Description
Robert Beavers
Author/Editor: Rebekah Rutkoff
CONTENTS
RELATED EVENTS: Robert Beavers: Filmmaker in Residence (January 30 – February 7, 2026) at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Berkeley CA. This career-spanning retrospective and residency offers audiences a rare opportunity to experience Robert Beavers’ films on the big screen and engage directly with the artist, whose work is celebrated for its visual beauty, aural richness and emotional depth.
In a career spanning five decades, Robert Beavers has distinguished himself as one of the most important American avant-garde filmmakers. From My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure, his cycle of 18 films made across Europe since 1967, to Pitcher of Colored Light (2007) and The Suppliant (2010), intimate portraits shot in the US, Beavers has produced a deeply original film language framed by his use of colored filters and mattes. His investigations of the handwork of anonymous artisans complement his dialogues with Ruskin, Leonardo and Borromini in Ruskin (1975/1997), From the Notebook of… (1971/1998) and The Hedge Theater (1986/2002).
This volume contains critical investigations of Beavers’ most important films and a collection of the filmmaker’s own writings. Occupying a unique space between poetry and philosophy, his aphoristic meditations vivify his own work and generously illuminate the art of film. The essay contributors include Tom Chomont, Don Daniels, Luke Fowler, Haden Guest, Kristin M. Jones, James Macgillivray, Gregory J. Markopoulos, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Jonas Mekas, René Micha, Susan Oxtoby, Rebekah Rutkoff, P. Adams Sitney and Erik Ulman.
CONTENTS:
Rebekah Rutkoff — Preface
Gregory J. Markopoulos — 10th of July, 1967
Tom S. Chomont — A Note on The Count of Days, a Film by Robert Beavers
Jonas Mekas — Introduction to the Work of Robert Beavers
René Micha — Robert Beavers or Absolute Film
Rebekah Rutkoff — He Made This Screen: Toward Robert Beavers’s Poetry
Luke Fowler — In the Shadow of a Sound: Sonic Montage in the Works of Robert Beavers
Ricardo Matos Cabo — A Single Image: Two Versions of Work Done (1972, 1999)
P. Adams Sitney — Masked Rhythm in Ruskin
James MacGillivray — Tectonics and Space: Architectural Thought in the Films of Robert Beavers
Kristin M. Jones — Drowning in Light: Sotiros
Erik Ulman — Notes on Robert Beavers
Don Daniels — A Master Motif: Aesthetic Benefice in Four Films by Robert Beavers
Susan Oxtoby — The Sightless Measure – Love, Loss, and Eternity
Ute Aurand and Robert Beavers — Conversation about The Stoas
Haden Guest — Of Place and Portraiture
Robert Beavers — A Few Points
Robert Beavers — Acnode
Robert Beavers — Selected Notes Filmed in From the Notebook of…
Robert Beavers — From the Notebook of…
Robert Beavers — Sotiros: A Sequence of Notes
Robert Beavers — The Searching Measure
Filmography
Bibliography
Contributors
Illustrations
ISBN: 978-3-901644-69-6
FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 30
Vienna 2017, 224 pages, in English
All publications by the Austrian Film Museum are distributed internationally by Columbia University Press.
