Described as “a cheerfully death-obsessed tribute to James Broughton’s poetry and filmmaking,” SCATTERED REMAINS is a cinematic performance piece enlivened by its experiments in poetic speech and poetic vision. Joel Singer creates a multi-faceted portrait of Broughton, who acts out his poetic verses within unlikely situations and surprising camera inventions. In the course of this divertissement, Broughton probes the puzzlements of mortality, destiny, and the magic of language.

“A celebration and an apotheosis of the masculine miracle: the transformative powers of the phallus, revealed as a phenomenon of glowing beauty and wonder.” —James Broughton

“The film consists predominantly of extreme close-ups of parts of James 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

As described by James Broughton and Joel Singer, “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.

In 1976, two years after their meeting, Joel Singer proposed that James Broughton be the subject of an experimental film portrait. This suggestion reenergized Broughton’s artistic practice. The resulting film, TOGETHER, consists of two disparate images of Broughton’s head — captured by Singer on high-contrast, black-and-white, 16mm film — slowly conjoining from opposite sides of the screen via rapid frame-by-frame intercutting. This stroboscopic imagery is accompanied by Broughton’s recitation of his poem of the same name.

James Broughton’s TESTAMENT (1974) reflects on the artist’s “quest for erotic transcendence” through the amalgamation of fragments of his previous films combined with newer footage. Broughton himself remarked, “I thought this would be my final film… it’s a self-portrait bouncing me from my babyhood to my imagined death.”

Three years into the exhilarating second act of his filmmaking career, James Broughton made THE GOLDEN POSITIONS (1970). Described by Broughton himself as “a series of naked tableaux vivants that glorify the human body,” THE GOLDEN POSITIONS once again finds the artist embracing nudity and human sexuality in a style distinct yet not dissimilar from his comeback piece, 1967’s erotic countercultural classic THE BED.

Following the success of THE PLEASURE GARDEN (1953), James Broughton was offered a Hollywood movie deal, which he turned down. Instead, the artist took a hiatus from filmmaking to focus on his poetry. 15 years later, he returned to filmmaking with THE BED (1967), which is now widely regarded as his best-known work and a countercultural classic.

A joyous musical fantasy celebrating “Love in the Park” and “the victory of the pleasure principle over all prudes and killjoys,” THE PLEASURE GARDEN was made in London and shot in the ruined gardens of the Crystal Palace. Winner of the Prix de Fantasie Poetique at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival, it is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of James Broughton’s early film career.

FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON depicts four poetic variations on the search for love featuring four oddball characters — Game Little Gladys, The Gardener’s Son, Princess Printemps, and The Aging Balletomane — living out their daydreams. Willard Maas dubbed FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON “the best poetry film ever made.”

One of the first major works of the San Francisco film movement, MOTHER’S DAY is a painfully humorous recollection of childhood in which a family of singular adults recreate their infancy by behaving as they did when growing up. Peter Kubelka once remarked, “MOTHER’S DAY, for me is one of the great films in film history.”

Like its predecessor, HOW TO BE A HOMOSEXUAL PART II sees Roger Jacoby fuse his distinctive hand-processed visual style with a newfound political consciousness. This film in particular, made shortly following Jacoby’s HIV diagnosis, exemplifies the adage “the personal is political.” It is undoubtedly his most intimate and moving work.

”HOW TO BE A HOMOSEXUAL began, said Jacoby, as ‘excerpts from a compilation journal work begun in 1979. It is an ironic title — there's nothing sexually explicit about the film.’ But the film is richly sensual... In every scene, the emulsion captures the images, enhances, then betrays, overpowers and destroys them, as the patterns and color reshape the filmed reality into a different landscape.” —Kathleen Tyner, Cinematograph

Ondine and Sally Dixon “star” as ecstatic 19th century lovers in Roger Jacoby’s first home-processed film. Nickelodeon imagery, school children of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Botanical Conservatory are seen throughout.