About

'The Films of Ute Aurand, Robert Beavers, and Gregory J Markopoulos' is a cinema program exploring the works of three major experimental filmmakers. All three artist-filmmakers share a commitment to the medium of film as a unique, material, poetic form. Encompassing both the minute and the epic, their works speak of their own artistic handiwork—the coming-into-being of the work; the creative pursuit of the film.

Aurand, Beavers, and Markopoulos are all filmmakers committed to the unique screening environment: the shared space of the cinema and the physical format of 16mm film. As such, their films have rarely been screened outside of Europe and America. This program offers Australian viewers the special opportunity to see film prints that have been restored and maintained by the Temenos Archive (founded by Markopoulos and Beavers) and from the artists’ personal collections. The program fittingly reflects on filmmaking and cinema-going as intimate, shared, and ephemeral. It considers the conversations and relationships not only between the film-works themselves, but between the films and their unique audiences.

Visiting Australia for the first time, Aurand and Beavers will present a curated selection of their own and Markopoulos’s work at QAGOMA’s Australian Cinémathèque, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and ACMI. The filmmakers will be in attendance to provide introductions to these rare films, as well as to engage in a fascinating In Conversation event that will explore their creative lives and practices.

Ute Aurand is a German filmmaker who has been a central presence in Berlin's experimental film scene since the 1980s. She studied filmmaking at the Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb) and has been making her own 16mm films since 1985. She founded "Ute Aurand Filmproduktion" in 1987, teaches analog film practice, and has regularly programmed women's artist films. She lives with the filmmaker Robert Beavers between Berlin and Massachusetts, USA.

Robert Beavers is an American filmmaker who has been working between Europe and America since the 1960s. Growing up in Massachusetts, he made his first film at the age of 16 in New York, where he met the filmmaker Gregory J Markopoulos. Beavers and Markopoulos relocated to Europe together in 1967 and eventually founded the Temenos Archive, now based in Ulster, Switzerland. Beavers lives with the filmmaker Ute Aurand between Berlin and Massachusetts, USA.

Gregory J Markopoulos was a Greek-American filmmaker who grew up in Toledo, Ohio, and began making films in the 1940s when he was a student at the University of Southern California's Film School. He moved to New York in 1960 where he engaged with several key figures in the burgeoning New American Cinema and completed major works including Twice a Man 1963 and The Illiac Passion 1967. In 1967, he relocated to Europe with Robert Beavers and both filmmakers lived and worked there up until Markopoulos's death in 1992.

Program curated by Audrey Lam and Keegan O'Connor.

In Conversation: Ute Aurand and Robert Beavers

11.00am, Sun 5 Nov 2023 | Free, no bookings required
Join us for a fascinating in-person In Conversation event between Ute Aurand and Robert Beavers, discussing their creative lives, filmmaking practices, and the legacy of Gregory J Markopoulos.

QAGOMA acknowledges the generous assistance of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg; German Films; the Goethe-Institut Australia; and the Power Institute, University of Sydney in their support for this program.