{"id":1077,"date":"2002-11-17T16:15:10","date_gmt":"2002-11-17T16:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/?p=1077"},"modified":"2018-01-25T15:00:42","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T15:00:42","slug":"special-presentation-robert-beavers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/2002\/11\/17\/special-presentation-robert-beavers\/","title":{"rendered":"Special Presentation: Robert Beavers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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ROBERT BEAVERS<\/b>
\nSunday 17 November 2002, at 4:15pm<\/b>
\nLondon National Film Theatre NFT1<\/b><\/p>\n

SPECIAL PRESENTATION: ROBERT BEAVERS<\/b>
\nIntroduced by the filmmaker<\/p>\n

Robert Beavers has created a body of work that aspires to impart \u2018the serenity of a thought without words\u2019. His careful choice of the site or locations for filming often displays a deep understanding of Greek landscape, culture and history or draws upon sources from the history of architecture. The physical actions or gestures of the filmmaker (or his human subject), the use of metaphorical imagery and the intricate arrangement of the soundtrack, fuse into a consummate film experience. In revising several of his earlier films by tightly editing the image and creating new soundtracks, Beavers has produced distilled works that are precisely balanced and meticulously composed. The correspondences of the images, shot over an extended time period and in diverse locations, are cut together to an invisible rhythm, intuitively measured against each other. The presence of the filmmaker, though not always visually evident, is felt through every composition, gesture and edit. There are few traces of narrative, rather each montage of image and sound conveys a feeling or thought in an innate and tacit manner. The films demand an openness and concentration, but despite their apparent formal rigour they retain an inherent humanity, communicated in the moment of projection. This single screening is an extremely rare opportunity to see works by a remarkable filmmaker who has not been shown in England for over 30 years. (Mark Webber)<\/p>\n

Robert Beavers, Sotiros, 1977-96, 25 min
\nRobert Beavers, Amor, 1980, 15 min
\nRobert Beavers, The Hedge Theater, 2002, 19 min
\nRobert Beavers, The Ground, 2001, 20 min<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cBeavers\u2019 personal films occupy a noble place within the history of avant-garde film, positioned at the intersection of structural and lyrical film-making traditions. Exuding a sense of joy for the filmic medium, they seem to embody the ideals of the high Renaissance in their fascination with perception (both visual and aural), psychology, literature, the natural world, architectural construction, musical phrasing and aesthetic beauty. Perhaps this work\u2019s greatest achievement is that it appears continually fresh, as timeless art should, both to the newcomer and to the fortunate viewer able to savour the richness of these films time and time again.\u201d (Susan Oxtoby, Cinematheque Ontario \/ Toronto International Film Festival 1999)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cRobert Beavers has been making films since the late 1960s, yet screenings of his work are rare, and are always stringently supervised by the artist. Beavers\u2019 meticulously composed films are influenced by the structural tradition of the Greek-American avant-garde filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos, his teacher and long-term partner. However, they stem from a more visceral, lyrical source. Each of his films is conceptually complex, carefully crafted and concise.\u201d (Chrissie Iles, Whitney Museum of American Art \/ Whitney Biennale 2002)<\/em><\/p>\nPROGRAMME NOTES<\/a>

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ROBERT BEAVERS
\n<\/b>Sunday 17 November 2002, at 4:15pm
\nLondon BFI Southbank NFT1<\/p>\n

SOTIROS
\n<\/b>Robert Beavers, USA-Greece-Switzerland, 1977-96, 35mm, colour, sound, 25 min
\n<\/b>In Sotiros<\/em>, there is an unspoken dialogue and a seen dialogue. The first is held between the intertitles and the images; the second is moved by the tripod and the emotions of the filmmakers. Both dialogues are interwoven with the sunlight\u2019s movement as it circles the room, touching each wall and corner, detached and intimate.<\/p>\n

AMOR<\/b>
\nRobert Beavers, USA-Italy-Switzerland, 1980, 35mm, colour, sound, 15 min
\n<\/b>The recurring sounds of cutting cloth, hands clapping, hammering, and tapping underline the associations of the montage of short camera movements, which bring together the making of a suit, the restoration of a building, and details of a figure making a series of hand movements and gestures.<\/p>\n

THE HEDGE THEATER<\/b>
\nRobert Beavers, USA-Italy-Switzerland, 2002, 35mm, colour, sound, 19 min
\n<\/b>With this newly completed film, shot in Rome and at the Naturtheatre in Salzburg, Beavers has completed the 18 film cycle, \u201cMy Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure\u201d.<\/p>\n

THE GROUND
\n<\/b>Robert Beavers, USA-Greece-Switzerland, 2001, 35mm, colour, sound, 20 min
\n<\/b> \u2018What lives in the space between the stones, in the space cupped between my hand and my chest? … With each swing of the hammer I cut into the image, and the sound rises from the chisel. A rhythm, marked by repetition and animated by variation; strokes, of hammer and of fist, resounding in dialogue.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Alina Rudnitskaya\u2019s humanistic approach to documentary filmmaking often brings out the humour in her chosen subjects. As an introduction to her work, this programme depicts three diverse groups of contemporary Russian women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[9,42],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-london-film-festival-2002","tag-london-film-festival","tag-robert-beavers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}