Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos is one of the most influential and
widely respected filmmakers in the world today, yet his films are still
largely unknown to the American public. In the first book in English to
focus on Angelopoulos's unique cinematic vision, Andrew Horton provides
an illuminating contextual study that attempts to demonstrate the
quintessentially Greek nature of the director's work. Horton situates
the director in the context of over 3,000 years of Greek culture and
history. Somewhat like Andrei Tarkovsky in Russia or Antonioni in Italy,
Angelopoulos has used cinema to explore the history and individual
identities of his culture. With such far-reaching influences as Greek
myth, ancient tragedy and epic, Byzantine iconography and ceremony,
Greek and Balkan history, modern Greek pop culture including bouzouki
music, shadow puppet theater, and the Greek music hall tradition,
Angelopoulos emerges as an original "thinker" with the camera, and a
distinctive director who is bound to make a lasting contribution to the
art form.
In a series of films including The Travelling Players, Voyage to
Cythera, Landscape in the Mist, The Suspended Step of the Stork,
and most recently in Ulysses' Gaze starring Harvey Keitel (winner of
the 1995 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix), Angelopoulos has developed a
remarkable cinematic style, characterized by carefully composed scenes
and an enormous number of extended long shots. In an age of ever
decreasing attention spans, Angelopoulos offers a cinema of
contemplation.