Double Vision

A lavishly illustrated inside account of one of avant-garde films most original outsiders, the filmmaker Robert Beavers. Double Vision is a beautifully written work of biography and criticism that tells the inside story of Robert Beavers (b. 1949), a major American avant-garde filmmaker. Until now, Beaverss dramatic life of itinerancy and resistance to commercial circulation has obscured his recognition as one of todays most significant living filmmakers. In Double Vision, Rebekah Rutkoff, the first scholar to have full access to Beaverss writing archive, sheds light on this deeply original underground figure and reveals the way Beaverss films explore nonoptical seeingawareness itselfas an outcome of cinematic sight. Born in the United States, Beavers moved to Europe as a teenager with his partner, filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos, in 1967. Over the following decades, he developed a unique cinematic language that fuses spiritual aims with cultural critique and braids domestic and erotic self-portraiture with studies of colored light and his own filmmaking process. Rutkoff uses the concept of double vision as a means to explore the poetic feedback loop between Beaverss filmmaking and writing practices, examine his life story and art next to those of Markopoulos, and demonstrate how his films defy standard art historical genealogies and binary thought. Richly illustrated with compelling film stills, many never before seen, Rutkoffs account of the outsider artist stands as the most detailed, knowledgeable, and fully researched to date. Double Vision celebrates Beaverss singular achievement and promises to make him known to all those who have not yet encountered his work.