Farallone Films

Men in pairs, mostly naked, perform various sensual tasks together.

In this homage to Zen poet Basho, the subtle changes of a pond are chronicled on film over a period of time. Broughton recites his cuckoo haikus in the background.

"TESTAMENT is James Broughton's exquisite self-portrait. A major figure in avant-garde filmmaking and poetry since the 1940s, Broughton views his life and life's work with irony, charm, humor, and a combination of joyous self-love and gentle self-depreciation. Scenes from his earlier films mix the elements of humor, magic, slapstick, melodrama, and romance which mark his aesthetic. A plethora of rich personal symbols is woven throughout the film, tied together by verbal games, Zen poems, anecdotes, songs, a child's prayer, dreams, and visions." - Karen Cooper "James Broughton's TESTAMENT is one of the most remarkable films ever produced within the American independent cinema. It is the most moving and most sublimely detached of the recent trend of filmic autobiographies - by Jerome Hill, Jonas Mekas, and Stan Brakhage, to name only the masters, and Broughton's peers." - P. Adams Sitney "A beautiful, important, mysterious work." - Amos Vogel

People quietly or mischievously pass the time in an overgrown garden full of statues, while a puritanical, funereal gentleman posts bills prohibiting all leisure activities.

Poems narrate four afternoon vignettes; each protagonist is older than the one in the previous sketch.

The oneiric quest of a modern argonaut on a mysterious island located somewhere on the borders of the unconscious.

A short black and white film from James Broughton with Kermit Sheets in a Chaplinesque role.

An old man (artist and landscape architect Bevis Bawa) contemplates the Garden of Eden.

Accepting the potentialities of the medium to manipulate both time and space, Broughton brings past and present head-on as he regards with adult feelings his childhood family and friends. Grown-ups romp like children, and by their magnified infantilism playfully underscore such basic traits as sadism, sensuality, arid egocentricity. (Melbourne International Film Festival)