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Robert Beavers

Born: 1949-01-01 in Brookline, Massachusetts, USA

Known For: Directing

Biography

Robert Beavers (born 1949) is an American experimental filmmaker whose work stands among the most significant in postwar avant-garde cinema. He is best known for My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure, an 18-film cycle spanning decades of work, much of it later re-edited. Beavers developed a distinctive visual language using hand-cut mattes, filters, and precise sound–image structures, often focusing on craft and manual labor as metaphors for filmmaking itself. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, he began making films in New York before moving to Europe in 1967 with his partner, Gregory J. Markopoulos. Together they withdrew their films from distribution, presenting them only at the Temenos screenings in Arcadia, Greece (1980–86). After Markopoulos’s death in 1992, Beavers founded Temenos, Inc. to preserve both of their legacies. His films draw deeply on place and history, from Florence in From the Notebook of… (1971/1998) and Venice in Ruskin (1975/1997) to the Greek landscapes of Wingseed (1985), The Hedge Theater (1986–90/2002), and The Ground (1993–2001). Later works include Pitcher of Colored Light (2007), The Suppliant (2012), Listening to the Space in My Room (2013), and The Sparrow Dream (2022). Beavers continues to live and work between Berlin and Massachusetts with filmmaker Ute Aurand, while overseeing the preservation of both his own films and Markopoulos’s Eniaios.

Filmography

2022

2018

2017

2016

2014

2010

2008

  • Zuoz as Ice skater

2007

2002

2001

2000

1997

1985

1983

1980

  • Amor ... (Director)

1978

1977

1974

1973

1972

1970

1969

1967

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