"These are works of multiple affect or, as a voice says in one film, 'speaking in tongues'; they hover on the edge of control and are pinioned by the twin axes of woman's victimization and woman's resistance." - Paul Arthur, Millennium Film Journal
Ms. Bromberg has been making experimental films since 1976. Her newest film, DIVINITY GRATIS, had its international premiere in Scotland at the celebration of Edinburgh's Fiftieth Film Festival (1996). Its US premiere was at Sundance Film Festival (1997). Her previous film, BODY POLITIC (GOD MELTS BAD MEAT), has shown extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe - most notably at the Rotterdam, London and Vancouver Film Festivals. She has had numerous one-woman shows of her work, most recently at the London Filmmaker's Co-Operative, the San Francisco Cinematheque, the College of St. Lucas in Brussels, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Her work has been included in numerous group shows at locations such as the Instituto de Estudios Norteamericanos in Barcelona, Spain, the Vootrum Centrum in Belgium, the National Film Theatre in London, the Harvard Film Archives in Cambridge, and in the Netherlands (American Avant-Garde, 1980-1990). Ms. Bromberg's films are in the collections of the National Film Library of Australia, the Honolulu Academy of Fine Art and the University of Wisconsin.
Ms. Bromberg taught film production at California Institute of the
Arts from 1990-1995 and has worked in the special effects industry in
Hollywood since 1980.
The abstracted voice of one and many women searching.
"PETIT MAL is a raw, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink movie: choppy street scenes, a girl clowning, subway sequences enlivened by artless overexposures and split screens. What holds it together is the strong and unobtrusive audio track, a melange of confessional rapping, nondescript mood music, and slyly gratuitous sound effects." - J. Hoberman, Artforum
1977, 16mm, color/so, 18m, $55
A personal film about love and mortality.
"CIAO BELLA is a summer-in-the-city travelogue that mixes verité of Lower East Side Bikers, Times Square topless dancers, and Coney Island crowds to achieve a highly charged atmosphere of manic exhibitionism and sexual raunch." - J. Hoberman, Artforum
1978, 16mm, color/so, 13m, $40
Sex roles, consumption and destruction in America.
"Bromberg is a subjective assault, a kind of found cinema, in which the pieces of existence, the pablum pop of Top 40 radio, mix effortlessly with thermonuclear techno-jargon, and stoned-out kids camping around in the buff co-exist in a restless uneasy mix with Times Square strip shows, neon effluvia, lugubrious country-western ballads and Bromberg's own visceral polemics. She boils international power politics down to a question of whose dick is longer, the US or Russia's, and who's going to put it where." - Brian Lambert, Twin Cities Reader
1980, 16mm, color/so, 21m, $60
Co-maker: Laura Ewig
A woman's response to technology/the jet-lag of birth.
"Although the title refers to a condition of acute malnutrition in which a child is unable to assimilate food, the film is a robust and sumptuous offering. This is no rough-edged, craft-resistant effort. Rather it is infused with a seductive glamour." - Janis Crystal Lipzin, Artweek
1981, 16mm, color/so, 24m, $50
A descent into a desert underworld.
A macabre tale of life and lifelessness.
"Sensually dark and foreboding, AZ IZ rouses an ancient and atavistic trance." - K. Brennan
1983, 16mm, color/so, 37m, $110
... travels through a realm of modern moral dilemma, as it examines the relationship between high-technology medicine, religion, politics, and the American family.
"The body, culture and nature are also at stake in BODY POLITIC, a film that goes to a hospital operating room, research laboratories and a family picnic to outline the issues raised by genetic experimentation. With her typical serious humor, Bromberg explores both the claims of science (we can improve human life) and the claims of religion (God made perfect beings) and implicitly asks the question, 'How do we know when we've gone too far?' ... There's no voice-over and the argument is made by an athletic juxtaposition and testimony." - Helen Knode, LA Weekly
Exhibition: London Film Festival, 1989; Rotterdam Film Festival, 1990; Museum of Modern Art, NY, 1990.
1988, 16mm, color/so, 40m, $120
VHS Sale: $70 Home; $220 Other
"As Mankind slouches toward the millennium, pride and shortsightedness often blind him to the imminent dangers of the future. The willful pollution of the earth, the instability of politics, and indeed nature herself are all potentially destructive forces.
"The greatest enemy of man, however, is time. Mankind rules this age, but like our Saurian ancestors we are doomed to extinction. Experimental filmmaker Betzy Bromberg's DIVINITY GRATIS explores our ultimately minor role within a treacherously vast and indifferent universe. This latest offering is an opus to the evolution of civilization.
"DIVINITY GRATIS is a very effective time machine. Like H.G. Wells' famous contraption, the film captures in a collage of exquisite and disturbing images key moments in earthly history. Neolithic ponies, a linguistic Tower of Babel and eerie dioramas of the perfect camping trip linger in the imagination long after the final credits roll. From man's first baby-steps to the climax of the lunar landing, all of humanity's folly and glory is unapologetically offered.
"Ms. Bromberg's personal ending softens the brutal honesty of her film, and as it comes full circle like the rotation of some great celestial body the message of the spirit is given - that even in our bleakest moment, there is always hope." - reprinted from the Edinburgh Film Festival Catalogue
Exhibition: Edinburgh Film Festival, 1996; Sundance Film Festival, 1997; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1998; Museum of Modern Art, NY, 1998.
1996, 16mm, color/so, 59m, $150