Robert Beavers

Nacimiento : 1949-01-01, Brookline, Massachusetts, USA

Historia

Robert Beavers is an American experimental filmmaker best known for My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure, an epic cycle comprising 18 of his films (many later re-edited) made since 1967. Beavers’s use of shaped mattes to obscure aspects of the image and gelatine filters that produce varieties of coloured light are hallmarks of some of his films, many of which observe hand- and craftwork (including his own filmmaking). Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, Beavers attended Deerfield Academy before meeting the filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos in 1966. They moved to Europe in 1967 and removed their films from distribution; Beavers did not show his films in the United States again until 1996. Beavers made films in Greece, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. His early Plan of Brussels and Winged Dialogue (1967-68/2000) are multilayered psychic explorations; From the Notebook of…(1971/1998) is set in Florence and inspired by Leonardo’s notebooks. Ruskin (1975/1997) is shot at the various sites of the titular artist/critic’s work in London, the Alps and Venice. Beavers’s only film to use intertitles, the dialogic Sotiros (1976-78/1996) marks the end of his use of filters and mattes. Wingseed(1985), The Hedge Theater (1986-90/2002), The Stoas (1991-97), and The Ground (1993-2001) dwell in pastoral environments in Italy and Greece. Beavers has produced three films outside the Hand Outstretched cycle: Pitcher of Colored Light (2007), The Suppliant (2012) (both shot in the U.S.) and Listening to the Space in My Room (2013). He lives with the German filmmaker Ute Aurand in Berlin and in Massachusetts.

Películas

The Sparrow Dream
Director
Beavers’ starting point for this film was a question about how the places where he has lived influences how he sees. Beavers return to one or two locations in Berlin that he had filmed for Diminished Frame in 1970.
Cape Cod
himself
película experimental
“Der Klang, die Welt…”
Director
'“Der Klang, die Welt…” was filmed in the same site as Listening to the Space in My Room, but now we hear Dieter Staehelin speaking about the place of music in his life, and we join him and Cécile Staehelin playing an Arabesque by Bohuslav Martinů. While they play, I turned the lens at certain moments to white, an open aperture.' (RB)
Among the Eucalyptuses
Director
Late afternoon quiet and a silent figure seated on a bench; the old factories and machinery, warehouses and train lines are part of Greece, now disappearing.
Shared Table
Cinematography
“Last August, several filmmakers joined me to repair the splices in Markopoulos’s Eniaios. I interrupted our work for a moment; the generosity of James, Silvia, Nina, Alexandre and Julia prompted me to film them. Then I filmed James Edmonds a second time with the avocado plant that he had grown while we were working together.” (RB)
Shared Table
Editor
“Last August, several filmmakers joined me to repair the splices in Markopoulos’s Eniaios. I interrupted our work for a moment; the generosity of James, Silvia, Nina, Alexandre and Julia prompted me to film them. Then I filmed James Edmonds a second time with the avocado plant that he had grown while we were working together.” (RB)
Shared Table
Director
“Last August, several filmmakers joined me to repair the splices in Markopoulos’s Eniaios. I interrupted our work for a moment; the generosity of James, Silvia, Nina, Alexandre and Julia prompted me to film them. Then I filmed James Edmonds a second time with the avocado plant that he had grown while we were working together.” (RB)
First Weeks
Director
A film by Robert Beavers.
Listening to the Space in My Room
Himself
Ostensibly a portrait of a place where the artist had resided until recently, the new film by Robert Beavers conjures not only the memory but also the physical presence of those who have previously stayed there. Adhering to a solitary intimacy while simultaneously acting as an ode to human endeavour and shared impulses toward fulfillment through art, Listening to the Space in my Room is a moving testament to existence (whose traces are found in literature, music, filmmaking, gardening) and our endless search for meaning and authenticity. The film's precise yet enigmatic sound-image construction carries a rare emotional weight.
Listening to the Space in My Room
Cinematography
Ostensibly a portrait of a place where the artist had resided until recently, the new film by Robert Beavers conjures not only the memory but also the physical presence of those who have previously stayed there. Adhering to a solitary intimacy while simultaneously acting as an ode to human endeavour and shared impulses toward fulfillment through art, Listening to the Space in my Room is a moving testament to existence (whose traces are found in literature, music, filmmaking, gardening) and our endless search for meaning and authenticity. The film's precise yet enigmatic sound-image construction carries a rare emotional weight.
Listening to the Space in My Room
Editor
Ostensibly a portrait of a place where the artist had resided until recently, the new film by Robert Beavers conjures not only the memory but also the physical presence of those who have previously stayed there. Adhering to a solitary intimacy while simultaneously acting as an ode to human endeavour and shared impulses toward fulfillment through art, Listening to the Space in my Room is a moving testament to existence (whose traces are found in literature, music, filmmaking, gardening) and our endless search for meaning and authenticity. The film's precise yet enigmatic sound-image construction carries a rare emotional weight.
Listening to the Space in My Room
Director
Ostensibly a portrait of a place where the artist had resided until recently, the new film by Robert Beavers conjures not only the memory but also the physical presence of those who have previously stayed there. Adhering to a solitary intimacy while simultaneously acting as an ode to human endeavour and shared impulses toward fulfillment through art, Listening to the Space in my Room is a moving testament to existence (whose traces are found in literature, music, filmmaking, gardening) and our endless search for meaning and authenticity. The film's precise yet enigmatic sound-image construction carries a rare emotional weight.
The Suppliant
Editor
“My filming for The Suppliant was done in February 2003, while a guest in the Brooklyn Heights apartment of Jacques Dehornois. When I recollect the impulse for this filming, I remember my desire to show a spiritual quality united with the sensual in my view of this small Greek statue. I chose to reveal the figure solely through its blue early morning highlights and in the orange sunlight of late afternoon. After filming the statue, I walked down to the East River and continued to film near the Manhattan Bridge and the electrical works; then I returned to the apartment and filmed a few other details. I set this film material aside, while continuing to film and edit Pitcher of Colored Light, later I took it up twice to edit but could not find my way. Most of the editing was finally done in 2009; then I waited to see whether it was finished and found that it was not. In May 2010, I made several editing changes and created the soundtrack with thoughts of this friend’s recent death.” (RB)
The Suppliant
Cinematography
“My filming for The Suppliant was done in February 2003, while a guest in the Brooklyn Heights apartment of Jacques Dehornois. When I recollect the impulse for this filming, I remember my desire to show a spiritual quality united with the sensual in my view of this small Greek statue. I chose to reveal the figure solely through its blue early morning highlights and in the orange sunlight of late afternoon. After filming the statue, I walked down to the East River and continued to film near the Manhattan Bridge and the electrical works; then I returned to the apartment and filmed a few other details. I set this film material aside, while continuing to film and edit Pitcher of Colored Light, later I took it up twice to edit but could not find my way. Most of the editing was finally done in 2009; then I waited to see whether it was finished and found that it was not. In May 2010, I made several editing changes and created the soundtrack with thoughts of this friend’s recent death.” (RB)
The Suppliant
Director
“My filming for The Suppliant was done in February 2003, while a guest in the Brooklyn Heights apartment of Jacques Dehornois. When I recollect the impulse for this filming, I remember my desire to show a spiritual quality united with the sensual in my view of this small Greek statue. I chose to reveal the figure solely through its blue early morning highlights and in the orange sunlight of late afternoon. After filming the statue, I walked down to the East River and continued to film near the Manhattan Bridge and the electrical works; then I returned to the apartment and filmed a few other details. I set this film material aside, while continuing to film and edit Pitcher of Colored Light, later I took it up twice to edit but could not find my way. Most of the editing was finally done in 2009; then I waited to see whether it was finished and found that it was not. In May 2010, I made several editing changes and created the soundtrack with thoughts of this friend’s recent death.” (RB)
Pitcher of Colored Light
Director
"The shadows play an essential part in the mixture of loneliness and peace that exists here. The seasons move from the garden into the house, projecting rich diagonals in the early morning or late afternoon. Each shadow is a subtle balance of stillness and movement; it shows the vital instability of space. Its special quality opens a passage to the subjective; a voice within the film speaks to memory. The walls are screens through which I pass to the inhabited privacy. We experience a place through the perspective of where we come from and hear another's voice through our own acoustic. The sense of place is never separate from the moment." – R.B.
My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure
Director
Avant-garde film by Robert Beavers. At first glance, this expression appears like a poetic riddle, but its practical relevance becomes quite obvious for those who see and hear the films. Beavers has worked extensively on re-editing his films to create the larger film cycle "My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure," a project started in 1968 and finished in 2002.
Early Monthly Segments
Early Monthly Segments, filmada cuando Beavers tenía 18 y 19 años, es un trabajo altamente estilizado de autorretrato que representa al cineasta y compañero Gregory J. Markopoulos en su apartamento suizo. La película funciona como un diario, capturando aspectos de la vida familiar con una atención precisa a los detalles, documentando lo cotidiano con gran amor y transformando objetos y efectos personales ordinarios en un trabajo altamente cargado de homoerotismo. (FILMAFFINITY)
Early Monthly Segments
Editor
Early Monthly Segments, filmada cuando Beavers tenía 18 y 19 años, es un trabajo altamente estilizado de autorretrato que representa al cineasta y compañero Gregory J. Markopoulos en su apartamento suizo. La película funciona como un diario, capturando aspectos de la vida familiar con una atención precisa a los detalles, documentando lo cotidiano con gran amor y transformando objetos y efectos personales ordinarios en un trabajo altamente cargado de homoerotismo. (FILMAFFINITY)
Early Monthly Segments
Cinematography
Early Monthly Segments, filmada cuando Beavers tenía 18 y 19 años, es un trabajo altamente estilizado de autorretrato que representa al cineasta y compañero Gregory J. Markopoulos en su apartamento suizo. La película funciona como un diario, capturando aspectos de la vida familiar con una atención precisa a los detalles, documentando lo cotidiano con gran amor y transformando objetos y efectos personales ordinarios en un trabajo altamente cargado de homoerotismo. (FILMAFFINITY)
Early Monthly Segments
Director
Early Monthly Segments, filmada cuando Beavers tenía 18 y 19 años, es un trabajo altamente estilizado de autorretrato que representa al cineasta y compañero Gregory J. Markopoulos en su apartamento suizo. La película funciona como un diario, capturando aspectos de la vida familiar con una atención precisa a los detalles, documentando lo cotidiano con gran amor y transformando objetos y efectos personales ordinarios en un trabajo altamente cargado de homoerotismo. (FILMAFFINITY)
The Hedge Theater
Editor
Beavers shot The Hedge Theatre in Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the Baroque architecture and stone carvings of Francesco Borromini and St. Martin and the Beggar, a painting by the Sienese painter Il Sassetta. Beavers’ montage contrasts the sensuous softness of winter light with the lush green growth brought by spring rains. Each shot and each source of sound is steeped in meaning and placed within the film’s structure with exacting skill to build a poetic relationship between image and sound.
The Hedge Theater
Cinematography
Beavers shot The Hedge Theatre in Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the Baroque architecture and stone carvings of Francesco Borromini and St. Martin and the Beggar, a painting by the Sienese painter Il Sassetta. Beavers’ montage contrasts the sensuous softness of winter light with the lush green growth brought by spring rains. Each shot and each source of sound is steeped in meaning and placed within the film’s structure with exacting skill to build a poetic relationship between image and sound.
The Hedge Theater
Himself
Beavers shot The Hedge Theatre in Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the Baroque architecture and stone carvings of Francesco Borromini and St. Martin and the Beggar, a painting by the Sienese painter Il Sassetta. Beavers’ montage contrasts the sensuous softness of winter light with the lush green growth brought by spring rains. Each shot and each source of sound is steeped in meaning and placed within the film’s structure with exacting skill to build a poetic relationship between image and sound.
The Hedge Theater
Director
Beavers shot The Hedge Theatre in Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the Baroque architecture and stone carvings of Francesco Borromini and St. Martin and the Beggar, a painting by the Sienese painter Il Sassetta. Beavers’ montage contrasts the sensuous softness of winter light with the lush green growth brought by spring rains. Each shot and each source of sound is steeped in meaning and placed within the film’s structure with exacting skill to build a poetic relationship between image and sound.
The Ground
Editor
What lives in the space between the stones, in the space cupped between my hand and my chest? Filmmaker/stonemason. A tower or ruin of remembrance. With each swing of the hammer I cut into the image and the sound rises from the chisel. A rhythm, marked by repetition, and animated by variation; strokes of hammer and fist, resounding in dialogue. In this space which the film creates, emptiness gains a contour strong enough for the spectator to see more than the image – a space permitting vision in addition to sight.
The Ground
Cinematography
What lives in the space between the stones, in the space cupped between my hand and my chest? Filmmaker/stonemason. A tower or ruin of remembrance. With each swing of the hammer I cut into the image and the sound rises from the chisel. A rhythm, marked by repetition, and animated by variation; strokes of hammer and fist, resounding in dialogue. In this space which the film creates, emptiness gains a contour strong enough for the spectator to see more than the image – a space permitting vision in addition to sight.
The Ground
Director
What lives in the space between the stones, in the space cupped between my hand and my chest? Filmmaker/stonemason. A tower or ruin of remembrance. With each swing of the hammer I cut into the image and the sound rises from the chisel. A rhythm, marked by repetition, and animated by variation; strokes of hammer and fist, resounding in dialogue. In this space which the film creates, emptiness gains a contour strong enough for the spectator to see more than the image – a space permitting vision in addition to sight.
Sotiros
Director
Beavers distilled the 26-minute Sotiros in 1996 from an original 50-minute trilogy. Filmed in Athens and Peloponnesus in Greece as well as in Austria, much of Sotiros is structured around another binarism: two repeating intertitles marked "He said" and "he said." Each title introduces a set of visual phrases with loosely parallel camerawork. The images are careful and delicate studies of light patterns in a hotel suite and at a cafe, rolling hills populated by a lone shepherd, Eurostyle modernized storefronts, a blind man begging in the street. The film’s title refers to one of the appellations of the Apollo, in his role as savior or healer. - New York Press
The Painting
Director
The Painting intercuts shots of traffic navigating the old-world remnants of downtown Bern, Switzerland, with details from a 15th-century altarpiece, “The Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus”. The Painting intercuts shots of traffic navigating the old-world remnants of downtown Bern, Switzerland, with details from a 15th-century altarpiece, “The Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus”. The painting shows the calm, near-naked saint in a peaceful landscape, a frozen moment before four horses tear his body to pieces while an audience of soigné nobles look on; in the movie’s revised version, Beavers gives it a comparably rarefied psychodramatic jolt, juxtaposing shots of Gregory Markopoulos, bisected by shafts of light, with a torn photo of himself and the recurring image of a shattered windowpane. (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice)
The Stoas
Director
“The title refers to the colonnades that led to the shady groves of the ancient Lyceum, here remembered in shots of industrial arcades, bathed in golden morning light, as quietly empty of human figures as Atget’s survey photos. The rest of the film presents luscious shots of a wooded stream and hazy glen, portrayed with the careful composition of 19th century landscape painting. An ineffable, unnameable immanence flows through the images of The Stoas, a kind of presence of the human soul expressed through the sympathetic absence of the human figure.” (Ed Halter, New York Press)
Birth of a Nation
Self
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.
Ruskin
Director
“Ruskin visits the sites of (art critic) John Ruskin’s work: London, the Alps and, above all, Venice, where the camera’s attention to masonry and the interaction of architecture and water mimics the author’s descriptive analysis of the ‘stones’ of the city. The sound of pages turning and the image of a book, Ruskin’s Unto This Last, forcibly reminds us that a poet’s perceptions and in this case his political economy, are preserved and reawakened through acts of reading and writing”. (P. Adams Sitney)
Wingseed
Director
“A seed that floats in the air, a whirligig, a love charm. This magnificent landscape, both hot and dry, is far from sterile; rather, the heat and dryness produce a distinct type of life, seen in the perfect forms of the wild grass and seed pods, the herds of goats as well as in the naked figure. The torso, in itself, and more, the image which it creates in this light. The sounds of the shepherd’s signals and the flute’s phrase are heard. And the goats’ bells. Imagine the bell’s clapper moving from side to side with the goat’s movements like my quick side-to-side camera movements, which increase in pace and reach a vibrant ostinato.” (Robert Beavers).
Efpsychi
Director
“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, where every street is named after a classic ancient Greek playwrite. In this setting of intense stillness, sometimes interrupted by sudden sounds and movements in the streets, he speaks a single word, “teleftea”, meaning the last (one), and as he repeats this word, it moves differently each time across his face and gains another sense from one scene to the next, suggesting the uncanny proximity of eroticism, the sacred and chance.” (Robert Beavers)
Amor
Director
Cutting and sewing as metaphors. Central to this work is the complex emotions surrounding love, separation, and the metonymic twinning of objects, including that of edited images and saturated sound. “AMOR is an exquisite lyric, shot in Rome and at the natural theatre of Salzburg. The recurring sounds of cutting cloth, hands clapping, hammering, and tapping underline the associations of the montage of short camera movements, which bring together the making of a suit, the restoration of a building, and details of a figure, presumably Beavers himself, standing in the natural theatre in a new suit, making a series of hand movements and gestures. A handsomely designed Italian banknote suggests the aesthetic economy of the film: the tailoring, trimming, and chiselling point to the editing of the film itself.” (P. Adams Sitney, Film Comment).
Sotiros in the Elements
Director
The final entry in Robert Beavers' Sotiros trilogy
Sotiros (Alone)
Director
The second film in Robert Beavers' Sotiros trilogy
Sotiros Responds
Director
The first film in Robert Beavers' Sotiros trilogy
Work Done
Director
”Bracing in its simplicity, Work done was shot in Florence and the Alps, and celebrates an archaic Europe. Contemplating a stone vault cooled by blocks of ice or hand stitching of a massive tome or the frying of a local delicacy, Beavers considers human activities without dwelling on human protagonists. Like many of Beavers’ films, Work done is based on a series of textural transformative equivalences: the workshop and the field, the book and the forest, the mound of cobblestones and a distant mountain”. (J. Hoberman)
From the Notebook of...
Cinematography
"From the Notebook of..." was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks and Paul Valéry's essay on da Vinci's process. These two elements suggest an implicit comparison between the treatment of space in Renaissance art and the moving image. The film marks a critical development in the artist's work in that he repeatedly employs a series of rapid pans and upward tilts along the city's buildings or facades, often integrating glimpses of his own face. As Beavers notes in his writing on the film, the camera movements are tied to the filmmakers' presence and suggests his investigative gaze.
From the Notebook of...
Sound
"From the Notebook of..." was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks and Paul Valéry's essay on da Vinci's process. These two elements suggest an implicit comparison between the treatment of space in Renaissance art and the moving image. The film marks a critical development in the artist's work in that he repeatedly employs a series of rapid pans and upward tilts along the city's buildings or facades, often integrating glimpses of his own face. As Beavers notes in his writing on the film, the camera movements are tied to the filmmakers' presence and suggests his investigative gaze.
From the Notebook of...
Editor
"From the Notebook of..." was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks and Paul Valéry's essay on da Vinci's process. These two elements suggest an implicit comparison between the treatment of space in Renaissance art and the moving image. The film marks a critical development in the artist's work in that he repeatedly employs a series of rapid pans and upward tilts along the city's buildings or facades, often integrating glimpses of his own face. As Beavers notes in his writing on the film, the camera movements are tied to the filmmakers' presence and suggests his investigative gaze.
From the Notebook of...
Himself
"From the Notebook of..." was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks and Paul Valéry's essay on da Vinci's process. These two elements suggest an implicit comparison between the treatment of space in Renaissance art and the moving image. The film marks a critical development in the artist's work in that he repeatedly employs a series of rapid pans and upward tilts along the city's buildings or facades, often integrating glimpses of his own face. As Beavers notes in his writing on the film, the camera movements are tied to the filmmakers' presence and suggests his investigative gaze.
From the Notebook of...
Director
"From the Notebook of..." was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks and Paul Valéry's essay on da Vinci's process. These two elements suggest an implicit comparison between the treatment of space in Renaissance art and the moving image. The film marks a critical development in the artist's work in that he repeatedly employs a series of rapid pans and upward tilts along the city's buildings or facades, often integrating glimpses of his own face. As Beavers notes in his writing on the film, the camera movements are tied to the filmmakers' presence and suggests his investigative gaze.
Still Light
Director
Landscape and desire. Details from the Greek island of Hydra, a figure, a study in light and place and the act of creation. The first half of the film explores delicate nuances of lighting, colour and depth as Beavers shoots the face of a young man in various locales on the Greek island of Hydra, using a variety of customized masks and filters. The man’s face remains constant throughout, surrounded by iconic elements in the landscape, like a pulsating Renaissance portrait. Still Light brings to mind any number of structuralist binarisms: youth and age, creation and criticism, action and reflection, living landscape and mummified text. (Ed Halter, New York Press).
Palinode
Director
In Palinode a disk-shaped matte continually shifting in and out of focus alternately blocks part of the image or contains it. Its respiratory rhythm matches operatic fragments of Wladimir Vogel’s Wagadu, as the camera studies a middle-aged male singer in Zurich, singing, eating, window shopping, and meeting a young girl. The filmmaker told himself, ‘Don’t let yourself know what that film is about while you are making it.’ (P. Adams Sitney, Film Comment).
Diminished Frame
Director
“There is a balance between a sense of the past seen in the views of West Berlin, filmed in black & white, and a sense of the present in which I filmed myself showing how the colour is created by placing filters in the camera’s aperture. I searched for signs of war’s aftermath and a few moments of daily life.” - Robert Beavers
The Count of Days
Director
The film is seen as though upon and through the structure of its spiritual partitions. One might say that there are three elements or levels to the images: narrative, descriptive or analytic, and abstract. "The film is seen as though upon and through the structure of its spiritual partitions. One might say that there are three elements or levels to the images: narrative, descriptive or analytic, and abstract. The Count of Days is not an account so much as an accounting of the essence of the days in which three separate persons are related at points … a penetration through the masks and habits of these days to reveal the nature of the charade and the arena in which it is enacted." (Tom Chomont, Film Culture)
View
Director
The view from a window overlooking a busy city street overlays varying geometric shapes moving against a brightly coloured background. Silence is punctuated only by street sounds.
Plan of Brussels
Director
Shedding all traces of narrative in Plan of Brussels, Beavers filmed himself in a hotel room, both at his work desk and lying naked on the bed, while in rapid rhythmic cutting, and sometime in superimposition, the phantasmagoria of people he met in Brussels and images from the streets flood his mind. (P. Adams Sitney, Film Comment)
Plan of Brussels
Shedding all traces of narrative in Plan of Brussels, Beavers filmed himself in a hotel room, both at his work desk and lying naked on the bed, while in rapid rhythmic cutting, and sometime in superimposition, the phantasmagoria of people he met in Brussels and images from the streets flood his mind. (P. Adams Sitney, Film Comment)
Winged Dialogue
"Winged Dialogue details with growing clarity the desperate beauty and sexuality of the body animated by its soul, essence blindly reaching out, touching, in brilliant patterns through and beyond those of the vanishing images, expressed vividly in the after-image on the mind, on the soul’s eye." (Tom Chomont)
Winged Dialogue
Director
"Winged Dialogue details with growing clarity the desperate beauty and sexuality of the body animated by its soul, essence blindly reaching out, touching, in brilliant patterns through and beyond those of the vanishing images, expressed vividly in the after-image on the mind, on the soul’s eye." (Tom Chomont)
On the Everyday Use of the Eyes of Death
Director
Filmed in Italy (Rome), on Agfa-Gaevert reversal film.
Spiracle
Director
Portrait studies of Mrs. Hodges, Gail Beavers (the filmmaker’s sister) and Gregory J. Markopoulos.
Eros, O Basileus
Eros
Structured in nine tableaux each a study of a simple action or situation involving a lone, naked figure, the blind Eros, searching for fulfilment, for self. The objects he touches - books, paintings - can be seen as icons of the creative spirit; there is also a motor cycle and film equipment. In succeeding scenes he appears to try on identities offered by institutional doctrines of religion and social traditions of (overt) masculinity. Much of the film was constructed in-camera with a small amount of editing afterwards. An innovation was the use of in-camera fade-outs as phrase markers, not as terminal points, within a single set-up or shot.
Jabbok
Jabbok
The story of Jacob wrestling the angel at the stream called Jabbok.