Films
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ExperimentalPOTAMKIN
Stephen Broomer16mm, black and white, sound, 67 minRental formats: 16mm, Digital file
Biography
Stephen Broomer (born 1984, Toronto, Canada)
Stephen Broomer is an experimental filmmaker. Peripheral to this, he has worked within the field of cinema as a preservationist, historian, educator, programmer, and publisher. Broomer's 16mm films and digital videos have screened at festivals such as the San Francisco Cinematheque's Crossroads Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, S8 Mostra de Cinema Periférico (Galicia), and the New York Film Festival, and he has presented solo programs at venues such as the Canadian Film Institute, Mono No Aware (Brooklyn), the Pleasure Dome (Toronto), the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library and the MassArt Film Society (Boston). In 2014, Broomer's films were the subject of a book-length collection of essays published by the Canadian Film Institute, The Transformable Moment: The Films of Stephen Broomer.
Broomer received his PhD from Ryerson University & York University's joint program in Communication and Culture in 2015, for his dissertation on difficult aesthetics and the origins of the Canadian avant-garde film movement. He has served as the Scholar-in-Residence at the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre (Ryerson University) and at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. His writings on cinema have appeared in Found Footage Magazine, La Furia Umana, CineAction, Film International, Desistfilm and the Visual Anthropology Review. In 2016, his first book, Hamilton Babylon: A History of the McMaster Film Board, was published by University of Toronto Press. In 2017, he founded Sightline Editions, a publishing imprint focusing on the relation between poetry and cinema.
Broomer has led the restoration of films by John Hofsess, R. Bruce Elder, Arthur Lipsett, Jim Smith, and Greg Curnoe. This work has been done both independently and with the support of institutions such as Library & Archives Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Cinémathèque québécois. As a programmer, Broomer has presented screenings of films by Saul Levine, Willie Varela, Marie Menken, Brian Wilson, Jim Davis, Rob Fothergill, Joyce Wieland, Maya Deren and Ian Hugo.
Broomer has held teaching appointments at Glendon College (York University), the Ryerson University Faculty of Graduate Studies and Sheridan College. He has led workshops in filmmaking at the Alberta College of Art and Design, Harvard University, MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Castilla y León), and the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto.