Artforum review

“Film as Film” reviewed in Artforum

Erika Balsom has written a wonderful article on Gregory J. Markopoulos and “Film as Film” for the March 2015 issue of Artforum. The conclusion is below, but you can read the full article online at www.artforum.com.

“The cultic aura that surrounds Markopoulos is intense, and Film as Film does little to diffuse it. Sometimes it can feel as if Markopoulos’s edict regarding the behavior of the ideal spectator remains in force today. In making available texts that had been exceedingly difficult to access, this collection represents a tremendous primary resource that at last illuminates a central personality of experimental cinema. But this is not a book that seeks to challenge the narrative that this sometimes self-mythologizing filmmaker crafted about himself. Markopoulos believed that unquestioning devotion was the best way to honor the creator, but critical perspectives are important as well. In addition to facilitating access to this material, one of the great contributions of Film as Film is its implicit demonstration of the need for further scholarship that will place Markopoulos’s films and writings in conversation with historical realities and differing points of view.”

Erika Balsom, excerpt from “Future Projections”, Artforum, March 2015