BASILICA SCREENINGS: SEPTEMBER
Film as Film: Three Films by Gregory J. Markopoulos
Ming Green | Twice A Man | Through a Lens Brightly: Mark Turbyfill
BASILICA SCREENINGS: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 8 PM
FILM AS FILM: THREE FILMS BY GREGORY J. MARKOPOULOS, co-presented by the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College
MING GREEN, 1966, 16mm, 7 min.
TWICE A MAN, 1963, 16mm, 48 min
THROUGH A LENS BRIGHTLY: MARK TURBYFILL, 1967, 16mm, 14 min.
total program 69 min.
// Filmmaker Robert Beavers and curator Mark Webber will be present for a discussion! //
“There is no language. There is no art. There is no knowledge. There is but film as film: the beginning and the eternal moment.” –Gregory Markopoulos
Celebrating the publication of Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos (The Visible Press), filmmaker Robert Beavers, and curator Mark Webber will present a very rare screening of three early Markopoulos films that were made in the United States in the mid-60s.
MING GREEN, 1966, 16mm, 7 min.
“An extraordinary self-portrait conveyed through multiple layered superimpositions of the filmmaker’s sparsely furnished room in Greenwich Village.” —Mark Webber
Dedicated to Stan Brakhage. Music: Traumen /Wesendonck Lieder by Richard Wagner. Filmed in New York City
TWICE A MAN, 1963, 16mm, 48 min.
“Twice A Man is a fragmented re-imagining of the Greek myth of Hippolytus, who was killed after rejecting the advances of his stepmother. Markopoulos’ vision transposes the legend to 1960s New York and has its main character abandon his mother for an elder man. Employing sensuous use of colour, the film radicalised narrative construction with its mosaic of ‘thought images’ that shift tenses and compress time. One of the touchstones of independent filmmaking, Twice A Man was made in the same remarkable milieu as Scorpio Rising and Flaming Creatures by a filmmaker named ‘the American avant-garde cinema’s supreme erotic poet’ by its key critic P. Adams Sitney.” —Mark Webber
Based on the story of Hippolytus. Featuring Paul Kilb, Olympia Dukakis, Albert Torgesen. Music: Excerpt from Manfred Symphony by Pyotr Tchaikovsky op. 58. Filmed in New York City, Staten Island, Long Island and Bear Mountain Park.
THROUGH A LENS BRIGHTLY: MARK TURBYFILL, 1967, 16mm, 14 min.
“The life of painter, dancer and poet Mark Turbyfill, seen in his 70th year, is evoked through traditional portraiture and personal objects.” —Mark Webber
Filmed in Chicago.
Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928-92) is acknowledged as one of the pioneers of independent and avant-garde cinema. A contemporary of Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage and Andy Warhol, he was at the forefront of a movement that established a truly independent form of cinema. Markopoulos became a key figure in the New York avant-garde film scene of the 1950s and 60s, co-founding the New American Cinema Group alongside Jonas Mekas, Robert Frank, Peter Bogdanovich and others. Markopoulos’ films, which often translated literary or mythological sources to a contemporary context, are celebrated for their extraordinary creativity, the sensuous use of colour and innovations in cinematic form. His many film portraits feature significant figures in the arts such as David Hockney, Rudolph Nureyev, Leonor Fini, Alberto Moravia, Gilbert and George, Susan Sontag, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Thek and W.H. Auden. At the end of the 1960s, he left the USA for Europe and began to withdraw his work from circulation. He ultimately re-edited his entire output into the 80-hour epic Eniaios (1947-91), which remained unprinted during his lifetime. Following the death of Markopoulos in 1992, his work has slowly returned to the public arena through events with institutions including The Museum of the Moving Image, Pacific Film Archive, New York Film Festival and Documenta 12. The Whitney Museum presented a complete retrospective in 1996. Since 2004, premieres of the restored units of Eniaios have taken place every four years at a site in rural Arcadia, Greece that was chosen by the filmmaker. These unique events have been reviewed in Artforum, Frieze, Film Comment and other important periodicals. His films are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) and the Austrian Film Museum (Vienna).
Many thanks to Robert Beavers and Mark Webber. For more information regarding Temenos, a monographic archive in Switzerland devoted to Markopoulos and Beavers’ work, and its projection space in Arcadia, Greece, visit www.the-temenos.org. For more information on the book, visit: www.thevisiblepress.com.
Additional events will take place at The Kitchen, Harvard Film Archive, Anthology Film Archives, and elsewhere this fall.
BASILICA SCREENINGS is a film series that presents an array of works from new and repertory narrative features, documentaries, experimental films, to video and media art, often with filmmakers and special guests in attendance for a discussion following the screenings. Programmed by Basilica Hudson’s film curator Aily Nash, and creative directors Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone.
All films begin at 8 pm and are $5-10 sliding scale, unless otherwise noted.