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Robert Beavers
Brookline, Massachusetts, USA
Robert Beavers (born 1949) is an American experimental filmmaker whose work stands among the most significant in postwar avant-garde cinema. He is best known for My Hand Outstretc…
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Robert Beavers (born 1949) is an American experimental filmmaker whose work stands among the most significant in postwar avant-garde cinema. He is best known for My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure, an 18-film cycle spanning decades of work, much of it later re-edited. Beavers developed a distinctive visual language using hand-cut mattes, filters, and precise sound–image structures, often focusing on craft and manual labor as metaphors for filmmaking itself. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, he began making films in New York before moving to Europe in 1967 with his partner, Gregory J. Markopoulos. Together they withdrew their films from distribution, presenting them only at the Temenos screenings in Arcadia, Greece (1980–86). After Markopoulos’s death in 1992, Beavers founded Temenos, Inc. to preserve both of their legacies. His films draw deeply on place and history, from Florence in From the Notebook of… (1971/1998) and Venice in Ruskin (1975/1997) to the Greek landscapes of Wingseed (1985), The Hedge Theater (1986–90/2002), and The Ground (1993–2001). Later works include Pitcher of Colored Light (2007), The Suppliant (2012), Listening to the Space in My Room (2013), and The Sparrow Dream (2022). Beavers continues to live and work between Berlin and Massachusetts with filmmaker Ute Aurand, while overseeing the preservation of both his own films and Markopoulos’s Eniaios.
Filmography
Movies and shows, newest first
- 2026
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2024
Dedication: Bernice Hodges
Movie Director
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2024
A Visit With Robert
Movie
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2022
The Sparrow Dream
Movie Director
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2018
Cape Cod
Movie himself
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2018
“Der Klang, die Welt…”
Movie Director
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2017
Among the Eucalyptuses
Movie Director
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2016
Shared Table
Movie Director
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2014
First Weeks
Movie Director
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2013
Listening to the Space in My Room
Movie Himself
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2010
Due film-maker in giardino - Robert Beavers & Gregory J. Markopoulos
Movie Self - director
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2010
The Suppliant
Movie Cinematography
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2008
Zuoz
Movie Ice skater
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2007
Pitcher of Colored Light
Movie Director
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2006
Mother's Day
Movie
- 2005
More credits
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2003
Early Monthly Segments
Movie
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2002
The Hedge Theater
Movie Himself
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2001
The Ground
Movie Director
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2000
Sotiros
Movie
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1997
The Stoas
Movie Director
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1997
Birth of a Nation
Movie Self
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1985
Wingseed
Movie Director
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1983
Efpsychi
Movie Director
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1980
Amor
Movie Director
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1978
Sotiros in the Elements
Movie Director
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1978
Sotiros (Alone)
Movie Director
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1977
Sotiros Responds
Movie Director
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1974
Ruskin
Movie Director
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1973
Work Done
Movie Director
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1972
From the Notebook of...
Movie Himself
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1972
The Painting
Movie Director
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1971
Still Light
Movie
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1971
Diminished Frame
Movie Director
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1970
Palinode
Movie Director
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1969
The Count of Days
Movie Director
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1969
View
Movie Director
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1968
Plan of Brussels
Movie
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1967
Winged Dialogue
Movie
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1967
On the Everyday Use of the Eyes of Death
Movie Director
