Monday | September 22, 2014 7:00 pm

Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort

Introduction by Robert Beavers
Screening on Film

Directed by Gregory Markopoulos.
US, 1947-48, 16mm, color, 70 min.
Print source: Cinema Arts Centre

Made as a USC student in Los Angeles, Markopoulos’ first 16mm film Psyche took as its source the unfinished novella of the same name by Pierre Louÿs. Shown together with Lysis and Charmides (both made on his return to Toledo, Ohio, and inspired by Platonic dialogues), it forms the trilogy titled Du sang de la volupte et de la mort (1947-48). By boldly addressing lesbian and homosexual themes, the trilogy gained unwelcome notices in Films in Review and Variety where, in the repressive atmosphere of the early 1950s, it was branded “degenerate” following a screening at NYU. Such a response is unimaginable today for lyrical works that express sensuality through the symbolic use of color and composition. Writing about these early films, Markopoulos chose to quote a statement by philosopher and theologian Mircea Eliade, offering viewers a clue to his entire body of work: “The whole man is engaged when he listens to myths and legends; consciously or not, their message is always deciphered and absorbed in the end.” The programme also includes his earliest film, an interpretation of Dickens made when the Markopoulos was only eight years old, and Christmas USA, in which documentary and fiction are woven together to convey a moment of awakening in the mid-West at the end of the 1940s. – Mark Webber

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Gregory Markopoulos' Du sang, de la volupte et de la mort introduction by Haden Guest and Robert Beavers. Read transcript

Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort introduction by Haden Guest and Robert Beavers. Monday September 22, 2014.

John Quackenbush 0:00

September 22, 2014, the Harvard Film Archive screened two early works by Gregory Markopoulos, including Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort. This is the audio recording by HFA Director Haden Guest and filmmaker Robert Beavers.

Haden Guest 0:16

Would you please turn off any cell phones, electronic devices that you have on you and please refrain from using them during the screening. This is the fourth screening in our Gregory Markopolos retrospective, which began on Friday. And this is an occasion to celebrate, and to explore the work of one of the great visionaries of the American avant garde. A filmmaker whose work has remained for many years inaccessible and is now being rediscovered with great excitement. And great excitement is also inspired by this book, which has just come out, Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory Markopoulos. This is a really indispensable and very important publication, which gathers Markopoulos's writings, from some of his earliest writings to some of his last visionary, and sweeping and really quite moving writings about Eniaios, his ambitious and extraordinary magnum opus, to which he would dedicate so much of his career. This book reveals Markopoulos's importance, not only as a filmmaker, but as a thinker about cinema. Markopoulos is, of course, recognized as an extraordinary formalist. His formalist rigor is really unmatched. And at the same time, he's truly a poet of the cinema.

Tonight we have with us Robert Beavers, who will offer some words about tonight's program. We're going to be seeing some of my Markopoulos's very early works, including A Christmas Carol from 1940, Christmas U.S.A. from 1949, and the trilogy Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort from ‘47-’48. These are films which were made, both in Los Angeles, where Markopoulos was studying at the University of Southern California, as well as in Toledo, Ohio, Markopoulos's hometown. Robert Beavers has been here at the Archive many times, and I'm very happy to say, here often to present his own work. But he's also been here to talk about his work as the leader of The Temenos. One of the co-founders of this important organization, which is dedicated to the preservation of Gregory Markopoulos’s cinema and to the realization of the Eniaios screenings, which take place every four years, the next in Arcadia, Greece. The next one will take place in 2016. At the end of this program we have two selections of films from Eniaios. It's a very rare chance to see these films, so please take a look at our schedule and make a point of coming. But for now, please join me in welcoming Robert Beavers. I should point out, the book is for sale at our box office.

[APPLAUSE]

Robert Beavers 3:46

Good evening. I just want to mention a few dates and about the films. I think Haden may have already mentioned that the first film is 1940 and the films were made—first film, the filmmaker was 12 years old. The second one, I think he was perhaps 20. And the longer trilogy, 19 years old. So, I always find it interesting to see his early work in the context of a university screening. A very lovely essay that Gregory wrote, very early in his career, about Psyche and other texts related to the trilogy in the book. So I hope some of you will have a chance to glance at those texts. I saw the trilogy for the first time, here in Cambridge, in 1965. In a square closer to Boston. So, there was a kind of private film club in the Odd Fellows Hall. Is that Central Square? Central Square, yes. So, I still remember that occasion and of course can have some memories also of my bewilderment, when I first saw the films. They are truly key works, having the seed for many of the thematic and aesthetic qualities of his later work. So, having said that, I hope you enjoy the program and we can speak afterwards.

[APPLAUSE]

©Harvard Film Archive

PRECEDED BY

A Christmas Carol

Directed by Gregory Markopoulos.
US, 1940, 8mm, black & white, 5 min.
Christmas U.S.A.

Directed by Gregory Markopoulos.
US, 1949, 16mm, black & white, silent, 8 min.