Pansexualist Poet James Broughton Brought to Life on Screen

  To listen to the KUCI Subversity Online podcast of our interview, recorded yesterday at Outfest, with director Stephen Silha,  click on: . 

A pensive James Broughton

A captivating documentary, "Big Joy", screening at Outfest Los Angeles, captures the pansexuality and poetic and cinematic genius of James Broughton, whose involvement in the San Francisco Renaissance predated the period of the Beats.

Stephen Silha at Outfest.  Photo copyright  Daniel C. Tsang 2013

Stephen Silha and his team of directors brings to the screen "Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton" and indeed viewers will be able to catch images and sound of Broughton from his marriage to film critic Pauline Kael (who bore him an offspring) to his later entanglements with men and women.  Eric Slade, another co-director, earlier made "Hope Along the Wind,” on the life of gay pioneer Harry Hay.

Subversity Online interviews co-director Stephen Silha, a first-time filmmaker, on the life and impact of the affectionate and fairy-like poet, who continued writing into the end of his life in his eighties.   In his senior years, Broughton is also engaged in a long relationship with another, younger man.  Silha discusses in the interview why he made this film and their use of archival footage, as well as where the Broughton archives are located.



As the Outfest program notes indicate: "His [Broughton's] reverence for unbridled joy through childlike creativity and silliness put him perfectly in tune with the flowering of free-spirited experimentation in the 1960s, of which his film THE BED (1968) is a cultural milestone."

Old and Younger Connect

"Big Joy" screens Monday 15 July at 5 pm at Directors Guild of America, DGA2.

For the entire lineup, see the Outfest LA program guide. See also ticket information. - Daniel C. Tsang.