (1988) and a very brief excerpt of it was used in the wonderful documentary on James’ life, Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton from 2013 (his centenary).” – Joel Singer
Hermes Bird (1979, 11 minutes, color, sound, 16mm or digital file)
Hermes Bird is a celebration and an apotheosis of the masculine miracle: the transformative powers of the phallus, revealed as a phenomenon of glowing beauty and wonder. Because the film occurs in extreme slow motion one has the opportunity to witness for the first time in cinema the delicate pulsations and tremors and changes of the penis as it grows erect, until at last, reaching outward and upward, it takes flight toward its climax. The filmmaker-poet has written a group of lyrical poems for the sound of the film. They are spoken by the poet, and they sing praises for the radiant masculine mystery of the “sacred firebird,” the “holy acrobat shaped for surprise” which is every man’s pride and, hopefully, his joy.
Windowmobile (1977, 8 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
“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
Song of the Godbody (1977, 11 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
“The film consists predominantly of extreme close-ups of parts of Broughton’s body. The camera slowly becomes the tool revealing 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 maintains an erotic role, probing, revealing and visually caressing. Broughton’s song is a praise of his body as divine androgyne, and an acceptance of this higher godly sexual power.” – Richard Bartone, Millennium Film Journal
Together (1976, 3 minutes, b&w, sound, 16mm or digital file)
A single-frame portrait of Broughton’s disembodied heads coming slowly together in wiggle, wobble and wonderment.
