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Theo Angelopoulos

Theo Angelopoulos

Directing

Biography

Theodoros "Theo" Angelopoulos (Greek: Θεόδωρος Αγγελόπουλος) (27 April 1935 – 24 January 2012) was a Greek filmmaker, screenwriter and film producer. An acclaimed and multi-awarded film director who dominated the Greek art film industry from 1975 on, Angelopoulos was one of the most influential and widely respected filmmakers in the world. He started making films in 1967. In the 1970s he made a series of political films about modern Greece. Angelopoulos' work, described by Martin Scorsese as that of "a masterful filmmaker", is characterized by slightest movement, slightest change in distance, long takes, and complex yet carefully composed scenes; his cinematic method, as a result, is often described as "sweeping" and "hypnotic." In 1998 his film Eternity and a Day went on to win the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 51st edition of the Cannes Film Festival, and his films have been shown at many of the world's most esteemed film festivals. In 2000 he was the President of the Jury at the 22nd Moscow International Film Festival. The life of Theo Angelopoulos, his work, and his passion were the subject of a documentary directed in 2008 by Elodie Lelu. Angelopoulos died late on Tuesday, 24 January 2012, at 76 years old after being involved in a crash with a motorcycle ridden by an off-duty police officer. He was taken to hospital, where he was treated in an intensive care unit but succumbed to his serious injuries several hours later. Description above from the Wikipedia article Theo Angelopoulos, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known For

To Each His Own Cinema
6.5

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

To Each His Own Cinema

2007
Eternity and a Day
7.8

Famous writer Alexander contracts a terminal illness. He receives a letter from his wife describing a summer day 30 years ago, and leaves his seaside home to remember his past. This journey will allow him to wander between the past and the present, and encounter unexpected people, allowing him to collect unforgettable memories in the final moments of his life.

Eternity and a Day

1998
40 x 15: The Forty Years of the Directors' Fortnight
N/A

A history of the Cannes Film Festival's Director's Fortnight selection.

40 x 15: The Forty Years of the Directors' Fortnight

2008
Lumière & Company
6.3

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

Lumière & Company

1995
A Special Day
6.0

At the 60th anniversary of Cannes Film Festival, 34 famous directors are followed by camera.

A Special Day

2012
Landscape in the Mist
7.6

Two Greek children embark on a journey to search for their father, who supposedly lives in Germany.

Landscape in the Mist

1988
Ulysses' Gaze
7.4

An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.

Ulysses' Gaze

1995
Kurosawa's Way
5.8

Eleven major film makers from Europe, America and Asia talk about Akira Kurosawa and discover surprising influences on their own work.

Kurosawa's Way

2011
The Beekeeper
7.0

Following the wedding of his daughter, stone-faced beekeeper Spyros makes an annual journey from the north of Greece to the south, traveling along with his hives. En route, he meets an erratic, young female drifter, with whom he strikes up an unusual, self-destructive relationship.

The Beekeeper

1986
The Suspended Step of the Stork
6.8

A reporter notices an old man in a border town who may be an important Greek politician who disappeared mysteriously years ago.

The Suspended Step of the Stork

1991
The Dust of Time
6.3

To trace the fading past of his parents, a grizzled Greek-American filmmaker decides to shoot a movie. By recounting the painful efforts of his mother to reunite with his musician father, his film spans more than half of the 20th century.

The Dust of Time

2008
The Travelling Players
7.2

A traveling theatre troupe tours the Greek countryside from 1939 to the early 1950s, staging “Golfo the Shepherdess”. As the years pass, its members endure persecution, betrayal, executions, and exile. Their personal stories become entangled with the country’s major historical events, in a seemingly endless cycle of violence and loss.

The Travelling Players

1975
Alexander the Great
6.9

Alexander, a tribal warlord and former political prisoner, kidnaps British tourists, holding them for ransom until Britain and the Greek puppet government in Athens meet his demand for amnesty for his band of freedom fighters.

Alexander the Great

1980
The Weeping Meadow
7.5

The story follows a family of refugees from the early twentieth century through to the Civil War. Through movements, separations, and reunions, personal lives intersect with Greece’s major historical transformations. Space and time are in constant flux, while the characters remain trapped in an unending search for a homeland.

The Weeping Meadow

2004
Voyage to Cythera
7.0

An old communist returning to Greece after 32 years in the Soviet Union is disillusioned with the state of things.

Voyage to Cythera

1984
A City Runs Through the Festival
6.7

A City Runs Through the Festival is an anatomy of the Festival through the eyes of its own audience.

A City Runs Through the Festival

2007
Champions: A Comic Tale
6.0

A comic tale. The issue of film education has been a Gordian link for many years in Greece. Starting from the time of Stavrakos in 1950, the documentary reaches up to the present day, exploring this issue through a dialogue between the people who dealt and are dealing. Among them Theodoros Angelopoulos, Pantelis Voulgaris, Dinos Katsouridis, Nikos Koundouros, Manos Zacharias, Werner Herzog, Emir Kustouritsa, Fatih Akin.

Champions: A Comic Tale

2011
Port Djema
6.2

A doctor from Paris travels to North Africa to investigate the murder of a friend and find a lost boy.

Port Djema

1997
Balkan Landscapes: The Gaze of Theo Angelopoulos
N/A

Theo Angelopoulos recalls the defining moment in 1964 that led to him to live his entire life in Greece, and explores the concept of borders in his work - as the limits of existence, of life and death, of language and communication. “Narrowing down the borders narrows the communication, stretches the differences, magnifies oppositions, magnifies reasons for war, magnifies the refugees, magnifies the internal exile... In reality a civil war leaves behind wounds which cannot easily be healed and they revive, like ghosts, or like recurrent nightmares, during the long nights which have dogged Greek society for years.”

Balkan Landscapes: The Gaze of Theo Angelopoulos

1993
The Hunters
7.7

During a hunting party on New Year's Eve 1976, five representatives of the bourgeoisie encounter with their companion the body of a partisan from the Civil War of the late forties. What they are most confused about is the fact that the corpse that lies at their feet is still bleeding…

The Hunters

1977