30 Day Film Challenge: Day 28

The Most Obscure Film You Have Seen

Robert Beavers is one of the great American experimental filmmakers but his work is rarely screened to the public. While in college, I was introduced to avant-garde filmmaking because it is one of my professor’s main field of interest. This is how I saw a great number of Beavers’ work, including Pitcher of Colored Light, a beautiful, moving portrait of his elderly mother. Beavers, from what I remember, gave his personal permission for his films to be screened to my seminar class.

I have seen a number of experimental films over the years that represent such a wide range of avant-garde filmmaking. I once spent two nights at Anthology Film Archives watching six hours of experimental films selected by Abigail Childs, Ericka Beckman, Peggy Ahwesh, and Su Friedrich. To this day I still don’t know how my eyes didn’t fall out of my head.

But it is Beavers’ films that have left a far greater impression on me. I’m grateful for it.

(Note: I could have written about Near the Big Chakra. But there is only so much I can write about it. You can thank me later.)