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.

Christmas U.S.A.

Things spin: amusement park rides, a phonograph record. A man wakes, shaves, and takes a phone call. Another man, in a kimono, walks in the woods, stops, and opens a small decorative box on the forest floor. People at an amusement park called Little Harlem enjoy themselves. A man walks through another amusement park, called Cavalcade Worlds, as midway rides spin. At a house, an older woman cleans; a pre-teen girl sets the table; a teenaged boy showers. After he dresses, he holds a candle high above his head and walks swiftly toward a young m...

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.

The Illiac Passion

Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound , finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.

Sorrows

Set to music by Beethoven, this lyrical portrait moves from a chilled and misty exterior to the crystalline interior of the Swiss chateau that King Ludwig II built for Wagner.

Galaxie

In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.

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. In succeeding scenes he appears to try on identities offered by institutional doctrines of religion and social traditions of (overt) masculinity. Much of the film was constructed in-camera with a small amount of editing afterwards. An innovation was the...

Serenity

Originally edited in two versions. Version I, 70 minutes; version II, 90 minutes. (The only known existing version is not Markopoulos’s edit and contains additional titles, music and voice-over added later than 1961. 65 minutes.) Filmed in Mytilene and Annavysos, Greece, 1958. Existing copy on video, J. and M. Paris Films, Athens.

The Dead Ones

Markopoulos’ first attempt at making a 35mm feature film, clearly inspired by the cinema of Jean Cocteau, was left unfinished and the materials were lost for many years.

The Mysteries

"In my film I suggest that there is no greater mystery than that of the protagonists. War and Love are simply equated for what they are; the aftermath is inevitable, and a normal human condition, for which like the ancients one can only have pity and understanding. In this lies the mystery. All else is irrelevant. That there are other sub-currents of equal power in The Mysteries goes without saying; and, those who are capable of the numerous visual visitations and annunciations which the film offers them will realize what is the Ultimate Mys...

A Christmas Carol

Based on the story by Charles Dickens. Filmed in Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A. Preserved by the Oesterreichisches Filmmsuem, Vienna and Temenos Archive, Zurich.

Doldertal 7

Edited but not printed. Filmed in Zurich. Original reversal film deposted in Temenos Archive, Zurich.

35, boulevard General Koenig

Edited but unprinted. Filmed in Paris. Original reversal film in Temenos Archive, Zurich.

(A)lter (A)ction

(A)lter (A)ction, 1968. Videotape, black-and-white, sound; 65 minutes (director's edit: 57 minute television version).

Flowers of Asphalt

Suggested music to be played during film : “Concerto Grosso” by Ludwig van Beethoven. With John Markopoulos, Maria Markopoulos, Andrew Markopoulos, Elaine Markopoulos and others. Filmed in Toledo, Ohio. ( This film contains footage from Jackdaw and Christmas U.S.A. Preserved by Temenos, Zurich & New York.

Der Schachtel

Die Schachtel (The Box), 1968. 35mm film transfer to videotape, black-and-white, sound; 29 minutes.

Eldora

The dreamlike Eldora describes love’s fragmenting effects on the consciousness of an adolescent girl.

Bliss

The first film made by Markopoulos after moving to Europe, Bliss was shot over the course of two days using only available light to create a lyrical study of the interior of the Church of St. John on the island of Hydra.

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. The film, at once melancholy and transcendent, consists of a shimmering, nearly plotless evocation of gender identity in flux through haunting, densely interlaced images.