Noticias

In the 1980's the Greek-American filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos began showing his decades of experimental film work in a remote area of the Greek Pelopenesse he called the Temenos.  The Greek meaning for the word Temenos is "a piece of land set apart."  Markopoulos screened his career's work with new work from his partner, the filmmaker Robert Beavers. During the 1960's, Markopoulos took off from the U.S. to head to Europe, removing himself from the New American Cinema movement that he and his films ("Du Sang, de la volupté, et de la mort," "Swain," and "The Illiac Passion") had helped constitute, along with Jack Smith, Andy Warhol and others.  He made the move with Beavers, who now manages the Temenos Archives in Switzerland that house Markopoulos's body of work and his own films. In 1992, Markopoulos passed away, and since 2004, Beavers has been heading to the Temenos every four years to.

First the history, then the list:

In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.

Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.

The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.