Northwest Film Forum

When artist James Broughton came on the scene in the 1940s, he struck with a personality so big and joyous that the film community could not help but follow. In the spirit of Broughton himself, Big Joy’s celebration of an experimental filmmaker’s life is a lively collage of movie clips, diary entries and unreserved conversations with the people who knew him best (including former lover Pauline Kael).

With the courage to tell a joke and the gumption to avoid Hollywood’s advances, Broughton gravitated to the center of revolutions both sexual and artistic, an “outsider’s outsider” who may become your favorite outsider, too. In the biggest adventure of his life, he fell madly in love with a young man nearly forty years younger than himself. Big Joy is a glorious celebration of art as liberation, and fully lives up to its title, brimming with the sheer giddy pleasure of being alive in this world. Or as the poet himself stated, “I believe in ecstasy for everyone.”

"filmed with an irresistibly playful spirit" —The Seattle Times

• Join us for special film introductions from director Stephen Silha on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Thursday at the 7pm screenings!
   
• We welcome local poet Thomas Pruiksma for a special pre-screening reading at the Sunday 7pm screening! About Thomas:

Thomas Pruiksma is a poet, magician, writer, translator, teacher, musician, and lover of life. He was born in Seattle, Washington, and has lived and worked in Tamil Nadu, India, and Oaxaca, Mexico. He is most recently the author and translator of Give, Eat, and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar and the co-author of Body and Earth: Notes from a Conversation (with the artist C.F. John) and A Feast for the Tongue: Forty Servings of Spoken Tamil with Helpings of Equally Spoken English (with the scholar Dr. K. V. Ramakoti). He now makes his home on Vashon Island, Washington, with his partner, David Mielke.