Film Series: Theo Angelopoulos: Myth and History
June 3, 10, 17, 18, 24, and 25***All film programs are held in the East Building Auditorium except where noted***
The Travelling Players (O Thiasos)
June 3 at 2:30 p.m.
With a Shakespearean tinge, The Travelling
Players—Greece's most artfully experimental
and expensive film when it was released in
the mid-1970s—probes the country's recent
past through the guise of itinerant players
roaming the countryside while performing
a popular folk melodrama: Golpho, the Lover
of the Shepherdess. Interest and irony develop
with a dramatic realization that the ancient
legends of the Agamemnon cycle are unfolding
among this group of modern actors. (1975,
35 mm, Greek with subtitles, 230 mins.
with intermission, print shown by special
permission of Theo Angelopoulos)
Calendar of Events | Theo Angelopoulos:
Myth and History list
Alexander the Great (O Megalexandros)
June 10 at 2:30 p.m.
Not the the story of the historical Alexander,
O Megalexandros fuses two themes: "the tradition
of a Greek liberator and the so-called
Dilessi incident of 1870, when a party of British
aristocrats was kidnapped and murdered
by the brigands who were an endemic feature
of nineteenth-century Greece. Updating
this affair to the first New Year's Eve of the
twentieth century, the film provides a searching
analysis of the cult of the political 'hero'
and the corruption of ideals in a false new
age."—British Film Institute (1980, 35 mm,
Greek with subtitles, 165 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Theo Angelopoulos:
Myth and History list
Voyage to Cythera (Taxidi sta Kithira)
June 17 at 2:30 p.m.
Winner of the award for best scenario in its
year at the Cannes Film Festival, Voyage to
Cythera is the tale of an old Civil War fighter
who returns after years of exile in Russia to
torment his son (a stage director in Athens)
and his long-deserted wife. "Shot partly in
the rain-drenched mountain regions and
on the stormy quay at Piraeus, the film is as
much a dream journey as a real one, as much
myth as contemporary drama. (The island
of the film's title is the last stop for many
elderly Greeks who go there to live on their
pensions.)"—Pacific Film Archive (1983,
35 mm, Greek with subtitles, 137 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Theo Angelopoulos:
Myth and History list
The Beekeeper (O Melissokomos)
June 18 at 4:30 p.m.
Note: This film is recommended for mature audiences only.
Angelopoulos conceived The Beekeeper to be
the middle film of his "trilogy of silence"
(with Voyage to Cythera and Landscape in the
Mist). Co-written by Michelangelo Antonioni's
scenarist Toniono Guerra and featuring
one of the Italian director's favorite actors,
the film is, according to Angelopoulos, "the
journey of a beekeeper from north to south,
a film about the silence of history, of love, of
God." Marcello Mastroianni plays a retired
teacher who abruptly leaves his wife and
daughter and drives off with his beloved
hives. Along the road he finds old friends
and a hitchhiker who, wrote James Quandt,
"reflect the director's concern with his country's
historical amnesia." (1986, 35 mm,
Greek with subtitles, 120 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Theo Angelopoulos:
Myth and History list
Landscape in the Mist (Topio stin Omichli)
June 24 at 1:00 p.m.
"Every day young Alexander and his sister
Voula wait on the station platform, anticipating
the arrival of their father. Despite their
vigil, the now mythical parent never materializes
so they hop a train, determined to find
him. Alternately exploited and protected,
thrown off trains, and repudiated by an uncle
and strangers alike, the two children traverse
an adult world which, seen through their
young eyes, resonates with the enchanting
and the surreal."—Pacific Film Archive (1988,
35 mm, Greek with subtitles, 122 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Theo Angelopoulos:
Myth and History list
Eternity and a Day
June 24 at 4:00 p.m.
Bruno Ganz plays Alexandre, a writer vacating
his apartment in Thessaloniki after
learning he's terminally ill. Throughout the
beautifully composed, elegiac film the dying
writer sifts through his random thoughts
on mortality, family, art, and the past. "Like
Ingmar Bergman," wrote one New York Times
reviewer, "whose sense of an intricately interwoven
present and past is echoed in a fluid
way, Angelopoulos turns the whole of his
protagonist's life into something far greater
than the sum of its parts." (1998, 35 mm,
Greek with subtitles, 132 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Theo Angelopoulos:
Myth and History list
The Weeping Meadow
(Trilogia I: To Livadi pou dakryzei )
June 25 at 4:00 p.m.
This first panel of a projected triptych is
Angelopoulos's latest completed project.
The ultimate goal, he says, is nothing less
than "a poetic summing up of the century
that just ended." Spanning the years 1919
through 1949, The Weeping Meadow opens
with a band of refugees on Greece's northern
plains. Young foundling Eleni falls in love
with her adoptive brother and flees with him
to the port of Thessaloniki. As the political
disorder of the era unfolds, however, Eleni
is left to bear the brunt of war and repression.
"Angelopoulos' recurring semi-surreal
dreamscapes are not mere effects....This is
Homeric filmmaking, uniquely worthy of the
word."—Michael Atkinson (2004, 35 mm,
Greek with subtitles, 170 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Theo Angelopoulos:
Myth and History list
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