Death of Angelopoulos
Posted by By ifvc at 27 January, at 13 : 09 PM Print
The film world has lost another great filmmaker, this time from Greece, Theodoros Angelopoulos.
Angelopoulos was a master of extremely long, sinuous sequence shots, which he used to explore themes of Greek cultural identity. He was born April 17, 1935 in Athens. He began to study law but was interrupted by his military service, which also seemed to change his focus since it was after that that he began to look into filmmaking. His first films were made in the wake of the 1967 coup that plunged Greece into military dictatorship.
Angelopoulos was killed on January 24 when he was struck by a motorcycle near the set of his new film in Pireaus. He was taken to the hospital and treated but died soon after of trauma from his injuries.
I was always a fan of this filmmaker’s unique style and have been infatuated with his themes of exile and return.
I will never forget the day that Sydney Pollack, a great American director and a good friend who recommended me for membership in the Academy of Arts and Sciences and who himself left us too early a number of years ago, came into my office and said, ‘Bahman, please give me some Angelopoulos films to watch. I’ve heard that his camerawork is amazing.’ I gave him copies of everything I had in my collection and when he came back, he couldn’t say enough about how impressed he had been by Angelopoulos’s visionary technique.
