Sotiros (1976–78/96) by Robert Beavers

Thursday, February 5, 2026, 7:00 pm

Robert Beavers: Filmmaker in Residence Program 5

In Conversation: Robert Beavers and Ken Ueno

BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE
2155 Center St
Berkeley

Presented in association with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Admission: $18 General / $12 Cinematheque Members
Event tickets here

Robert Beavers: Filmmaker in Residence
January 30 – February 7, 2026 

This career retrospective, combined with a filmmaker residency, offers Bay Area audiences a chance to see American avant-garde filmmaker Robert Beavers’ highly rewarding body of work and engage with him as an artist. His films are exceptional for their visual beauty, aural texture, and depth of emotional expression.

Born in 1949 in Brookline, Massachusetts, Beavers began to make films in the mid-1960s in New York City. By the end of that decade, he had relocated to Europe with fellow American filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos, who would be his lifelong companion until Markopoulos’ death in 1992. The majority of Beavers’s films were shot in the 1970s and 1980s in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Greece. Between 1994 and 2002, the artist involved himself in reediting the images and creating new soundtracks for his eighteen-film cycle, My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure.

Beavers’ films embody the ideals of the Renaissance in their fascination with perception, psychology, literature, the natural world, architectural space, musical phrasing and aesthetic beauty. For many years now, Beavers has made Berlin his home with fellow filmmaker Ute Aurand. BAMPFA will present seven films he has made since 2007, which continue his exploration of sense of place, reflection and harmony. (Susan Oxtoby, Director of Film and Senior Film Curator; BAMPFA)

This series is co-presented by the UC Berkeley Department of German, with support from the Mosse Foundation. Thanks also to the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

Robert Beavers: Filmmaker in Residence
1   2   3   4   5   Lecture   6   7

Robert Beavers: Program 5
In Conversation: Robert Beavers and Ken Ueno 

Ken Ueno is a composer, vocalist, sound artist and Professor in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley.

Sotiros incorporates narrative film devices such as intertitle cards into a metaphorical dialogue between two male lovers, revealed largely through the luminous depiction of everyday objects in their shared world. A color palette of pastels and golden hues and the strains of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck enrich the film’s emotional character. Robert Beavers wrote of Efpsychi: “The details of the young actor’s face—his eyes, eyebrows, earlobe, chin, etc.—are set opposite the old buildings in the market quarter of Athens. …He speaks a single word, teleftea, meaning the last (one).” In Wingseed, Beavers draws comparisons between the pastoral beauty of a Greek hillside and that of the male form.

SCREENING:
Sotiros (Greece/Austria/Switzerland; 1976–78/96); 35mm, color, sound, 25 minutes. Print from the maker.
Efpsychi (Greece; 1983/96); 35mm, color, sound, 20 minutes. Print from the maker.
Wingseed (Greece; 1985); 35mm, color, sound, 15 minutes. Print from the maker.
TRT: 60 minutes