Robert Beavers started making films at a very early age, offering reflections and lyrical notes on the “architecture” or composition of film, dialoguing with the traditions of European art. In 1967, together with his partner Gregory Markopoulos, he left the US and began a cycle of films made in Venice, London and different parts of Greece. Thereafter, the two of them restricted screenings of their films. From the Notebook of…, which Beavers made when he was 21, is a seminal film in his body of work: filmed in Florence, it is based on the notebooks of Leonardo and Valéry’s essay about the artist, and establishes parallels between the treatment of space in the Renaissance and in moving images. Pitcher of Colored Light (2007) is his first film made in the United States since 1967: a meditation on memories and the changing seasons in a portrait of his aged mother in her garden, amid shadows, slanting shafts of light, movement and stillness. It was voted second best avant-garde film of the 2000s by Film Comment magazine. The session also presents the last work of the filmmaker, The Suppliant (2010). [Screening in 16 mm]
The Suppliant, 2010, 5 min.; Pitcher of Colored Light, 2007, 23 min.; From the Notebook of…, Italy, 1971/1998, 48 min.
