Big Joy Project

Have you seen Big Joy yet? It's now available to stream on Netflix or download through iTunes!  Watch the trailer & find out more here: http://bigjoy.org/

"It's one of the few films I've seen in the last five years that has really challenged my mind." ~ Megan Harris shares a thoughful and sassy response to seeing the documentary Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton.

San Francisco-based Kenneth Kemp fuses the soul of chillout disco, the melodic synths of Giorgio Moroder, and the danceable pulse of modern indie-disco in this ode to "Bliss". Check out "Bliss" and all the other great tracks on Music Of His Dance Vol. 1 on iTunes or wherever you buy your music.  Music of His Dance Vol. 1: 1. Up Yours - "Bear Of Heaven" 2. The SyntheTigers ft. Tobirus Mozelle - "This Is It" 3. Two Dudes In Love - "Wondrous" 4. Juan Ramos - "The Music Of His Dance" 5. Kenneth Kemp - "Bliss" Learn more about James Broughton, whose poetry is used in Bliss and throughout the Music of His Dance series through the documentary Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton. Explore this and other releases on Friends With Benefits Records. Photo & video by Kitten Calfee.

"Do not ask where  we go from here Nobody knows Some think they do but nobody really knows anything  about anything. We are only gurgles in the stream..." ~ James Broughton

"This Is It" ~ A short film by the avant-garde filmmaker James Broughton. "James Broughton's creation myth, THIS IS IT, places a 2-year-old Adam and a bright apple-red balloon in a backyard garden of Eden, and works a small miracle of the ordinary. And since that miracle is what his film is about, he achieves a kind of casual perfection in matching means and ends." - Robert Greenspun, The New York Times "It's simple, inspired, and ecstatic. To watch Broughton's film you need a certain silence, a certain descending to the more subtle, more fragile levels of your being - otherwise, the film and its content will not reach you, it will break to pieces. I figure this is the main reason why films of the stature and subtlety and ecstasy of THIS IS IT never reach the New York Film Festival screen." - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice "A seminal film that promises to affect the course of film art for some time to come." - Hollis Frampton Awards: First Prize, Yale Film Festival, 1972; First Prize, Hawaii Int'l Film Festival, 1972; First Prize, Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival, 1972; First Prize, Kenyon Film Festival, 1972. Find out more about this innovative filmmaker in the new documentary, "Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton."

Juan Ramos is an American DJ and techno producer based in Berlin, Germany who infused James Broughton's poem "Song of the Godbody" with syncopated percussion and twinkling bells in this hypnotic deep house track “The Music Of His Dance.” Part of a beautiful collection of dance music that features poetry by James Broughton, available now on iTunes from Friends with Benefits records.

James Broughton appeared on Screening Room in April, 1977. He screened and discussed the films Loony Tom: The Happy Lover, This Is It, Water Circle, Windowmobile and Testament.   Often called "the father of West Coast independent cinema," James Broughton (1913-1999) considered himself to be, first and foremost, a poet. Writing poems and making films were, for Broughton, simply two different ways of creating images with feeling.

What else would you rather be doing?  Dividing the Eithers from the Ors?

WATCH: A performance of James Broughton's poem "I took a sharp look" from his book Graffiti for the Johns of Heaven. Dedicated to Michael Seely for his help in making our film Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton.