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Broughton reads his poetry over various images.
Men in pairs, mostly naked, perform various sensual tasks together.
People quietly or mischievously pass the time in an overgrown garden full of statues, while a puritanical, funereal gentleman posts bills prohibiting all leisure activities.
Images, Joel Singer; Sounds, James Broughton. "The film is shot both through and at a window, superimposing and conjoining, thereby elaborating events on both sides of the glass. Broughton's accompanying poem sings the same song as the images, sounding from an Eden of the golden passing of days: "They were seeing the light every day then ... / They were looking and they were seeing / They were living there in the light at that time." - Robert Lipman, On the Films of Joel Singer
In this homage to Zen poet Basho, the subtle changes of a pond are chronicled on film over a period of time. Broughton recites his cuckoo haikus in the background.
Mapping extreme close-ups of Broughton's body, the camera slowly becomes a tool to reveal the erotic beauty of the body and the sensual pleasure in loving oneself. The ecstasy and power of sexual gratification are celebrated by the camera, as it probes, reveals, and visually caresses. Broughton's song is a praise of his body as divine androgyne, and an acceptance of this higher, sexual power.
Accepting the potentialities of the medium to manipulate both time and space, Broughton brings past and present head-on as he regards with adult feelings his childhood family and friends. Grown-ups romp like children, and by their magnified infantilism playfully underscore such basic traits as sadism, sensuality, arid egocentricity. (Melbourne International Film Festival)
"TESTAMENT is James Broughton's exquisite self-portrait. A major figure in avant-garde filmmaking and poetry since the 1940s, Broughton views his life and life's work with irony, charm, humor, and a combination of joyous self-love and gentle self-depreciation. Scenes from his earlier films mix the elements of humor, magic, slapstick, melodrama, and romance which mark his aesthetic. A plethora of rich personal symbols is woven throughout the film, tied together by verbal games, Zen poems, anecdotes, songs, a child's prayer, dreams, and visions." - Karen Cooper "James Broughton's TESTAMENT is one of the most remarkable films ever produced within the American independent cinema. It is the most moving and most sublimely detached of the recent trend of filmic autobiographies - by Jerome Hill, Jonas Mekas, and Stan Brakhage, to name only the masters, and Broughton's peers." - P. Adams Sitney "A beautiful, important, mysterious work." - Amos Vogel
The oneiric quest of a modern argonaut on a mysterious island located somewhere on the borders of the unconscious.
Poems narrate four afternoon vignettes; each protagonist is older than the one in the previous sketch.