Two poets of the cinema discuss cinema and life! Michael Guillen and Robert Beavers compose an interview so expansive, esoteric, ocular, open-hearted, and mythic; you will never be the same! :)
Winged Distance/Sightless Measure: A Conversation with Robert Beavers, Part One
Winged Distance/Sightless Measure: A Conversation with Robert Beavers, Part Two*
A few excerpts:
Michael Guillen: I was walking to my bus stop and there was a pigeon on the sidewalk and --as I drew near--the pigeon startled and took flight and there was that sound of the flapping wings which runs throughout your films. I immediately saw a flash of images from your films. I saw the image of your film layered upon the surface of the world. That association and layering of meaning onto the physical world is a quality of psychoid consciousness. It's a way of living in the world where everything means something of personal value. I have to thank you for adding onto that natural phenomenon a cerebral overlay.
Robert Beavers: Cerebral?
Michael Guillen: Cerebral and emotional, as in emotional intelligence.
Rober Beavers: And sensuous?
*
Robert Beavers: . . . It is an intuitive searching and the central part of the filming as it develops. In a number of films--I know which ones--I can feel that I did not really know what I was doing. This must be true of many people. There are probably artists and composers and others who do know what they're doing; but I'm one of those mixtures: I know what I'm doing, I'm thinking certain things, and then I also don't know what I'm doing.
*
Robert Beavers: All the filmmakers of my kind of filmmaking are using our elements to express what we either cannot or do not want to express in words; we want to give you another experience.
