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Robert Beavers: Recent Films + Q&A
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Suppliant, dir. Robert Beavers, USA 2010, 5 min., 16/35mm, no dialogue


A programme of films completed by influential avant-garde filmmaker Robert Beavers, most of which are being presented in London for the first time.

Although born and raised in Massachusetts, Beavers relocated to Europe in 1967 with filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos, and over the next decades made films in Greece, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. Following Markopoulos’ death in 1992, he set up the Temenos archive in Uster, Switzerland to preserve his work and legacy. He lives with the filmmaker Ute Aurand in Berlin and Massachusetts and continues to make films on 16mm. 

His most recent work The Sparrow Dream forms part of a loose trilogy of studies of the filmmaker’s domestic spaces. The films are interconnected and are in dialogue with one another. 

This screening is followed by a conversation between Robert Beavers and Mark Webber.
Programme:

Pitcher of Colored Light, dir. Robert Beavers, USA 2007, 24 min., 16/35mm, sound

Beavers films his mother’s house and her garden. The shadows play an essential part in the mixture of loneliness and peace that exists here.
 
The Suppliant, dir. Robert Beavers, USA 2010, 5 min, 16/35mm, sound

Filmed in February 2003, while Beavers was a guest in the Brooklyn Heights apartment of Jacques Dehornois. A compilation of scenes that was finally completed in May 2010. He created the soundtrack with thoughts of his friend’s recent death.

Listening to the Space in My Room, dir. Robert Beavers, Switzerland / Germany / USA 2013, 19 min., 16mm, sound

Robert Beavers films his room in Zurich and its immediate surroundings during the editing of his previous film The Suppliant. A celebration of light and colour and an intimate ode to existence.

“Der Klang, die Welt…” , dir. Robert Beavers, USA / Germany 2018, 5 min., 16mm, sound 

Filmed on the same site as Listening to the Space in My Room, the film was intended as a gift to Cécile Staehelin, who now lives alone in the house.

The Sparrow Dream, dir. Robert Beavers, USA / Germany 2022, 29 min., 16mm, sound

Beavers’ starting point for the this film was a question about how the places where he has lived influences how he sees. Beavers returns to one or two locations in Berlin that he had filmed for Diminished Frame in 1970.
With the support of the Goethe-Institut London.
 
Ticket information
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All films are ad-free and 18+ unless otherwise stated, and start with a 10 min. curated selection of trailers.

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