February 8th, 2014
@ Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz (map)
4pm
$10 / ERC Pass (Buy Tickets Here)
Experimental Response Cinema and the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz are proud to present a special screening of Betzy Bromberg’s a Darkness Swallowed! Bromberg is currently the Director of Film and Video at CalARTS, prior to which she worked for years in the Hollywood special effects industry. Her work is widely celebrated and have been shown extensively in the United States and abroad, most notably at the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Cinemateque, and she recently had a retrospective at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema. Holly Willis writes “All of Bromberg’s films are from that same ‘extremely personal place.’ They stand out because they are about merging experience with the very act of filmmaking, and about staging the process of knowing who you are in the very work that you create. ” We are excited to present one of her most acclaimed films! Programmed by Rachel Stuckey.
This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office / Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.
a Darkness Swallowed by Betzy Bromberg
78 min / 16mm / sound / 2005
” a Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over, Bromberg references a past event, once that will forever haunt her although it occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both the body and the Earth. Noises – of clanging metal, bells, heartbeats and jazz music, to name only a few – combine to create a dense sound environment, a seemingly immense, three dimensional space for contemplation. As with all of Bromberg’s films, there are images that, once seen, will stay with you forever, and then there are the colors – rich, luscious hues to be savored slowly. Dedicated to the filmmaker’s mother, the film is also a gift to us, a reminder of cinema’s organic basis in chemistry and light, and of its ability to take us deep inside.”
– Holly Willis, L.A. Weekly
Selective Exhibition: Sundance, Buenos Aires International, Athens (Greece), Seoul (South Korea), Bradford (England), Ann Arbor And Seattle Film Festivals; Walking Picture Palace (Anthology Film Archives), Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago) and The Centro de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona (Spain)