Voyage to Cythera

The film is about an old man – the country’s leftist past – who cannot become reconciled to his country’s present; or perhaps it is Greece that is not ready to come to grips with its past. In the end, the old man is set adrift on a raft headed away from Greece into international waters, with no home to steer toward, joined by his wife, a latter-day Penelope who, despite the fact that this man is more a stranger than a husband to her after so many years, chooses to share the rest of her life with him and in doing so accepts all of his past, his sorrow, his politics and his failed dreams. It is a journey to the dark side of Greek history where it crosses paths with myth.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.
Script: Theo Angelopoulos based on an idea by: Theo Angelopoulos, Pierre Baudry with the collaboration of: Tonino Guerra, Thanassis Valtinos
Cinematography: Yorgos Arvanitis
Editing: Yorgos Trantafyllou
Sound: Thanassis Arvanitis, Dinos Kittou, Nikos Achladis
Music: Eleni Karaindrou
Actors: Manos Katrakis (old man), Mary Chronopoulou (Voula), Dionysis Papagiannopoulos (Antonis), Dora Volanaki (old woman), Giulio Brogi (Alexander), Yorgos Nezos (Panagiotis), Athinodoros Proussalis (police
Production: Theo Angelopoulos, Greek Film Center, Greek Television (ERT-1), ZDF (Germany), Channel 4 (UK), R.A.I. (Italy)
Producers: Theo Angelopoulos, Yorgos Samiotis
Art Direction: Mikes Karapiperis
Costumes: Yorgos Ziakas
Format: 35mm Color
Production Country: Greece
Production Year: 1984
Duration: 137
Assistant Editor: Dimitris Veinoglou
Sound mix: Thanassis Arvanitis
Assistant Directors: Takis Katselis, Haris Papadopoulos, Nikos Sekeris
Executive producer: Nikos Angelopoulos
Unit Production Managers: Yorgos Samiotis, Pavlos Xenakis, Phoebe Stavropoulou, Vera Lykouressis

1984: Best Screenplay, FIPRESCI Award – Cannes IFF
1984: Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Manos Katrakis), Best Actress (Dora Volanaki), Best Set Design, Critics’ Award – Rio De Janeiro Film Festival

Theo Angelopoulos

He was born in Athens in 1935. He began to study Law in Athens, but dropped out of university before his graduation. In 1961 he left for Paris, where he attended courses in French Literature, Filmology, and Ethnology, before going on to study at the IDHEC Film Academy and the Musee de l’homme. He returned to Greece in 1963 and worked as a film critic for four years. 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. The distinctive sequence shots in The Travelling Players (1975) established his personal style. 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 was awarded an honorary doctorate from Vrije Universiteit in Brussels (1995), Nanterre La Defense (2001), Essex University (2001), the University of Western Macedonia (2008), the University of the Aegean (2009) and Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir (2010). He died on January 24th, 2012, following an accident during the shooting of his film The Other Sea.

Filmography

1965 Forminx Story (unfinished)
1968 The Broadcast (short)
1970 Reconstruction
1972 Days of ’36
1975 The Travelling Players
1977 The Hunters
1980 Alexander the Great
1981 One Village, One Villager (ντοκ/doc)
1983 Athens, Return to the Acropolis (ντοκ/doc)
1984 Voyage to Cythera
1986 The Beekeeper
1988 Landscape in the Mist
1991 The Suspended Step of the Stork
1995 Lumiere and Company: Ulysses (segment)
1995 Ulysses’ Gaze
1998 Eternity and a Day
2004 Trilogy Ι:The Weeping Meadow
2007 To Each his Own Cinema: Three Minutes (segment)
2008 The Dust of Time
2012 The Other Sea (ημιτελής/unfinished)