“… The shadows play an essential part in the mixture of loneliness and peace that exists here. The seasons move from the garden into the house, projecting rich diagonals in the early morning or late afternoon. Each shadow is a subtle balance of stillness and movement; it shows the vital instability of space. Its special quality opens a passage to the subjective; a voice within the film speaks to memory. The walls are screens through which I pass to the inhabited privacy. We experience a place through the perspective of where we come from and hear another’s voice through our own acoustic. The sense of place is never separate from the moment.” (RB)

“Late afternoon quiet and a silent figure seated on a bench; the old factories and machinery, warehouses and train lines are part of a Greece, now disappearing.” (RB)

Robert Beavers films his room in Zurich, and its immediate surroundings, during the editing of his previous film The Suppliant. The seasons go by, and he observes, with great warmth, his neighbours and hosts, an elderly couple. While he, a musician, plays the cello, she tends to the garden. All three characters share a space, though never at the same time, and a dedication to their respective activities: music, gardening, filmmaking. A celebration of light and colour and an intimate ode to existence.

“My filming for The Suppliant was done in February 2003, while a guest in the Brooklyn Heights apartment of Jacques Dehornois. When I recollect the impulse for this filming, I remember my desire to show a spiritual quality united to the sensual in my view of this small Greek statue. I chose to reveal the figure solely through its blue early morning highlights and in the orange sunlight of late afternoon. After filming the statue, I walked down to the East River and continued to film near the Manhattan Bridge and the electrical works; then I returned to the apartment and filmed a few other details. I set this film material aside, while continuing to film and edit Pitcher of Colored Light, later I took it up twice to edit but could not find my way. Most of the editing was finally done in 2009; then I waited to see whether it was finished and found that it was not. In May 2010, I made several editing changes and created the sound track with thoughts of this friend’s recent death.” (RB)

““Der Klang, die Welt…” was filmed in the same site as Listening to the Space in My Room, but now we hear Dieter Staehelin speaking about the place of music in his life, and we join him and Cécile Staehelin playing an Arabesque by Bohuslav Martinů. While they play, I turned the lens at certain moments to white, an open aperture.” (RB)