Gregory J. Markopoulos
Gregory J. Markopoulos (March 12, 1928 - November 12, 1992) was an American experimental filmmaker. Born in Toledo, Ohio to Greek immigrant parents, Markopoulos began making 8 mm films at an early age. He attended USC Film School in the late 1940s, and went on to become a... Read full bio →
Eniaios
An 80-hour film being printed and shown in cycles every four years at a remote location in Greece.
Gammelion
Gammelion 1968, filmed at Il Castello Roccasinibalda in Rieti, Italy, is a major work in Markopoulos’s oeuvre, marking the transition into his late period and anticipating his epic final film, Eniaios 1947–91.
The Illiac Passion
Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination.
Himself as Herself
The young hero seems the essence of maleness, yet he's troubled by vaguely feminine objects. Soon his masculine and feminine selves are intercut, as each of his identities appears to look and gesture at the other.
Eros, O Basileus
Structured in nine tableaux each a study of a simple action or situation involving a lone, naked figure, the blind Eros, searching for fulfilment, for self. The objects he touches - books, paintings - can be seen as icons of the creative spirit; there is also a motor cycle and film equipment.
Ming Green
This portrait of the filmmaker's apartment, painted in the color of the title, was made a few months before his departure from New York. It is dedicated to the filmmaker Stan Brakhage and was shot without a scenario and edited entirely in the camera.
Twice a Man
A reworking of the myth of Hippolytus, in which a chaste youth rejects the incestuous advances of his mother and is saved from death by a caring physician.
Swain
Swain is inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fanshawe, features a dreamlike narrative of a young man’s ritualized rejection of heterosexuality, as a mysterious woman in white gossamer pursues him through a ruined landscape.
Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort, part III: Charmides
Based on Plato's dialogue Charmides.
Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort, part II: Lysis
Markopoulos called Lysis “a study in stream-of-consciousness poetry of a lost, wandering, homosexual soul” and felt that the film foreshadowed The Illiac Passion.
Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort, part I: Psyche
Psyche 1947, made while a student at USC, shows Markopoulos’ developing style and his sensuous use of colour and composition. Shot in the Hollywood hills, the film was inspired by an unfinished novella by Pierre Louÿs. - Tate Modern