On this day, January 24, 2012, the great Greek director and screenwriter passed away Theodoros Angelopoulos, one of the most important creators of modern Greek cinema. His poetic cinema, which is full of allegories regarding 20th century Greek history, politics and society, brought him to the forefront of European Modernism.

Studies in Paris and return to Greece

Theodoros Angelopoulos was born in Athens on April 27, 1935. In 1961 he left his studies at the Athens Law School and left for Paris. He initially attended courses in French literature, filmology and ethnology at the Sorbonne, while in 1962-63 he was admitted to the Institute of Higher Cinematographic Studies (IDHEC). In the same period, Tonia Marketakis, Alexis Grivas, Stavros Konstandarakos, Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Lambros Liaropoulos also studied at IDHEC, who together with Angelopoulos and others will form the famous generation of the New Greek Cinema (NEK).

A dispute with one of his professors leads him to permanently interrupt his studies there. In the period 1963-64 he apprenticed with the ethnologist Jean Roux at the Museum of Man (Musee de l’homme). In 1964 he returned to Greece and worked as a film critic for the newspaper “Democratic Change” until it was closed by the Junta of the Colonels in 1967. Meanwhile his first attempt to make a film in 1965, entitled “Forminx Story”, failed fruitless.

Film

The first steps

In 1968, the modular film he attempted to create together with other NEK filmmakers did not find funding, however he managed to shoot his own piece, the short film “Ekpopi”. A group of journalists pours into the streets of Athens and searches among the people who meets the image of the ideal man. In the same period, he created the magazine “Synchronos Kinematografos” together with Vassilis Raphaelides, Tonia Marketakis and other NEK directors and critics.

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