My Hand Outstretched: Programme 2

Date: 23 February 2007 | Season: Robert Beavers 2007

MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: PROGRAMME 2
Friday 23 February 2007, at 9pm
London Tate Modern

Robert Beavers, The Count of Days, 1969/2001, 16mm, colour, sound, 21 min
The film is seen as though upon and through the structure of its spiritual partitions. One might say that there are three elements or levels to the images: narrative, descriptive or analytic, and abstract. The Count of Days is not an account so much as an accounting of the essence of the days in which three separate persons are related at points … a penetration through the masks and habits of these days to reveal the nature of the charade and the arena in which it is enacted. (Tom Chomont, Film Culture)

Robert Beavers, Palinode, 1970/2001, 16mm, colour, sound, 21 min 
In Palinode, a disk-shaped matte continually shifting in and out of focus alternately blocks part of the image or contains it. Its respiratory rhythm matches operatic fragments of Wladimir Vogel’s ‘Wagadu’, as the camera studies a middle-aged male singer in Zurich, singing, eating, window shopping, meeting a young girl. The filmmaker told himself, “Don’t let yourself know what that film is about while you are making it.” (P. Adams Sitney, Film Comment)

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