FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact : Bérénice Reynaud : berenice3@earthlink.net (do not publish)

Film at REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts, launches its 2004-2005 season with a Darkness Swallowed -- the world premiere of innovative Los Angeles filmmaker Betzy Bromberg's latest experimental feature.

View the event.

Los Angeles, CA, August 19, 2004 - The first film of the Jack Skirball Screening Series at Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts (REDCAT) is Betsy Bromberg's a Darkness Swallowed (2004, 16 mm, 78 min), on Monday, September 27th, at 8:00pm. The program is curated by CalArts Faculty Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud and organized in collaboration with NewTown.

a Darkness Swallowed is Los Angeles-based experimental filmmaker Betzy Bromberg's most abstract and most intimate work -- and maybe her most beautiful in a list of films that have already shattered and expanded the viewer's conception of beauty. The camera sensually explores a range of hues that go from the golden amber of light reflected through murky waters and resin sculptures, to the light gray and pale green of subtle, fragile Japanese-like compositions. A dark, brooding, richly textured soundtrack - non-traditional percussion, processed acoustic instruments and ambient sounds - echoes the film's journey through a metaphorical, surreal landscape. Like a whisper, invisible traumas and imaginary memories haunt the cinematic space, sending the viewers back to their own swallowed darkness.

"[It's] a revelation [to discover] the filmmaker's fearlessness and dedication to her art. She revels in the process of seeing and uncovering the diffident places within herself. Her films are effusive spaces of creation and enquiry, where she finds herself in the world and makes the chaotic inequity of loss and despair somehow bearable. And even beautiful." - Holly Willis

Betzy Bromberg, the Director of the Program in Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts, has been making experimental films since 1976. Her work includes: Tachycardia (1977), Ciao Bella (1979), Soothing the Bruise (1980), Marasmus (1981), As Iz (1983), Body Politics (god melts bad meat) (1988) and Divinity Gratis (1996). Her films have been shown extensively in the United States and Europe, most notably at the Sundance, Rotterdam, London and Vancouver Film Festivals, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and Anthology Film Archives (New York City), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the San Francisco Cinematheque, the Pacific Film Archives (Berkeley), the Harvard Film Archives (Cambridge), Film Forum (Los Angeles and Pasadena) and the National Film Theater (London).

This world premiere launches the Jack Skirball Screening Series at REDCAT, which will include several evenings featuring in-person presentations by major experimental, documentary and narrative independent film and video artists. Future screening information available by clicking here.

REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets are $10 for the general public, $6 for students with valid ID and $4 for CalArts students. Seating is general admission. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office -- located at the corner of 2nd and Hope streets, calling 213.237.2800 or at redcat.org.

This film event is generously supported by Wendy Keys and Donald A. Pels and NewTown , A persistent weed in the garden of art -- supported by The Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The Pasadena Art Alliance, The City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division and its many generous members.

Jack Skirball Screening Series 2004 - 05
Some of the artists participating in this year's season include experimental works by Shanghai-based multidisciplinary artist Yang Fudong; Phillip Rodriguez with Los Angeles Now; James Benning with two feature-length films, 13 Lakes and Ten Skies, an evening of films by Joseph Cornell, a screening of Ken Jacobs' profound political meditation-critique Star Spangled To Death; several programs of historic and contemporary animation; critic-historian J. Hoberman on films of the '60s, as well as appearances by Janie Geiser, Nathaniel Dorsky, Ken Kobland, Jon Jost and Alpert Award winners Ellen Bruno and Renee Tajima-Peña.

For more information about events at REDCAT, go to www.redcat.org. For more information about CalArts, visit www.muse.calarts.edu.

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