Date: 29 November 2014 | Season: Gregory Markopoulos: Film as Film | Tags: Gregory Markopoulos
FILM AS FILM: GREGORY J. MARKOPOULOS
Saturday 29 November 2014, at 6pm
Brighton Museum & Art Gallery
The meticulously crafted films made by Gregory Markopoulos encompass mythic themes, portraiture and studies of landscape and architecture. Employing spontaneous in-camera superimposition and complex editing techniques, he sought to unlock the mystery and energy contained within the single frame. This rare opportunity to encounter a true cinematic visionary celebrates the publication of his collected writings and will be introduced by the book’s editor Mark Webber.
Gregory Markopoulos, Ming Green, 1966, 7 min
Gregory Markopoulos, Through a Lens Brightly: Mark Turbyfill, 1967, 14 min
Gregory Markopoulos, Twice a Man, 1963, 46 min
Presented by Cinecity 15th Brighton Film Festival and supported by the University of Sussex Centre for American Studies, in collaboration with the University of Brighton.
PROGRAMME NOTES
FILM AS FILM: GREGORY J. MARKOPOULOS
29 November 2014, at 6pm
Brighton Museum & Art Gallery
MING GREEN
Gregory J. Markopoulos, USA, 1966, 16mm, colour, sound, 7 min
An extraordinary self-portrait conveyed through multiple layered observations of the filmmaker’s sparsely furnished room in Greenwich Village.
THROUGH A LENS BRIGHTLY: MARK TURBYFILL
Gregory J. Markopoulos, USA, 1967, 16mm, colour, sound, 14 min
The life of painter, dancer and poet Mark Turbyfill, seen in his 70th year, is evoked through a unique form of cinematic portraiture that encompasses the person, their environment and personal objects.
TWICE A MAN
Gregory J. Markopoulos, USA, 1963, 16mm, colour, sound, 46 min
Twice A Man is a fragmented re-imagining of the Greek myth of Hippolytus, who was killed after rejecting the advances of his stepmother. Markopoulos’ vision transposes the legend to 1960s New York and has its main character abandon his mother for an elder man. Employing sensuous use of colour, the film radicalised narrative construction with its mosaic of ‘thought images’ that shift tenses and compress time. One of the touchstones of independent filmmaking, Twice A Man was made in the same remarkable milieu as Scorpio Rising and Flaming Creatures by a filmmaker named ‘the American avant-garde cinema’s supreme erotic poet’ by its key critic P. Adams Sitney.
—Mark Webber
Back to top
