Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.

Birth of a Nation

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

This documentary highlights day-to-day life in a boarding school named Zuoz. Here, high in the Swiss mountains, the heirs of rich and influential families are locked up and expected to perform. Director Daniella Marxer spent her youth in such an institution. At Zuoz, individuality is neither tolerated nor of interest. There are very few deviations from the rules; the system has to work perfectly. Rebellion is not tolerated, and, if you don't submit, you will immediately be expelled.

Zuoz

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

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

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.

My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure

“I have filmed my mother’s house and her garden. 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.