Paul: I must say, Redfern, old pal, there are few people I’d rather discuss these films with than you. Your writing on Robert Beavers has been not only shrewdly argued and remarkably clear-sighted, but also infused with a passion that radiates from your prose. So, the big question I have right out of the gate is: what were your expectations for this series, and were they met? I know you're a big fan of many of the films you’ve seen before, so I assume you enjoyed most of what was screened. But were there any surprises in Beavers' work that came to light through the retrospective? I know these questions are broad in scope, but with a series like this—25 films screened over five days—it seems worthwhile to examine the whole forest before diving in and defending any opinions we have. 

 

Redfern: Thank you very much, Paul, and I must say the feeling is mutual. As to the question of my expectations, the MoMA program which preceded this retrospective by a few weeks and served as the premiere for Robert’s new film certainly helped to lay down what we were to see in the rest of his filmography, both in his earlier work where his and Markopoulos’ relationship and travels were foregrounded, and his later films centring on time and the passing of all things through quite a different, perhaps ‘mature’, approach to montage — no less musically-inclined than his youthful creations. Yet, I certainly was faced with some surprises, too. I’m thinking of the semblances of narrative some of his films gesture towards, not in the traditional sense of storytelling obviously, but how Markopoulos spoke about beginning with the single image which then goes on to form clusters and thus associations and bonds, inspiring ideas in the mind of the viewer; in this case, the ‘narrative’ (if it can indeed be called that) is the story of the film’s own creation, and the inscription in time of the filmmaker’s thoughts and emotions as a response to the space(s) around them. Quite a few of his films can be talked about in this way, and it isn’t really until the end of the My Hand Outstretched cycle and the death of Gregory that his work takes a slight turn in its direction — still very much tied to place but now lacking this strong sense of ‘authorship’, of the man behind (and in front) of the camera, which marks his early and middle period films; replaced by a self rendered diffuse, as if its past unity was dependent on Gregory’s presence. Not to say that this is a bad thing at all, it is simply a further development in his art, one which lays itself bare to the passage of time and no longer wishes to make any distinction between self and other or here and there, and it’s in this way that Beavers achieves a new kind of religiosity heretofore unseen in his work, which is itself an aspect of the man’s films rarely spoken of. 

 

Paul: I think it really goes to show just how much we have to discuss when an entirely different screening enters the conversation! But yes, with the perfect 20/20 vision of hindsight, the program you’re referring to at MoMA—which, for those not present, consisted of Early Monthly Segments (1968–70/2002), Pitcher of Colored Light (2000–07), and his latest “small” film, as Robert himself called it, Dedication: Bernice Hodges (2024)—does seem like a good encapsulation of the Beavers project, both past and present, as well as a glimpse into the possibility of new forms in the future. The “musicality” you mentioned is still very much present in these later works, but with a different rhythm and tempo: less staccato, more legato. Both are equally valid forms of musical articulation, of course, but witnessing this gradual shift over several days felt oddly satisfying to me after the small sampling provided by the MoMA screening. I feel like the term “late style” has been overused to the point of near uselessness, but all the qualities I’ve come to expect from a master like Beavers at this point in his life—patience, wisdom, and a clarity of vision—were on display in these “late” works.

 

So, in a sense, I think we would both agree on the existence of a line—perhaps not explicitly drawn between films, but one that slowly progresses—from what we might call Beavers’ “younger” films, which are more immediately concerned with intense formal exploration and obsessively searching for that stamp of authorship you mentioned, to his “older” works, which are decidedly more relaxed. But I’m curious if you have any other groupings for Beavers’ films that you find useful. I, for one, continue to think about the small five-piece suite of sorts that forms from Plan of Brussels (1968) to Still Light (1971)—titles most notable, perhaps other than the psychodramatic/sexual elements of Brussels, which we can get into as well, for their technical qualities, each displaying a unique interest in different styles and shapes of mattes and color filters. They remind me of a painter or photographer consumed by a specific subject matter or technique for a brief period, and to me, this sort of unexplainable artistic impulse seems connected to a youthful energy associated with self-discovery and the realization of one’s ability to shape the world around them. The final shot of Early Monthly Segments, with an outstretched hand drenched in brilliant color, beautifully epitomizes this idea.

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Redfern: Your characterisation of his later, ‘American-return’, work is perfectly agreeable, and, yes, after seeing the man’s entire filmography in such a short period of time, a clear trajectory does show itself even if it can’t be demarcated in strict terms. This early period of his career you describe (the late 60s into the start of the 70s), however, does appear very closely linked, perhaps in part because seeing Early Monthly Segments — the film in which his first five films are anthologised — twice in the same month has ensured that Beavers’ early work has seared itself in my memory, but also because (as you mention) they are all defined by similar technical qualities: the play of mattes, colourings of filters, rotating lenses, etc. A profound sense of discovery typifies these first five films, firstly through the travels which Beavers and Markopoulos engaged in during this time (the geographic element), secondly on a psychosexual level which narrativises the two men’s relationship and Beavers’ response to the spaces/cities around him alike, and thirdly in the technological realm, like the artist who understands they must first learn their tools before they can progress to the stage of creation, Beavers experiments with every kind of manipulation he can subject the Bolex 16mm camera to — mattes which can form obstructions in the frame as well as open absences/windows as if being a frame within the frame; filters which can deepen the tones of already existing colours in the image or alternatively invert the image’s palette, sometimes coming to overwhelm us as if writing poetry through the full range of the light spectrum; and, most uniquely, the mechanical features of the Bolex which features a rotating set of three lenses that Beavers often flips between to share varying perspectives on the same scene or occasionally halts before completing a rotation, leaving the lens somewhere between the aperture and turret so that scenes are cut and seen through semi-circles at the top or bottom of the frame. Indeed, I can’t think of any other filmmaker who has so thoroughly explored their artistic tools like Beavers has. His mind was surely one of restless creation and innovation in this youthful phase of his career, and it should come as no surprise that after 3-4 years of experimenting as such his filmmaking changed to include further approaches to the representation of his thoughts and feelings as a response to the art and places affecting him.