Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2019 – Towards the Temenos

The 60th edition of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival will feature Towards the Temenos, a section dedicated to the Temenos with screenings by both Markopoulos and Beavers as well as a special event: a conversation between Robert Beavers and Mark Webber, of the Visible Press, editor of Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos.

The screenings take place on November 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 8th – see schedule below.

The series is curated by writer, curator, and photographer Georgia Korossi whose Devotion (screening on the 3rd) documents the 2016 screenings of Markopoulos’s Eniaios in Greece.

November 1st

November 2nd

November 3rd

November 8th

Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum – Gäste im Kino: Ute Aurand und Robert Beavers

Saturday September 14th, 2019
6:00pm
Films by Robert Beavers
Ruskin – USA 1975/97, 45 min, 35mm
The Suppliant – USA 2010,  5 min, 16mm
Listening To The Space In My Room – Germany / Switzerland / USA 2013, 19 min, 16mm

Guest: Robert Beavers
Saturday September 14th, 2019
8:30pm
Rushing Green with Horses
Film by Ute Aurand – 82 min, 16mm

Guest: Ute Aurand

Kunstmuseum Basel – Robert Beavers program curated by Maja Naef

Kunstmuseum Basel will host Robert Beavers for a special screening of his films followed by a discussion on Wednesday, March 20th, at 6pm.

The following films will be screened:

• Early Monthly Segments, 1968-70/2002 16mm, (Sw./Gr./Ge.), color, 33min
• Pitcher of Colored Light, 2007, 16mm, (USA/Sw./Ge.), color, 23min
• The Suppliant, 2010, 16mm, (USA/Sw./Ge.), color, 5min
• «Der Klang, die Welt…», 2018, 16mm, (Sw./Ge.), color, 4min

After the screening, Robert Beavers and Maja Naef (from the University of Basel’s department of Art, Media, Philosophy) will discuss the films, the importance of the archive for analog film, and the museum as a venue for his films.

Edit Film Culture! – Portraits (II) – Arsenal

Portraits (II)

*Birgit Hein and Dorothee Wenner in person

From the 5th to the 22nd of July, 2018, the Edit Film Culture! festival and exhibition is taking place at silent green Kulturquartier and Arsenal. It incorporates different event formats involving international experts and artists to raise questions about the conditions of film cultures today and their relevance for society. The magazine Film Culture, which was started by Jonas and Adolfas Mekas in New York in 1955, was regarded as a platform for dialogue between filmmakers and their audiences, between theory and practice, between film and art. 79 issues were published through 1996.

For more information:

https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/arsenal-cinema/current-program/single/article/7324/2796.html

Gregory J. Markopoulos and the Cantrills – MELNYC – Melbourne

Part of the MELNYC celebration of Melbourne and New York

This program was a reflection on the under-explored relationship between Markopoulos and the Australian experimental film pioneers Arthur and Corinne Cantrill.

Markopoulos was one of the leading figures of the New American Cinema of the 1960s. During these years in New York, he created a singular, mythic, and poetic body of work, and made films with numerous leading NYC figures—Andy Warhol, Taylor Mead, Jasper Johns, W.H. Auden, Susan Sontag, Shirley Clarke, Allen Ginsberg, Jonas Mekas, and several others. But, by 1967, disillusioned with the American underground cinema, Markopoulos left for Europe with his partner Robert Beavers. He began to pull his films from distribution in the US and, in the early ‘70s, publicly announced his dissociation from New York’s Film-makers Co-operative and the New American Cinema. In Europe, he would develop his vision for a film archive and projection space for, and commensurate to, both his and Beavers’ films. This would be founded in the Temenos, near Lyssarea in Greece, which was conceived of as the fimmakers’ gift to future ideal viewers of their films, the “New Cinema Spectators”.

The removal of his films from distribution is partially why Markopoulos remains so overlooked and under-seen. However, quite surprisingly, and luckily for all of us, as part of his exile from America, Markopoulos offered his films to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. In fact, during the early ‘70s, when Markopoulos was cutting his ties with New York’s film culture, he also started to publish for the newly-initiated, Melbourne film journal, the Cantrills Filmnotes (1971-2000), run by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill. The largely forgotten story of Markopoulos, and his less recognised connections with Australian film culture (and the Cantrills especially), inspired this program. This is a really rare opportunity to see Markopoulos’s and the Cantrills films—which are born of a similar commitment to the cathode medium itself; to “film as film”—in their intended, material formats.

We hope you can join us for some or all of the screenings in July. Please share with anyone who may be interested.

With best wishes,
Audrey Lam and Keegan O’Connor

1. Gregory J. Markopoulos: Mythopoet, Artist-Physician
   Monday, July 2, 6.30 start. Approx. 102 mins.
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2. Gregory J. Markopoulos: The Illiac Passion
   Thursday, July 5, 6.30 start. Approx. 92 mins.
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3. Markopoulos and the Cantrills: Portraits
   Monday, July 9, 6.30 start. Approx. 82 mins.
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4. Markopoulos and the Cantrills: A Sense of Place
   Tuesday, July 10, 6.30 start. Approx. 91 mins.
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More details: https://thelanguageoftheimage.tumblr.com/

The Illiac Passion – Museum of the Moving Image

Part of Panorama Europe 2018

Presented by the Consulate General of Greece in New York and the Onassis Foundation USA

USA. Dir. Gregory Markopoulos, 1967, 90 mins. 16mm. With Taylor Mead, Andy Warhol, Jack Smith. In English. One of the masters of American avant-garde filmmaking, Gregory Markopoulos had developed a singular, senses-stunning style—marked by lush, color-saturated visuals; psychologically-charged editing; and a concern with the mythopoeic—when he left the US for good, relocated to Europe, and pulled his films from public exhibition. The gradual re-emergence of his work continues with this rare screening of one of his greatest achievements, a contemporary take on Prometheus Bound. It’s a spectacle of passion and creation in which Aeschylus’ text mixes with the music of Bartok and underground luminaries Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, Taylor Mead, Beverly Grant, Gregory Battcock, and Gerard Malanga are cast as the titans of Greek mythology.