My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure

My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure

18 Movies

My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure is a film cycle by Robert Beavers, developed between 1968 and 2002. Rather than a single compiled film, it consists of individual works that Beavers continually re-edited and re-contextualized, shaping them into a larger cycle presented under this title. The phrase itself may sound like a poetic riddle, yet its meaning becomes clear in the experience of seeing and hearing the films. While sometimes treated as one work in retrospectives and museum programs, My Hand Outstretched… is best understood as a collection of interconnected films, not a singular release.

ALL MOVIES IN ORDER

1. Winged Dialogue
1967 · ★ 0.0
An early exploration of intimacy and perception, the film portrays the body’s beauty and sexuality a…
2. Plan of Brussels
1968 · ★ 6.0
Filmed in a Brussels hotel room, Beavers alternates between his work desk and lying nude on the bed,…
3. The Count of Days
1969 · ★ 0.0
The film is seen as though upon and through the structure of its spiritual partitions. One might say…
4. Palinode
1970 · ★ 0.0
In Palinode a disk-shaped matte continually shifting in and out of focus alternately blocks part of …
5. Diminished Frame
1970 · ★ 0.0
“There is a balance between a sense of the past seen in the views of West Berlin, filmed in black &a…
6. Still Light
1971 · ★ 6.0
Filmed on Hydra, the work studies a young man’s face across shifting light and landscape, framed thr…
7. The Painting
1972 · ★ 7.0
Beavers intercuts scenes of traffic in Bern with details from the 15th-century altarpiece The Martyr…
8. From the Notebook of...
1972 · ★ 6.3
Shot in Florence, the film draws on Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and Paul Valéry’s essay on da Vinc…
9. Work Done
1973 · ★ 8.5
Shot in Florence and the Alps, the film contemplates traditional European labor—ice vaults, bookbind…
10. Ruskin
1974 · ★ 6.2
Beavers traces John Ruskin’s legacy from London to the Alps and especially Venice, where the camera …
11. Amor
1980 · ★ 6.1
Shot in Rome and Salzburg’s natural theatre, the film uses cutting and sewing as metaphors for love,…
12. Efpsychi
1983 · ★ 0.0
“The details of the young actor’s face – his eyes, eyebrows, earlobe, chin, etc. – are set opposite …
13. Wingseed
1985 · ★ 10.0
A meditation on landscape and desire, the film juxtaposes arid terrain, wild grasses, and herds of g…
14. The Stoas
1997 · ★ 8.0
Named for the colonnades of the ancient Lyceum, the film juxtaposes industrial arcades in golden mor…
15. Sotiros
2000 · ★ 6.7
Distilled in 1996 from an earlier 50-minute trilogy, this 26-minute film was shot in Greece and Aust…
16. The Ground
2001 · ★ 6.0
Interweaving stonework and filmmaking, Beavers evokes memory through hammer strokes and chisel sound…
17. The Hedge Theater
2002 · ★ 6.4
Filmed in Rome in the 1980s, the work draws on Borromini’s Baroque architecture and Il Sassetta’s St…
18. Early Monthly Segments
2003 · ★ 0.0
Filmed when Beavers was 18–19, this self-portrait depicts him and Gregory J. Markopoulos in their Sw…