Betzy
Bromberg, former Director of the Program in Film and Video, has been making
experimental films since 1976. Her most recent film, Glide of Transparency (2016/17), completes her 16mm abstract feature
trilogy. It premiered at the
Redcat Theater in Los Angeles and was listed as one of the year’s best films in
both Senses of Cinema (Jordan Cronk)
and Fandor (Michael Sicinski and
Jordan Cronk) https://www.fandor.com/posts/interesting-times-year-avant-garde-film. Her previous film, Voluptuous Sleep (2011), had its festival premiere at the New York Film Festival:
Views From The Avant-Garde. Voluptuous
Sleep was listed as one of the Best Films for 2011 in both the New York Times (Manohla Dargis) and Indiewire (Andrea Picard). Scott MacDonald included it in his
Highlights 2012 in Lumiere Magazine and published an interview with Ms.
Bromberg in his book, Avant-Doc:
Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema.
In June, 2018, Ms. Bromberg had a
comprehensive retrospective of her films at the historic Anthology Film
Archives in NYC which included the NY premiere of Glide of Transparency. Her previous film, Voluptuous Sleep won the
Stan Brakhage award at the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival (2012). In 2011, both Voluptuous Sleep and a
Darkness Swallowed (2005)
screened at the Guggenheim Bilbao (Spain). In addition, Voluptuous Sleep screened at the
Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de
Cine Independiente (BAFICI 2012), the Bradford International Film Festival
(United Kingdom) and CinemaSpace at the Segal Centre of Performing Arts (Montreal)
as part of Suoni per iI Popolo Avant-Garde Music Festival.
Ms. Bromberg had a full
retrospective of her films at BAFICI in 2007. a Darkness Swallowed (2005), screened at the Sundance Film
Festival as well as 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 at Ponrepo, theatre of the Czech
National Film Archives (Prague, Czech Republic). Ms. Bromberg’s films have shown extensively in museums,
cultural venues and festivals within the United States and abroad. Most
notably, her work has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art (New York
City), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Cinemateque, the Harvard
Film Archives (Cambridge), Anthology Film Archives (New York City), the
National Film Theater (London), The Vootrum Centrum (Belgium) and the Centre
Georges Pompidou (France).
Previous to becoming the Director
of the Program in Film and Video California Institute of the Arts, Ms. Bromberg
worked in the Hollywood special
effects industry for many years as a supervisor and camerawoman for the
production of optical effects in major motion pictures.