Robert Beavers
London Birkbeck Cinema
Tuesday 2 June 2009, at 7pm
Please join us for a rare screening of Robert Beavers’ films, which will be followed by a Q&A with the artist.
“Robert Beavers has created a body of poetic work that is meticulously composed, yet sensuous and astoundingly beautiful. Shot largely in Italy and Greece and then edited in Switzerland, Beavers’ elegantly lyrical films draw on European landscape, art, and architecture to deeply explore aural and visual perception and the filmic medium itself. Musical, metaphorical, and magical, these films aspire to convey, as the artist says, ‘the serenity of a thought without words.’” (Kathy Geritz, Pacific Film Archive)
- Early Monthly Segments
Robert Beavers, 1968-70/2002, 16mm, colour, silent, 33 minutes
Filmed in Switzerland, West Berlin, and Greece.
“EARLY MONTHLY SEGMENTS collects studies shot between 1968 and 1970 and was completed in 2002 (this unhurried artist finishes pieces over a span of decades). In it, he begins to articulate his distinct cinematic lexicon: close examinations of Mediterranean light, the elaborate use of mattes and colour filters as cinematic punctuation, associative editing and visual rhymes, and a variety of in-camera effects.” (Ed Halter, Village Voice)
- The Stoas
Robert Beavers, 1991-97, 16mm, colour, sound, 22 minutes
Filmed in Greece (Athens & Gortynia)
“THE STOAS commences as a beige-brown study in haunted urban space: the back alley of some anonymous metropolis, its rusted metal infrastructure and cardboard detritus. Partway in, sunlit green washes over the frame, as the setting shifts to a lush mountain stream. Splendours of light, leaf and running water dazzle the eye, while an ancient stone bridge reiterates Beavers’ pull toward the past and his penchant for half circle shapes. Interspersed throughout is an emblematic image: a pair of hands lit up in the foreground of utter darkness. They make a gesture of movement, one over the other, and a sign of measure, empty space held between. Whatever else it says, THE STOAS is a hushed testament to the adventure of consciousness, the eternal drama of perception, selection, patience and skill.” (Nathan Lee, The New York Sun)
- Pitcher Of Colored Light
Robert Beavers, 2000-07, 16mm, colour, sound, 23 minutes
Filmed in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
“I have filmed my mother’s house and her garden. The shadows play an essential part in the mixture of loneliness and peace that exists here. The seasons move from the garden into the house, projecting rich diagonals in the early morning or late afternoon. Each shadow is a subtle balance of stillness and movement and shows the vital instability of space. Its special quality opens a passage to the subjective. A voice within the film speaks to memory. The walls are screens through which I pass to the inhabited privacy. We experience a place through the perspective of where we come from and hear another’s voice through our own acoustic. The sense of place is never separate from the moment.” (Robert Beavers)
at
Birkbeck Cinema
41-43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
Nearest Tube: Euston / Euston Square / Russell Square
Tickets: £3, email <[email protected]> to reserve
Free admission to Birkbeck students
www.birkbeckcinema.com
