Robert Beavers
Robert Beavers is an American experimental filmmaker best known for My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure, an epic cycle comprising 18 of his films (many later re-edited) made since 1967. Beavers’s use of shaped mattes to obscure aspects of the image and gelatine filters that produce varieties of coloured light are hallmarks of some of his films, many of which observe hand- and craftwork (including his own filmmaking). Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, Beavers attended Deerfield Academy before meeting the filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos in 1966. They moved to Europe in 1967 and removed their films from distribution; Beavers did not show his films in the United States again until 1996. Beavers made films in Greece, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. His early Plan of Brussels and Winged Dialogue (1967-68/2000) are multilayered psychic explorations; From the Notebook of…(1971/1998) is set in Florence and inspired by Leonardo’s notebooks. Ruskin (1975/1997) is shot at the various sites of the titular artist/critic’s work in London, the Alps and Venice. Beavers’s only film to use intertitles, the dialogic Sotiros (1976-78/1996) marks the end of his use of filters and mattes. Wingseed(1985), The Hedge Theater (1986-90/2002), The Stoas (1991-97), and The Ground (1993-2001) dwell in pastoral environments in Italy and Greece. Beavers has produced three films outside the Hand Outstretched cycle: Pitcher of Colored Light (2007), The Suppliant (2012) (both shot in the U.S.) and Listening to the Space in My Room (2013). He lives with the German filmmaker Ute Aurand in Berlin and in Massachusetts.
From the Notebook of...
as Himself"From the Notebook of..." was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da...
Movie pageBirth of a Nation
as SelfFilmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.
Movie pageEarly Monthly Segments
as uncreditedEarly Monthly Segments, filmed when Beavers was 18 and 19 years old, now forms the opening to...
Movie pageThe Hedge Theater
as HimselfBeavers shot The Hedge Theatre in Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the...
Movie pageListening to the Space in My Room
as HimselfOstensibly a portrait of a place where the artist had resided until recently, the new film by...
Movie pageWinged Dialogue
as uncredited"Winged Dialogue details with growing clarity the desperate beauty and sexuality of the body...
Movie pageJabbok
as JabbokThe story of Jacob wrestling the angel at the stream called Jabbok.
Movie pageEros, O Basileus
as ErosStructured in nine tableaux each a study of a simple action or situation involving a lone, naked...
Movie pageZuoz
as Ice skaterFilmed in Switzerland and released as part of a triptych with A Walk, Zuoz features the...
Movie pageSotiros
as uncreditedBeavers distilled the 26-minute Sotiros in 1996 from an original 50-minute trilogy. Filmed in...
Movie pagePlan of Brussels
as uncreditedShedding all traces of narrative in Plan of Brussels, Beavers filmed himself in a hotel room,...
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