Monday,
October 8 at 7pm
To
the Winged Distance: Films by Robert Beavers
Co-presented
by Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and supported
by the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Fund for Cinema Studies Programming
Director
Robert Beavers in person
Since
leaving the USA in 1967, Robert Beavers has labored in relative
isolation on works whose goal ‘is for the projected film image
to have the same force of awakening sight as any other great
image.’ His meticulously crafted films are at once lyrical and
rigorous, sensuous and complex. Whilst communicating his response
to the landscapes, architecture and traditions of the Mediterranean
and Alpine countries in which they were filmed, they also incorporate
deeply personal and aesthetic themes. Rarely seen in public,
Robert Beavers’ remarkable body of work is a celebration of
light, life and color.
Early
Monthly Segments
dir.
Robert Beavers, Switzerland, 1968-70/2002, 35mm, 33 mins, silent
Early
Monthly Segments,
filmed when Beavers was 18 and 19 years old, now forms the opening
to his film cycle, “My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance
and Sightless Measure.” It is a highly stylized work of self-portraiture,
depicting filmmaker and companion Gregory J. Markopoulos in
their Swiss apartment. The film functions as a diary, capturing
aspects of home life with precise attention to detail, documenting
the familiar with great love and transforming objects and ordinary
personal effects into a highly-charged work of homoeroticism.
The
Ground
dir.
Robert Beavers, Greece,
1993-2001, 35mm,
20 mins, color
 "What
lives in the space between the stones, in the space cupped between
my hand and my chest? Filmmaker/ stonemason. A tower or ruin
of remembrance. With each swing of the hammer I cut into the
image and the sound rises from the chisel. A rhythm, marked
by repetition, and animated by variation; strokes of hammer
and fist, resounding in dialogue. In this space which the film
creates, emptiness gains a contour strong enough for the spectator
to see more than the image – a space permitting vision in addition
to sight."
Robert
Beavers
Pitcher
of Colored Light
dir.
Robert Beavers, USA/Switzerland 2007, 16mm, 23.5 mins, color
"I
have filmed my mother's house and her garden. The
shadows play an essential part
in the mixture of loneliness and peace that exists here. The
seasons move from the garden into the house, projecting rich
diagonals in the early morning
or late afternoon. Each shadow
is a subtle balance of stillness
and movement and shows the
vital instability of space.
Its special quality opens a passage to the subjective.
A voice within the film speaks
to memory. The walls are screens through
which I pass to the inhabited
privacy. We experience a place
through the perspective of where we come from and hear
another's voice through our own acoustic. The sense of place
is never separatefrom the moment."
Robert
Beavers
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