Film as Film: Theory and Practice in the Work of Gregory J. Markopoulos

Film as Film: Theory and Practice in the Work of Gregory J. Markopoulos
Opening Session

Introduction by Maja Naef and Markus Klammer
Jonas Mekas, Gregory J. Markopoulos Shoots Backgrounds for Galaxie (excerpt of Walden), c.1966, c.2 min
Mark Webber presents the book “Film as Film. The Collected Writings of Gregory
J. Markopoulos” (The Visible Press, 2014)

The Greek-American filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928–1992) was one of the key figures in the development of postwar avant-garde film, and a co-founder of the New American Cinema Group. In his exquisitely stylized and dreamlike early films, and in the stunning works of the sixties and seventies, Markopoulos formulated a maverick aesthetic characterized by incomparable formal rigor, fascinating beauty, and the penetrating representation of interior worlds that emerge from the entwinement of image and sound into an ecstatic filmic language. He was able to infuse his films with poetic density and force using minimal filmic and financial means. Although the archive of his films, texts, research materials, correspondence and library has been located in Switzerland since his death, Markopoulos’ films have yet to be officially shown here, nor have they been the subject of extended scholarly discussion. On the occasion of the publication of his collected writings in September 2014, texts which underpin Markopoulos’ oeuvre with far-reaching theoretical reflections, this event presents three film programs and a colloquium that will discuss the many different aspects of his work.