All That Glitters: Scott Miller Berry introduces De Profundis a film by Lawrence Brose
The third event in Forest City Gallery’s All That Glitters programming. Forest City Gallery is proud to offer a month of programming that will explore complex expressions of queer identities through the lens of the camera. This program seeks to feature screenings chosen by members of London’s art and queer communities, in order to highlight queer cultural voices from a local perspective.
6:30- Introduction by Scott Miller Berry
7:15- Screening
Free Event/ Times are Approximate
Guest Programmed by Sebastian Di Trollio
Screening:
De Profundis (Lawrence Brose, 1997, USA, 65 minutes)
Music by Frederic Rzewski, with additional compositions by Lawrence Brose and Douglas Cohen
Presented on 16mm film.
(may contain explicit imagery; not suitable for all audiences)
About this event:
Scott Miller Berry, of Images Festival (Toronto), will be introducing Lawrence Brose’s experimental film De Profundis.
Buffalo-based filmmaker, curator and arts advocate Lawrence Brose’s landmark De Profundis is a 65-minute meditation on gay desire based on Oscar Wilde’s infamous prison letter presented via lush hand-processed imagery. The film utilizes vintage erotica, home movies, radical faerie gatherings, queer pagan rituals and drag shows alongside a piano score by Frederic Rzewski which incorporates Wilde’s text as a means of exploring assimilation and sexuality through hand painted frames and manipulation. The result is an exploding utopia of colour and a layered but equally privileged soundscape.
Recently the film has come under scrutiny by the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Justice Department as Brose now faces serious charges for allegedly possessing illicit digital images. One hundred of the listed images in the charges are film frames from De Profundis. The fact that he is under indictment for using images made by others to examine the taboos that such laws are meant to prevent is as overreaching as it is disturbing. This prosecution should be viewed as a challenge to artistic freedom, brought by a U.S. Attorney’s office that previously unsuccessfully prosecuted Critical Art Ensemble founder Steve Kurtz.
For more information about Brose’s indictment or to donate to his legal defense fund, please visit:
lawrencebroselegaldefensef
Lawrence Brose is an experimental film artist and has created over thirty films since 1983. His films have been shown at international film festivals, museums, art galleries, and cinematheques in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. In 1989 he began a series of film collaborations with contemporary composers to explore the relationship between the moving image and music.