[MGSA-L] "Temenos, " a two-day screening of films by Gregory Markopoulos, at U-Michigan

Artemis S Leontis 1 aleontis at umich.edu
Fri Jan 27 08:45:46 PST 2012


"Temenos,"

a two day program of films by Gregory J. Markopoulos and Robert Beavers

will be screened at Angell Auditorium A

February 4th and 5th at 3:00pm.

Following the screening of Robert Beavers films on Sunday the 5th,  
will be a panel discussion with contributions from Robert Beavers,  
Stashu Kybartas, James Macgillivray and Julie Murray.

The programs are in honor of the 2012 Temenos program this summer. The  
premiere of the sixth, seventh, and eighth orders of Gregory J.  
Markopoulos?s final and culminating film, ENIAIOS, will take place at  
the Temenos site near Lyssaraia in Arcadia from June 29 through July  
1, 2012.  Markopoulos and Beavers films have been shown in a number of  
venues including the Museum of Modern Art, The New York Film Festival,  
The Whitney Museum, The Tate Gallery, The Harvard Film Archive, The  
Louvre Museum, The Pacific Film Archive and the Osterreichisches  
Filmmuseum.

Gregory Markopolos and Robert Beavers

Two major figures of the American Avant Garde cinema from the 1950s to  
the present are Gregory Markopoulos (originally from Toledo) and  
Robert Beavers (from Brookline, Massachusetts). Having met in 1966 in  
New York, they soon moved to Europe, splitting their time between  
Greece, Italy and Switzerland. Markopoulos, the older of the two was  
already a major figure in American cinema; Beavers, only 17 at the  
time, began in the role of the apprentice, but was soon making major  
works of his own. Markopoulos? films are characterized by their  
classical themes, attention to color and exquisite craft. For his  
part, Beavers has pioneered certain aspects of camera manipulation and  
movement together with an intricate and masterful use of sound. Both  
filmmakers are intimately engaged in architecture both as a historic  
subject and a site for the filmic manipulation of space.

Towards the end of the 1970s, Markopoulos conceived of a space which  
he would later call the Temenos, for the projection of both of their  
films. Temenos, a Greek word meaning ?a piece of land set apart? was  
initially inspired by Markopoulos? trip to Greece in the 1950s,  
particularly to the amphitheater and the temple of Asclepius at  
Epidaurus. They eventually settled on a site near Markopoulos?  
father?s native town of Lyssarea in the Pelopenese. Viewers of films  
at the Temenos gather in the town for four days in a kind of cinematic  
pilgrimage; at the end of each day they hike up to a screen and  
projector in the middle of an isolated field for five hours of  
challenging films under the night sky.

For both of the artists, the Temenos proved to be vital as both a  
conceptual and literal site for the projection of their work. For  
Markopoulos in particular, the advent of the Temenos was indivisible  
with the creation of his immense final film, Eniaios. An utterly  
singular work in the history of film, Eniaios is comprised of 22 film  
cycles, each cycle made up of several films, the total being over one  
hundred films and approximately 80 hours in length. After Markopoulos?  
death in 1992, Beavers is now responsible both for the continuation of  
the Temenos screenings and also for the restoration and printing of  
the Eniaios film.




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