Former Director of the Program in Film and Video at California Institute of the Arts, Visual Effects Supervisor, Film Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Sound Designer, Professor.
Years active
1976-present
Notable work
Voluptuous Sleep (2011), A Darkness Swallowed (2005)
Bromberg studied at CalArts in the late 1970s with Chick Strand, and for many years was an optical effects supervisor in the special effects industry.[2]
Background
Bromberg originally studied journalism and photography at Northwestern University before she became a filmmaker.[3] Bromberg started making her first films at Sarah Lawrence College in 1977,[3] where she studied both film and electronic music. After she graduated from college, Betzy Bromberg relocated to Los Angeles and studied at CalArts under Chick Strand. Later, she spent over twenty years working in the Hollywood industry as an optical effects camerawoman and supervisor. She began teaching in 1990 and in 2002, she became the Director of the Program in Film and Video at CalArts[4] after the industry abandoned analog effects[5] and moved much production overseas.
Style
Bromberg's earlier films were influenced by New York, where she spent was born and raised, and spent part of her college career. She is known for her experimental avant-garde stylistic approach in cinema. In many of her works she experiments with the intersection of documentary and avant-garde.[5]
Bromberg's work in the Hollywood industry of optical effects allowed her to carry over technical and problem solving skills to her experimental work without detriment to its avant-garde themes.[6] Additionally, her experimental film works have all been shot in 16mm, an analog medium which Bromberg says she will work with until "either I'm done or it's done," in reference to the dominance of digital filmmaking in Hollywood.[7]
The style of Bromberg's experimental films is described as slowly evolving into the abstract, consciously free of the special effects of her industry career, and evocative of "a retrieval of a kind of visual innocence."[7] Bromberg's use of light and the transformation of the movement of light over time is the basis of her filmmaking and can be seen throughout her works.[7]
Directorial filmography
Film Name
Details
Glide of Transparency
2016, 16mm, color, sound, 89 minutes, a film in three parts.
The third feature-length experimental film following a Darkness Swallowed and Voluptuous Sleep.
Sound: Betzy Bromberg, Dane A. Davis, Stephen Small, Robert Allaire, Pam Aronoff
2011, 16mm, color/sound, 95 minutes, experimental film
Part I:Language is a Skin
Sound and Music: Dane A. Davis, Zack Settel, Jean-Pierre Bedoyan, Pam Aronoff, James Rees, and Betzy Bromberg
Part II: And the Night Illuminated the Night
Music: Robert Allaire, performed by the Formalist Quartet
Screened and exhibited:
Premiered at REDCAT; festival premiere at the New York Film Festival: Views From The Avant-Garde.
The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente (BAFICI 2012), the Bradford International Film Festival (United Kingdom), the CinemaSpace at the Segal Centre of Performing Arts (Montreal) as part of Suoni per iI Popolo Avant-Garde Music Festival, and the Guggenheim Bilbao (Spain)
2006 Sundance Film Festival, the Seoul Film Festival (South Korea), the Athens International Film Festival (Greece), the Bradford International Film Festival (England), Seattle International Film Festival (Washington), the Centro de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona, (Spain), and Ponrepo, theater of the Czech National Film Archives (Prague, Czech Republic).[10]
^Turnock, Julie A. (2015). Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Technology, and the Emergence of 1970s Blockbuster Aesthetics. Columbia University Press. pp. 155–156. ISBN9780231163521.
^ abcMacDonald, Scott (2014). Avant-Doc: Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema. Oxford University Press. pp. 23, 314–324. ISBN9780199388738.
