Introduced by Peter Todd with Luke Fowler, Anthea Kennedy and Ian Wiblin in attendance.

“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 J. Markopoulos

“In poetry, something else happens. Hard to say what it is. Presence, let’s say, soul or spirit, an empathy with whatever it is that’s dwelt upon, feeling for it – to the point of identification". – Margaret Tait

This latest programme of artists' films in an ongoing series curated by Peter Todd brings together filmmakers with overlapping histories, friendships, and dialogues. Ute Aurand and Peter Todd met thanks to the late Margaret Tait and remain active in the exhibition and preservation of her remarkable 'film poems'. Robert Beavers takes forward the late Markopoulos' films with Berlin restoration workshops steadily presenting fresh 16mm prints of his epic, 80-hour Eniaios at the Temenos site in Arcadia, Greece. Rare 16mm prints of Markopoulos’ and Tait’s work courtesy of Temenos Verein and the Estate of Margaret Tait. This programme also presents work by Renate Sami, Anthea Kennedy & Ian Wiblin. Luke Fowler’s acclaimed recent work includes Being in a Place: A Portrait of Margaret Tait.

In fond memory of Renate Sami (10.02.1935 - 24.12.2023)

Bliss
Gregory J. Markopoulos, 1967, 6 min, 16mm

Dedicated to Alice Burkhard, Bliss was the first film Markopoulos made after relocating from the USA to Europe. A kaleidoscopic portrait of the interior of the Byzantine church of St. John, Hydra, Greece, it was composed and superimposed in-camera in the moment of filming.

Cape Cod
Renate Sami, 2018, 3 min

Perceptions of a visit. A last film.

Fenster
Anthea Kennedy and Ian Wiblin, 2024, 5’30 min
World Premiere

Aunt Erika writes in her diary. Aunt Emma leaps out of the window. Uncle Ernst is excluded from school. We build a new city.

Four Diamonds
Ute Aurand, 2016, 4’30 min, 16mm

“Two memories from a longer visit to New England in Autumn 2012: A group of elderly ladies playing bridge followed by the stormy ocean at Cape Cod in Winter while listening to Etienne Grenier's music practice”. – Ute Aurand.

The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo
Margaret Tait, 1955, 7 min, 16mm

“An entrancing translation into film of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo. The theme is a common one in this most difficult and yet most transparently simple of all poets: all things lovely and young are doomed inevitably to decay and death – nothing can keep them away. Yet (comes back the golden echo from the grayness of the lamentation) having once existed they can never pass away: beauty is gathered and stored in granaries beyond corruption. Every film artist who attempts to interpret such a poem will do it in her own different way. I found Margaret Tait’s choice of individual images extraordinarily moving and evocative: the flowers, the children, the wrinkles in the mirror…” – George Mackay Brown

A Visit with Robert
Luke Fowler, 2013, 3 min, 16mm
World Premiere

“In Spring 2013 I was artist in residence at Dartmouth College in New England. This was a vital time for me developing films and projects with artists Toshiya Tsunoda, Christian Wolff and Larry Polanski. I recently discovered a roll I shot during this time – whilst on a visit to the Cape with Robert. The occasion stuck in my memory because of a particularly bad infection I had caught; making me reticent to travel or do anything which required energy. I recall Robert urging me to come and visit despite this illness. Whilst there he encouraged me to film in his garden – to use this seeing as a way of counter-acting the virus and my general state of malaise.” – Luke Fowler.

The Suppliant
Robert Beavers, 2010, 5 min, 16mm

“Robert Beavers’s The Suppliant is an exquisitely wrought, five-minute portrait, both of the small statue of the title and of the artist/friend (filmed in the apartment of Jacques Dehornois, Brooklyn Heights) in whose apartment it resides.” – Tony Pipolo

Together
Peter Todd, 2018, 3 min, 16mm

“A tomato might be a planet. Daisies are stars in a heaven of grass. A tumbler of water is a sun around which all things turn.” – Gareth Evans

A Year/Ein Jahr
Renate Sami, 2011, 12 min

"A tree seen through the window of my kitchen. And behind the tree a wall, the stucco old and falling in pieces, leaving strange abstract forms and designs that changed with the light according to the time of day and season. I started to film in early spring and went on through summer, fall and winter. The tree grew leaves and shed them. There was sunshine and rain, hail and a storm, snow and there were birds: I saw a sparrow and heard many others; I heard a blackbird, a pigeon and some crows. There was faint music sometimes and a church bell ringing from very far away. And suddenly one evening behind a window that had always been dark a lamp was turned on and off again. The film is constructed like a poem. What would be the end of a line in a poem is here marked by 24 frames of black leader separating one, two or a cluster of images to give it a rhythmic structure." – Renate Sami

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Gregory J. Markopoulos’s Eniaios Cycles XV – XVIII will be premiered in Arcadia, Greece, on June 27th through June 30th, 2024.

(Things) Not Moving Towards the Circle by Robert Beavers, Natasha Cox and Gregory J. Markopoulos appears in fieldnotes issue 6 Spring 2024.

Thanks to Natasha Cox and Bella Marrin at fieldnotes, the filmmakers, the estate of Renate Sami, the estate of Margaret Tait, Sarah Christian, Gareth Evans, LUX, Temenos Verein (Zurich).

Peter Todd curated the Refuge and Film Poems screenings at Close-Up in 2019. In 2018 he curated the season Rhythm and Poetry the Films of Margaret Tait at BFI Southbank to mark the centenary of her birth. Collaborative projects have included programmes with Guy Sherwin and Ute Aurand at Close-Up, and The Room with Luke Fowler, Keith Rowe, and Lee Patterson. His most recent film pillow bowl rose tree premiered at the Open City Documentary Festival in 2023. His piece of writing On Showing a Film Some Thoughts and Voices can be found on the Vertigo Magazine archive.