Pitcher of Colored Light (2000–07) by Robert Beavers

Saturday, February 7, 2026, 7:00 pm

Robert Beavers: Filmmaker in Residence Program 7

In Conversation: Robert Beavers and Rebekah Rutkoff

BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

2155 Center Street

Berkeley, CA 94720

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 7
In Conversation: Robert Beavers and Rebekah Rutkoff

Rebekah Rutkoff is the author of two books devoted to the work of Robert Beavers (listed below).

Robert Beavers’s recent films demonstrate a continuation of his interest in poetic form, while documenting the world around him. Pitcher of Colored Light is a loving portrait of his mother filmed through the seasons at her home in East Falmouth, Massachusetts. Filmed in a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights, The Suppliant is a “portrait of a solitary life comforted by art” (Tony Pipolo, Artforum). Listening to the Space in My Room, filmed at Beavers’s home in Zumikon, Switzerland, portrays his landlords, who have spent decades of their shared lives in that country house. A number of these films (including The Sparrow Dream) explore places Beavers has lived and how each location has influenced how he sees. These late-period works—such as Dedication: Bernice Hodges—also offer a return to influential moments in the artist’s life.

SCREENING:
Pitcher of Colored Light (US; 2000–07); 35mm, color, sound, 23 minutes. Print from the BAMPFA Collection.
The Suppliant (US; 2010); 35mm, color, sound, 5 minutes. Print from the BAMPFA Collection.
Listening to the Space in My Room  (Switzerland; 2013); 16mm, color, sound, 19 minutes. Print from the maker.
Among the Eucalyptuses (Greece; 2017); 16mm, color, silent, 4 minutes. Print from the maker.
“Der Klang, die Welt…” (Switzerland; 2018); 16mm, color, sound, 5 minutes. Print from the maker.
The Sparrow Dream ( Germany/US; 2022; 16mm, color, sound, 29 minutes. Print from the maker.
Dedication: Bernice Hodges (US; 2024); 16mm, color, sound, 4 minutes. Print from the maker.
TRT: 89 minutes