Flowers of Asphalt

A Christmas Carol

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

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.

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.

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.

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. Shot with only two rolls of film, the work extends seven minutes of footage to almost one hour of viewing time using hundreds of fades in and out. - Tate Modern

Dionysus

In 1963 Boultenhouse wrote, produced, and directed Dionysius,which he described as a “free treatment of Euripides' The Bacchae.”It starred the dancers Louis Falco, Anna Duncan, and Nicolas Magallanes as Dionysius, Agave, and Pentheus respectively, and the experimental filmmakers Charles Levine, Willard Maas, Gregory Markopoulos, Marie Menken, Lloyd Williams and William Wood as the Chorus of Cameras. The film's score was by Teiji Ito.

Eniaios

An 80-hour film being printed and shown in cycles every four years at a remote location in Greece.

Genius

Based upon the theme of Faust, with the characters portrayed serving as representatives of the crises of their time. A triple portrait of three important figures in the art world: British artist David Hockney, Argentine surrealist painter Leonor Fini, and German-French art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.

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.

Sotiros

Distilled in 1996 from an earlier 50-minute trilogy, this 26-minute film was shot in Greece and Austria and structured around two recurring intertitles, “He said” and “he said.” Each introduces delicate studies of light and place—hotel interiors, cafés, hillsides, storefronts, and street life—framed in parallel variations. The title invokes Apollo as savior and healer.

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.

Charmides

Based on Plato's dialogue Charmides.

The Olympian

Portrait of novelist Alberto Moravia filmed in Rome.

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 man standing bare-chested, his arms extended. A man arrives home where the girl has set the table. The youth sleeps. Christmas?

Fragment of Seeking

A young man desperately seeks out the fleeting image of a female companion, and though he never quite catches her, he discovers much more through the surreal explorations of his own sexuality. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

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.