In this episode of 180ID, avant-garde filmmaker Robert Beavers discusses questions around film and possibility, at the cafe of Cinemateca Portuguesa.

At 17, Robert Beavers left Brookline, Massachusetts for New York, where he began orbiting the Filmmaker's Cinematheque. A year later he left again, this time for Europe, alongside his collaborator Gregory Markopoulos, co-founder of New American Cinema.

He would carry his life in a suitcase for the next 25 years, moving constantly from place to place, staying long enough in each one, he says, "to be able to see these things”, such as how light moves through a room, how architecture changes what a camera can do with it. "This is also, you know, like a stage for light," he told us, describing buildings less as backdrops than as instruments he plays with proportion, depth, and time.

Over that time Beavers has made more than 25 films, rarely finishing them in what would be considered a timely manner. His piece "Sotiros," for instance, was made between 1976 and 1996, with Robert returning to the film again and again, reworking image and sound until they're almost unrecognizable from their first form.

In this conversation, Robert told us about some of his influences, like the artist Paul Klee, or poet Paul Valéry, his relationship to patience and the unexpected, and how architecture, light, and rhythm have guided his filmmaking across five decades.