Robert Beavers

Born: 1949-01-01

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.


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Birth of a Nation

as Self
Released: 1997-08-06

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.

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Eros, O Basileus

as Eros
Released: 1967-04-23

Structured in nine tableaux each a study of a simple action or situation involving a lone, naked...

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Early Monthly Segments

as uncredited
Released: 2003-09-09

Early Monthly Segments, filmed when Beavers was 18 and 19 years old, now forms the opening to...

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From the Notebook of...

as Himself
Released: 1972-02-11

"From the Notebook of..." was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da...

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The Hedge Theater

as Himself
Released: 2002-11-17

Beavers shot The Hedge Theatre in Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the...

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Zuoz

as Ice skater
Released: 2008-06-01

Filmed in Switzerland and released as part of a triptych with A Walk, Zuoz features the...

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Listening to the Space in My Room

as Himself
Released: 2013-09-10

Ostensibly a portrait of a place where the artist had resided until recently, the new film by...

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Plan of Brussels

as uncredited
Released: 1968-01-01

Shedding all traces of narrative in Plan of Brussels, Beavers filmed himself in a hotel room,...

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Cape Cod

as himself
Released: 2018-07-13

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Jabbok

as Jabbok
Released: 1967-01-01

The story of Jacob wrestling the angel at the stream called Jabbok.

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Winged Dialogue

as uncredited
Released: 1967-12-30

"Winged Dialogue details with growing clarity the desperate beauty and sexuality of the body...

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