ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION
“Speaking About Theo Angelopoulos”
On Thursday, November 8, 2012, at the John Cassavetes Theater, the Round Table Discussion on Theo Angelopoulos took place in an emotionally charged atmosphere. The discussion “Speaking about Theo Angelopoulos” is part of the Tribute to the work of this director held by the 53rd Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Present was Festival director Dimitri Eipides. The participants were close friends and collaborators of the acclaimed director: composer Eleni Karaindrou, director Margarita Manda, photographer Dimitris Sofikitis, production designer Yiorgos Ziakas, as well as actors Eva Kotamanidou and Omero Antonutti. Journalist and film critic Maria Katsounaki coordinated the discussion.
Ms Katsounaki noted: “The 53rd Thessaloniki International Film Festival could not do anything but honour Theo Angelopoulos. It has had strong ties with him while he was alive; ties which his death did not loosen but rather strengthened. Theo Angelopoulos will never cease to be present because time is his ally, as it only happens with great artists. I am deeply moved and consider it a great honour that the Festival has assigned me the coordination of this discussion”.
Mr. Eipides spoke in turn: “Thank you for being with us today. Today’s event is very difficult for me, personally. Theo and I were friends for almost fifty years. I got to know him at the first screening of The Travelling Players in Berlin, if I’m not mistaken. It was an evening screening, it began around 9 or 10 at night, and by the time we left the cinema, after speaking with the enthusiastic audience, and with us Greeks in a state of frenzy, the sun had already risen. It was a sunny day in Berlin. I have loved his work and it has influenced me. The group of people who are with us today have worked closely with him and they will tell us about their memories and experiences. It is rather like a celebration; we are celebrating Theo, and I hope we will celebrate him forever. He is immortal”.
Before turning the discussion over to the director’s collaborators, Ms Katsounaki presented her own personal experience of knowing him. “I first met him for an interview during the shooting of The Beekeeper. Seferi’s verses were the motto: ‘to speak simply, may this grace be given to me’. The title was for Theo Angelopoulos’ own clarification, that when we say simply we do not mean simplistically, but sparsely and with an economy of expressive spoken means. Afterwards, many other interviews followed, and reports from his film shoots. Twenty-six years later, I will disagree with him. I don’t know if he conquered simplicity, but I know that this conscientious leftist, this cinematic warrior, as Le Monde had called him, in the last few years had become more immediate, more confessional, perhaps more melancholy but certainly more stubborn, more resistant and more persistent. It was not only his characters whose eyes filled with tears, his own did as well. This is how I will remember him, from The Dust of Time, gesturing with his hand raised but not in farewell. Perhaps a simple greeting, perhaps a welcome”, Ms Katsounaki said.
Then Eva Kotamanidou spoke. She first met the director for The Travelling Players: “Our first meeting was in the summer of 1973, when I received a phone call to go to his small office on Aristotelous street so he could see me about a film. He was preparing The Travelling Players and was casting for actors. Our fist contact was overwhelming. We spoke, one of his collaborators took photos of me, and he told me that he would call me to give me the final ok, so you can understand the immense joy I felt. Our first shoot was at the main square of Karditsa. Then the Polytechnic incidents happened and everything came to a stop. We started again during the hardest period of the junta, under Ioannidis. The shoot lasted almost two years. When The Travelling Players began during the junta, none of us actors knew what film we were shooting, what the script was or what our role was. They were difficult times and Theo didn’t know who we were. We shot long and distant shots and when he began to get to know us, he called us to his room one day at a hotel in Ioannena and told us the story of the script”. Speaking on the relationship between Angelopoulos’ work and History, Ms Kotamanidou noted: “Theo was always a lover of History. His films always focused on historical events, but he didn’t do reconstructions of History. Essentially he used History, without changing it of course, in order to speak through his own aesthetic, artistic and creative point of view. I remember that some old leftists accused him of not saying things in a certain way and saying things in another way with The Travelling Players”. She also spoke about the way her theatrical roots helped her approach the work of Angelopoulos: “Coming from theatre, I trembled at the thought of standing in front of the camera. But when we began those great, magnificent travelling shots which moved both the audience and ourselves through time and space, I had the feeling that the lens didn’t come close to me and I could express myself with my whole being. It was the ‘physical theatre’ that we spoke about at the Art Theatre (Theatro Technis in Athens) from which I came. Because the body speaks a great deal according to how it moves, and reacts as strongly as speech does. What I was seeing was not the cinema I knew. This film language was hugely fascinating”. In closing, Ms Kotamanidou noted: “I am sure that Theo will not be forgotten, his work is great. New generations will see it and enjoy it as we who took part in it did”.
Actor Omero Antonutti who played Alexander the Great in the film of the same name noted: “To begin, I should mention that before Alexander the Great I had worked with the Taviani brothers in Padre Padrone, but after that I had not worked for two whole years. This happened because the Italian film scene, the directors, actors, didn’t know me and I looked like an actor someone found on the street. I imagine they asked themselves if I were a shepherd from Sardinia, and on the one hand I liked this, but on the other I didn’t. When Theo Angelopoulos called me, I thought it was a joke. I had seen The Travelling Players and Theo Angelopoulos was already considered a pillar of the new international cinema. I asked myself how this great director came to Rome to get my agreement for a film. We thought it over for a year, both he and I, until we decided due to a number of issues. There were difficulties. When the film was finished people asked who played Alexander the Great, and finally they started calling me an actor. I thank him for the road he opened for me”. Speaking about the director away from the set, Mr. Antonutti added: “He was an imaginative, pleasant person, but during the shoot he was very demanding and that is a good thing. The work was hard because he wanted the result to be perfect”. He added: “Theo Angelopoulos was trying to show that three powers, the anarchic, the authoritarian and the public can be united and give life to a true socialism. Even after the dissolution of the idea, a small Alexander will be born who will go on to a new era. That was his commitment. We thought that it could be realized, but even in our day people are struggling”.
Then Yiorgos Ziakas spoke, noting: “For me, The Travelling Players and The Hunters were among the most significant points of my career. We will never forget Theo, he will remain in eternity and the enormous work he left behind will be known by future generations”. Visibly moved, he spoke about the last time he saw the director: “It was half an hour before he left, at the set of The Other Sea, where I was dressing the two drivers of the fatal scene. Theo always wanted his friends and collaborators near him; he wanted our assurance at the end of the scene. When he was happy with the shot, he shouted a general ‘Stop!’, and took a small jump. So I go to find him and he says ‘long time no see’ and I ask ‘aren’t you tired from yesterday and the day before?’ He was very happy that day. He went away truly happy, almost running down the stairs – and in half an hour he was ‘gone’”. Mr. Ziakas recalled his first meeting with the director: “I got to know him better when, because I was friends with Eva, I came upon the crew shooting the scene at the cafe. After that came The Hunters: first collaboration, the telling of the story of the script. Theo’s storytelling was one of the most magical things. He had a way of immersing you into it to the brim. An incredible way of narrating and changing the script, even while narrating it. The many changes he made to the script can be seen by his many drafts – in fact his last film was in its one hundredth draft”. Mr. Ziakas added: “I won Theo’s trust during the first shoot of The Hunters. I became a part of the group he called his family. Theo was greatly tied to people as well as locations. Our collaboration was magical because of the things I learned and because of his unique persistence on detail. He was a most charming person”.
Visibly moved, director Margarita Manda spoke about the first time she met Theo Angelopoulos: “We bumped our heads together at our first meeting”, she said and explained that they were both walking on Skoufa street, looking down and bumped into each other when she was still a film student. “Eight years later he proposed that I work on Ulysses’ Gaze. He gave me the script and I read it in one go, I had never read anything like it. When I came to the end I began crying uncontrollably, because the beauty was so great I couldn’t contain it. When we began working, I would have a shock every day. He worked harder than anyone I’ve ever met. The harshness with which he made himself work was a revelation for me and made me work even harder. That film changed my life and my view on cinema”, Ms Manda noted and added: “The shoot was an erotic act, full of adrenaline, sanctity, solemnity, a gamble. I am very lucky to have gotten to know this cinema and this way of making films. For me, Theo Angelopoulos was the teacher of a lifetime. I saw the way he placed his trust, and this is the most important lesson I ever received. I owe him a great deal and I am deeply grateful to him”.
Then composer Eleni Karaindrou spoke. “It is very difficult for me to speak about Theo in the past tense. For me he is here, present through his work and his vision. What I really lived and felt about him I have talked about through my music. I remember our first meeting 29 years ago as if it were yesterday. He called to tell me that he wanted me to compose the music for Voyage to Cythera. He told me that he had been writing the script for a long time, listening to Vivaldi’s concert for two mandolins. The invitation and the challenge was to compose variations on this”, Ms Karaindrou said and added: “I have made eight films with him, eight magnificent journeys, but each time when I began I felt as if it were the first time, the same agitation, the same touch. Something like a celebration. We had something ritualistic, our own code. What is stamped in my memory was the shoots and the frightening “let’s go!” from Theo. In the strength of his voice was his strong belief of what had to happen at that moment. Theo Angelopoulos inspired people. He was a poet and a prophet, and I believe that in thirty years his films will be seen differently. I am sure of this. I want to say a very big thank you and express a deep gratitude because it was an extremely significant meeting that led me to self-knowledge”.
Photographer Dimitris Sofikitis then shared a memory of a trip he took with Theo Angelopoulos to Epirus: “A great love for the country and for travel connected the two of us. We both had a great adoration. This journey lasted about thirty-five years. It began two years before every production for location scouting. There were unbelievable adventures, joys, sorrows and dangers in it. When every trip was over we thought about the next one. I could tell countless stories, but I will focus on only one. Theo and I were travelling with Mike Karapiperis and Georges Arvanitis, a jokester duo. We were in Epirus in winter, at a village called Syrrako. There is not a soul around; only the cafe on the square and a few farmers inside it guarding the village. Entering the cafe, Georges says to Theo: “Tell them that you are Angelopoulos and you make films”, and Mike adds: “There is no way they don’t know who you are”, and they start to joke with each other. Theo, very serious, says: “That’s exactly what I’m going to say. I am Theo Angelopoulos, I make films and I am scouting for locations”. The villagers look at each other and say: “you know who this gentleman is? He’s the one whose movie I took you to see in Ioannena”. And this was The Travelling Players. Georges and Mike are thunderstruck. Of course Theo was enjoying himself with his unique smile as if saying: “Just so you youngsters learn”. At some point Theo asked the villagers how they liked the film, and one of them answered: “Listen, we didn’t understand much, but what I can tell you is that it’s a thing that belongs to us”. For Theo, that was the greatest award he could have received”, Mr. Sofikitis said.
Ms Kotamanidou answered a question as to whether or not the director’s work is populist: “His films, and particularly The Travelling Players spoke strongly to the popular sentiment during the junta. I wouldn’t say that he was just populist. Theo was a very intelligent man, well read, with high aesthetics, with a great deal of knowledge, so I believe that the audience responded according to its own education”. In answer to the same question, Mr. Antonutti added: “It depends by what we mean by populist. Theo Angelopoulos is well known in Greece and abroad. He makes a kind of cinema we don’t see elsewhere, and from its cinematography alone you know that it is one of his films. One needs culture and education to understand his films”.
Closing the discussion, Ms Katsounaki quoted a phrase from Theo Angelopoulos that Margarita Manda had entrusted to her a few months after the director’s death: “We do not abandon, we continue”.
It should be noted that the tribute to Theo Angelopoulos includes the screening of three important films in his career, as well as a concert by Eleni Karaindrou “Music for the Films of Theo Angelopoulos”, which will take place at the Thessaloniki Concert Hall with the participation of Dimitra Galani and the Human Touch jazz trio (David Lynch, Stavros Lantsias and Gioti Kiourtsoglou) – a collaboration of the TIFF with the Thessaloniki State Orchestra. The tribute is also accompanied by a bilingual publication on the director’s complete works.
The tribute to Theo Angelopoulos is financed along with other 53rd Festival activities, by the European Union – European Regional Development Fund, part of Central Macedonia IMA 2007 – 2013.
