Innis College, room 222
April 3, 2025, 8PM
Free admission, open to the public!
A miracle happened: summer came ahead of time.
“Stephen Broomer’s Lulu Faustine is an homage to the Latin American literary science fiction classic, Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, in which a fugitive escapes to an island and becomes enamoured with a woman, like a future Eve. This woman, Faustine, recorded by a machine, in her concept and abstraction, becomes the conducting thread of all the ideas that traverse Broomer’s film. Like Morel (and the fugitive), the filmmaker designs this feminine figure through digital codes, giving her a new texture. It’s Lulu who scapes the expressive humanity of Pabst, to be molded to the eyes of a different creator, many years after, given new life with the help of technology.” Mónica Delgado, Desistfilm
To be in love with an image was worse than being in love with a ghost. (I feel as if my tympanum were breaking.) Almost everything, in fact, does have an explanation. (Atmospheric pressure is increasing…).
“Lulu Faustine becomes a film about Faustine and (Louise) Brooks—at once speaking to its literary source, the films that provide its images, and Joseph Cornell’s collage film Rose Hobart, all of which provide pathways through its hypnotic imagery.” Ben R. Nicholson, Sight and Sound
The remaining chapters will hold no surprises. (…and I feel as if my tympanum were breaking.) To be on an island inhabited by artificial ghosts was the most unbearable of nightmares. (12.30 o’clock, respiration is extraordinarily difficult.) I have given you a pleasant eternity! Just me for you and you for me alone. (I am intoxicated with gasoline.) It will be an act of piety.
Stephen Broomer is a filmmaker born in Toronto, Canada. His films have been the subject of retrospectives at Anthology Film Archives (New York), the Pleasure Dome (Toronto), and the Canadian Film Institute (Ottawa). Broomer’s work has been the subject of an essay collection, The Transformable Moment (2014), and he has been a Fulbright scholar with the Prelinger Library (San Francisco). In his role as a historian of Canadian cinema, Broomer has written three monographs, co-authored a textbook, and co-edited two collections of essays on essential contemporary Canadian filmmakers. He is the founder of the home video label Black Zero, dedicated to Canadian experimental cinema, and he is the creator and host of Art & Trash, a video essay series on underground cinema. He teaches cinema studies at Innis College, University of Toronto.
Stuart Broomer is a writer and musician. From the mid-1960s to the mid 1980s he was involved as bassist, pianist and composer in the Canadian free jazz and improvised music communities, releasing LPs with saxophonist Bill Smith and percussionist John Mars. He has written on music for The Globe & Mail, Toronto Life, Coda, Musicworks and New York City Jazz Record. His column “Ezz-thetics” appears regularly at pointofdeparture.org. He is the author of Time and Anthony Braxton (Mercury Press) and co-author of Arrivals & Departures: New Horizons in Jazz (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation). He has written 140 liner essays on improvised music. Broomer’s engagement in film music began with live performances as a pianist in Joyce Wieland’s Bill’s Hat at Cinecity, Toronto and the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1967, later touring extensively (1970s-80s) with John Mars, improvising live soundtracks for classic silent films. His soundtracks for feature films by Stephen Broomer include Potamkin, Tondal’s Vision, Phantom Ride, Lulu Faustine and Fat Chance (2017-2021).
Programme:
Lulu Faustine (2020, 65 mins.)
TRT: 65 minutes
AD HOC aims to rethink what an experience of cinema can be. We seek to reposition historical landmarks and buried treasures within the on-going tradition of experimental and other non- commercial modes of filmmaking, drawing on work from Toronto, throughout Canada, and internationally. Within these parameters, we aspire to diversity in programming, as well as to multimedia and interdisciplinary screening events that bring together varied communities.
AD HOC = Stephen Broomer, Madi Piller, Jim Shedden, Bart Testa.
AD HOC would like to thank Alberto Zambenedetti, Denise Ing, Charlie Keil, Eyan Logan, Rob Trevisan, Thom Chan, Jarret Sorger, and the staff of Innis College and the Cinema Studies Institute.