Biography

Theodoros Angelopoulos

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Theo Angelopoulos began to study law in Athens but broke up his studies to go to the Sorbonne in Paris in order to study literature. When he had finished his studies, he wanted to attend the School of Cinema at Paris but decided instead to go back to Greece. There he worked as a journalist and critic for the newspaper "Demokratiki Allaghi" until it was banned by the military after a coup d'état. Now unemployed, he decided to make his first movie, Reconstruction (1970). Internationally successful was his trilogy about the history of Greece from 1930 to 1970 consisting of Days of '36 (1972), The Travelling Players (1975), and The Hunters (1977). After the end of the dictatorship in Greece, Angelopoulos went to Italy, where he worked with RAI (and more money). His movies then became less political.
- IMDb mini biography by: Volker Boehm

Extremely long, elaborately staged takes
Shots in his films often drift back and forth in time
Often shoots with rainy, wintry and moody weather in provincial Greece
Uses long, static takes combined with complex tracking shots and beautiful landscape photography.

Former student at L'IDHEC (La FEMIS). He had to leave after only 1 year because of aesthetic disagreements with his teachers, who didn't support his interest in shooting sequences in one long take. Ironically, he later became famous for exactly this style of filmmaking.
Worked frequently with composer Eleni Karaindrou.
Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 40th Cannes International Film Festival in 1987.
Often worked with cinematographer Giorgos Arvanitis and Andreas Sinanos, composer Eleni Karaindrou, sound mixer Thanassis Arvanitis, set designer Mikes Karapiperis, writers Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris, Thanassis Valtinos and film editor Giorgos Triandafyllou.
Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival in 1978.

Women more than men are tragic figures. My mother, for example, was Antigone at times or Hecuba other times. In her life she played different roles.
Prizes are prizes, but I still need to tell that story. And being simple is the hardest thing.
In Voyage to Cythera (1984) the voyage is really a reworking of the myth of the Return of Odysseus according to a myth which preceded Homer. Similar to Dante's version, there is a pre-Homeric version that Odysseus set sail again after reaching Ithaca. So the film becomes more a leaving than a homecoming. I have a soft spot for the ancient writings. There really is nothing new. We are all just revising and reconsidering ideas that the ancients first treated.
For all of the difficulties, all the frustrations and hardships, filmmaking is, finally, a human adventure...
Alexander the Great (1980) involves the transformation of a person into a tyrant. It does not aim only at the phenomenon of fascism or of Stalinism, but also any type of power. The view expressed in Alexander the Great is that of the danger of the transformation of any authority or power, regardless of how good its intentions were at the beginning, into despotism.

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