[Frameworks] Eniaios: Cycle V Discussion/Screening

[Fred Camper]

I was at both. The panel was quite interesting, and it was good to see that
some serious scholars were interested in Markopoulos.

The film was the first section of "Eniaios" that I have seen. I  
thought I had known what to expect from the Markopoulos films I have  
seen that seem related, like "Gammelion." But no. Great as "Gammelion"  
is, "Eniaios" is something else. It is as great a film as any I know.  
There are ways in which it is greater than any I know, in its austere  
perfection, its demands on the viewer, and the transcendent beauties  
it wrests from rhythms of black and white, the briefest of images, and  
the many amazing moments when the images last long enough to show  
movement. The whole has an almost eternal quality, feeling  
disconnected from any particular time or from any particular culture.  
The times when my attention wandered during a few seconds of black,  
the film would suddenly feel "destroyed," in a way that doesn't happen  
in other great films, which I took to reveal that every frame is  
perfectly essential.

It is an incredible scandal that this work is not recognized as the  
towering masterpiece that it is, and that Robert Beavers has to seek  
funds to continue to print it.

Fred Camper
Chicago