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The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: a cinema of contemplation ANDREW HORTON, 1997
Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press (Princeton Modern Greek Studies) pp. xiii, 227, illus. (cloth) At the very beginning of his book on Theo Angelopoulos, Andrew Horton discusses the traits of this director's approach to filmmaking.
(1) Angelopoulos helps to 'reinvent' cinema with each of his films, because for him cinema is not only an aesthetic but a cultural medium as well.
(2) Throughout his career Angelopoulos has been completely fascinated with history. All his films are devoted to it and each one echoes various periods of Greece's past. These reflect a deep preoccupation with Greek myth and culture which intersects with a study of the nature and dangers of the violent abuse of power.
(3) Angelopoulos's cinema is one of meditation; it suggests a desire to transcend.
(4) Angelopoulos plays with notions of 'reconstruction' to force the viewer to re-examine the fictive boundaries of any presentation in an alienated Brechtian discourse.
(5) Angelopoulos has his own concept of character. There are Faulknerian interconnections among themes, personages and locations that run throughout his work. He prefers to locate his films in rural Greece, particularly the northern territories of Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace.
(6) Beyond Greece itself, Angelopoulos stands apart as a director and contemporary citizen deeply concerned with the past and present of the Balkans as geographical, cultural and spiritual territories.