Oblivion + Winged Dialogue & Plan of Brussels + Twice a Man

“I wish to demonstrate by the film Twice a Man, a new narrative form which is based on very brief film-phrases used in clusters to evoke thought through imagery,” Gregory J. Markopoulos declared in a statement about his modern restaging of the Hippolytus myth. By intercutting these fleeting moments into longer sequences, he found novel ways to convey the shape of consciousness via cinema, highlighting the psychological and aesthetic force of individual film frames, and the space between them. Beyond the innovations of his approach to composition, Markopoulos was also a tremendously supportive and influential figure for young gay experimental filmmakers in the 1960s, such as Nathaniel Dorsky, Jerome Hiler, Edward Owens, and Warren Sonbert, as well as Robert Beavers and Tom Chomont, represented here by important early works that, each in their own distinct way, plumb the depths of the erotic imagination through complex superimposition and pulsing montage.

Oblivion
Tom Chomont, USA, 1969, 16mm, 4m

Winged Dialogue & Plan of Brussels
Robert Beavers, Greece/Belgium, 1967-8/2000, 16mm, 3m/18m

Twice a Man
Gregory J. Markopoulos, USA, 1963, 16mm, 49m