From: Kathryn MacKay (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Mar 02 2010 - 16:43:40 PST
EARLY MONTHLY SEGMENTS presents 3 films by ROBERT BEAVERS
Tuesday March 16, 2010, 7:30 PM Gladstone Hotel Art Bar,
1214 Queen Street West, Toronto
*Early Monthly Segments* (1968-2002)
16mm, color, silent; 33 minutes
*The Painting* (1972/1999)
16mm, color, sound; 13 minutes
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*Pitcher of Colored Light* (2007)
16mm, color, sound; 24 minutes, Canadian Premiere!
In celebration of our first anniversary, the Toronto monthly film series EARLY
MONTHLY SEGMENTS is delighted to present an evening of films by Robert
Beavers, the artist from whom we borrow our name. Since none of Beavers’
films are distributed in North America, this is an extremely rare
opportunity to view these exceptional works.
Beavers was born in Brookline Massachusetts in 1949 and began to make films
in New York City in the 1960s. By the end of that decade he had relocated to
Europe with filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos who was to be his lifelong
companion until Markopoulos’s death in 1992. Separating themselves from the
dynamic North American experimental film scene of the subsequent decades
meant that both their bodies of work (especially that of Beavers’ who was
not yet established as an artist) remained, until recently, all but unseen
in North America. Being unencumbered by association with any particular
scene or school of filmmaking allowed Beavers to develop a unique body of
work that remains perpetually fresh and relevant. Living and working in
Switzerland, Italy and Greece, his films are a distillation of the
architecture, painting, music, landscape and culture of those places both in
terms of structure and subject. Recent retrospectives at the Whitney Museum
of American Art, Tate Modern and Pacific Film Archives have brought his work
to new prominence within the world of art and film. This programme includes
early and recent films and illustrates both Beavers’ mastery of his chosen
medium and the remarkable scope of his vision.
*Early Monthly Segments* (1968-2002) is composed of a series of short films
and fragments shot between 1967 and 1970. These films lay the foundation for
Beavers’ film practice over the subsequent decades in terms of structure and
technique as well as content. The physical nature of the camera, its optical
elements and the nature of the filmstrip itself are as much a part of the
work as its images of places, autobiographical elements and portraits. In *The
Painting *(1972/1999), Beavers juxtaposes shots of *Martyrdom of Saint
Hippolytus* altarpiece, by an unidentified Flemish artist with an
intersection in Bern and images of Gregory Markopoulos and himself. He
describes the film as using “the theme of tearing as an emblem of intense
emotion” to illustrate “the unity of destruction and unity.” This could also
serve as a description of the filmmaking process in which images are taken
apart then reconstructed in the process of editing. *Pitcher of Colored
Light *(2007), Beavers’ most recent film, is a portrait of his mother and
her surroundings. This film shows remarkable refinement in its construction,
the structure and logic combined seamlessly with the photography and subject
of the film. “*Pitcher* alights on various motifs (sun-dappled grass,
household ceramics, a cat on a couch, silvery hair) only to pan, fade,
lurch, or glide off subject in a continuous act of readjusted attention….
Beavers' mesh of images are impelled by emotional, not just formal,
necessity.” Nathan Lee (The Village Voice)
*Early Monthly Segments* is a monthly film series named after an early film
by Robert Beavers, and is inspired by the immediacy, vibrancy and
experimentation found in that film. Programmed by Scott Berry, Chris
Kennedy, and Kate MacKay this series will feature historical and
contemporary avant-garde films in a salon-like setting at the Gladstone
Hotel Art Bar. In this relaxed context with refreshing beverages and food
available, we hope to encourage a convivial atmosphere for engaged viewing
and post-screening dialogue.
Media Contact:* email suppressed*
Website*: www.earlymonthlysegments.org*
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Contact: *email suppressed*
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Robert Beavers Filmography:* http://www.the-temenos.org/rb_filmography.htm*
* *
Selected Bibliography:* http://www.the-temenos.org/rb_bibliography.htm*
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