THE ILLIAC PASSION
Sat 17 April 2004, at 8.40pm
London National Film Theatre NFT2

BLISS
Gregory Markopoulos, Greece, 1967, 16mm, colour, silent, 6 min

THE ILLIAC PASSION
Gregory Markopoulos, USA, 1967, 16mm, colour, sound, 92 min

The work of Gregory Markopoulos occupies a unique position in the history of film. He is widely regarded as one of the masters of the cinematic art, yet since he departed the United States in 1967 his films were almost impossible to see. As a result of his need for total control over the presentation of his vision, he increasingly withdrew himself and his films from the film community he had been so actively involved in up to that point.

In recent years the films of Markopoulos have been gradually reintroduced to the viewing public and have been honoured at major museums and festivals, including retrospectives at the American Centre (Paris 1995), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York 1996), Pacific Film Archive (San Francisco 1997) The Film Society of Lincoln Centre (New York 2003) and Harvard Film Archive (2003). In May 2003, Robert Beavers and Simon Field presented a screening of Markopoulos films at the Goethe Institute, Athens, to an audience exceeding 350 people, and in June 2004, Temenos Inc. will resume the summer screening programme at the outdoor site in Lyssaraia.

This National Film Theatre season is the first time that so many of the films of Markopoulos have been shown in England on such a scale. Since he withdrew his films from exhibition in the early 1970s, they have been virtually impossible to see in the UK. This high-profile event will also act as a precursor to the resumption of outdoor Temenos projections at a remote site near Arcadia in the Peloponnese in June 2004, where restored films from the epic Eniaios cycle will be presented in public the first time. For three consecutive nights, screenings will take place from 10pm to 4am in the place chosen by Markopoulos as the ideal site for a spectator’s quest, in which his films may elevate the spectators’ sense of time while emotionally and physically connecting them to the mythic themes and locations.

After making Himself as Herself and Eros, O Basileus (both 1967) in New York, Markopoulos moved to Europe, ostensibly to raise money to finally print The Illiac Passion. While in Greece he made the architectural portrait Bliss (1967),shot over the course of two days using only available light to create a lyrical study of the interior of the Church of St. John on the island of Hydra.

In the autumn of 1967, Markopoulos was living in Brussels where he persuaded a consortium of businessmen to fund the completion of The Illiac Passion. The film had been shot in 1964 starring Richard Beauvais alongside a cast of well-known underground personalities including Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga, Taylor Mead, Beverly Grant and Jack Smith. It was originally edited in the first half of 1965, and was then intended as a three hour long, triple projection film in which 35, 16 and 8mm frames would be superimposed on each other to demonstrate different layers of consciousness. During the printing process, Markopoulos commuted between Brussels and the lab in Boulder, Colorado. After a 30-minute section had been completed, he realised that the film would never be ready in time for the film festival at Knokke-le-Zoute, so he reconceived and re-edited the film into the 92-minute version that exists today.

(Mark Webber)

For me the inspiration for The Illiac Passion was derived from Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound: from the multitude of impressions I had had from time to time of what the other two, lost plays of his trilogy, might have been like. And my own golden circle of inspiration not once ignored what I had read once as a student in a wonderful essay by Gordon Craig that the actor should appear naked upon the stage. Thus, I decided to film the protagonist shaped out of Prometheus naked. The season in New York was proper towards this endeavour, and I had no difficulty once I had cast the role in either filming the protagonist naked or in the most obvious difficulty, developing the film footage. But of the main characters in the Aeschylus, I only kept three: Prometheus, Poseidon, and Io. Prometheus was cast and in my own being thought of as Prometheus (thought he has no such name in the film proper) was portrayed by Mr Richard Beauvais. Poseidon no longer arriving in a bath tub but riding an exercycle was portrayed by Mr Andy Warhol. And Io not chased by a gadfly, but cast in a kind of subterranean aura, slowly becoming porcelain, and imbued with an Asiatic quality, portrayed by Miss Clara Hoover. Of the three members, I had to film most with Richard Beauvais. Andy Warhol’s footage was shot all in one evening, with Life magazine recording the event in colour stills; the stills have never been published. Clara Hoover’s footage was shot over a period of two or three weeks; a part of the time in below zero weather with Richard Beauvais at Lloyd’s Neck, Long Island.

If the point of inspiration for the three central characters (though in essence Beauvais is the only central character) was Aeschylus’ play, the point of inspiration for the mythic characters, if they be so called, were the Greek myths which had always brought me such jubilation: the myths of Narcissus and Echo, Icarus and Daedalus, Hyacinthus and Apollo, Venus and Adonis, Orpheus and Eyrudice, Zeus and Ganymede, and many others. Using these pointillistically, as illuminated, exotic ports of departure I allowed myself to depart, to drift, to journey amongst the emotions of the players I found during my odyssey: until finally, in the final version of The Illiac Passion, the players become but the molecules of the nude protagonist, gyrating and struggling, all in love, bound and unbound, from situation to situation in the vast sea of emotion which becomes the filmmaker’s proudest endeavour.

One more characterisation should be mentioned as a direct descendant of the two characters who bind Prometheus in the opening passages of the Greek play. The characterisation which I have in mind is that of the inimitable Mr Taylor Mead (underground poet and film personality) who portrays in composite the two characters from Aeschylus: Power and Force. Some film spectators, having seen The Illiac Passion (one dissenting that he was needed in the film!), have looked to him as a sprite, as a fire image; as a fire image because of the costume we selected together for his portrayal. None of these, however, valid as they may seem from the film spectator’s viewpoint, hold as much truth as the filmmaker’s own interpretation: that Taylor Mead is the opposite of the Muse in the film, a Demon; a Demon in the full sense of the Greek word. One has only to think of the film in order to agree to the interpretation. For always, the Demon and the Muse, so deftly portrayed by a true-to-life Muse herself, Mrs Peggy Myrray, are kept apart; apart, that is, they are never seen or superimposed in the same scene or composition together.

(Gregory Markopoulos)

Back to top