Introduced by Robert Beavers
Thursday, October 24, 2013, 16:15h
One of the key figures of the New American Cinema, Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928–1992) made indelible film portraits and interior studies during the brief period when he was living in New York. Ming Green, named after the color of the walls in his apartment on West 11 Street, was his farewell to the city; dedicated to Stan Brakhage, the film was edited entirely in camera. Galaxie is his intimate record of cultural luminaries in mid-1960s New York: 33 painters, poets, filmmakers, choreographers, and critics, including W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Paul Thek, Maurice Sendak, Shirley Clarke, George and Mike Kuchar, and Allen Ginsberg, whom he observed in their studios or homes and filmed in a single session. While Andy Warhol had his Screen Tests, and Brakhage and Jonas Mekas were also making their own beautiful film portraits, Markopoulos perfected a technique of layering and editing within his Bolex camera that had the effect, he noted, of making "the idea and the image more concentrated; the result a more brilliant appeal to the mind and dormant senses." This program is presented by his partner Robert Beavers, an accomplished filmmaker who has passionately dedicated himself to the Temenos Archive and film theater that Markopoulos established in Lyssaraia, Greece. Restored by the Temenos Archive in collaboration with the Academy Film Archive, courtesy the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna.
