The Travelling Players

The film follows a group of travelling players in Greece, between 1939-1952, as they wander through provinces, cities and villages, performing, in increasingly threadbare circumstances, a 19th century pastoral melodrama, Peresiadis’s Golfo the Shepherdess. The political history of Greece and the private lives of members of the troupe, who also belong to the same family, become inextricably entwined. The adventures of Orestes, his sister, his father, his mother and her lover are redolent of the myth of the House of Atreus. The father is executed by the German occupiers after being turned in by his wife’s lover; Orestes, a communist guerilla, assisted by his sister Electra, will kill his mother and her lover on stage, only to be executed himself during the cleansing operations against the Greek guerillas carried out during the Civil War. The film’s sequential structure, complex and complicated, is built around continuous temporal maneuvers and alternating time periods.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.
Script: Theo Angelopoulos
Cinematography: Yorgos Arvanitis
Editing: Takis Davlopoulos,Yorgos Triantafyllou
Sound: Thanassis Arvanitis
Music: Loukianos Kilaidonis
Actors: Eva Kotamanidou, Vangelis Kazan, Aliki Georgouli, Kyriakos Katrivanos, Stratos Pachis, Nina Papazafeiropoulou, Yannis Fyrios, Alexis Boubis, Maria Vassileiou, Grigoris Evangelatos, Petros Zarkadis
Producers: Yorgos Papalios
Costumes: Mikes Karapiperis
Production Design: Yorgos Samiotis
Sets: Mikes Karapiperis
Format: 35mm Color
Production Country: Greece
Production Year: 1975
Duration: 230
Costumes Illustrations: Yorgos Patsas
Assistant Director: Takis Katselis
Unit Production Manager: Stefanos Vlachos, Christos
Paliyannopoulos, Lefteris Charonitis

Awards
1975: International Film Critics Award (FIPRESCI) – Cannes IFF
1975: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor(Vangelis Kazan), Best Actress (Eva Kotamanidou), Greek Critics Association Awards – Thessaloniki Film Festival
1975: Interfilm Award – Berlinale Forum
1975: Best Film of the Year – Βritish Film Institute
1975: “Golden Age” Award (for best film of the year) – Brussels
1979: Best Film for 1971-1980 –Italian Film Critics’ Association

 With the support of the GFC

Theo Angelopoulos

He was born in Athens in 1935. In 1968, he presented his first short film, The Broadcast, at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Two years later, his first feature film, Reconstruction, won First Prize at Thessaloniki, as well as several other prizes at international festivals around the world, signalling the dawn of Modern Greek cinema. His films were screened at various film festivals and garnered numerous nominations and awards, culminating in the Golden Palm at Cannes, in 1998, for Eternity and a Day. He died on January 24th, 2012, following an accident during the shooting of his film The Other Sea.

Filmography

(selected)
1970 Reconstruction
1972 Days of ’36
1975 The Travelling Players
1980 Megalexandros (Alexander the Great)
1984 Voyage to Cythera
1988 Landscape in the Mist
1991 The Suspended Step of the Stork
1995 Ulysses’ Gaze
1998 Eternity and a Day
2008 The Dust of Time