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Journalism of Courage
The recent Kolkata Film Festival had a distinguished visitor: Theo Angelopoulos, the invincible maestro of Greek cinema. A retrospective of six of his films captivated thousands of viewers.
Angelopoulos, described as 8216;one of the cinema8217;s great unsolved mysteries8217; by Michael Wilmington, is the first filmmaker to have dared to tackle the Balkan crisis and the human massacres it entailed. Through films like Voyage To Cythera, The Suspended Step of the Stork, Ulysses8217; Gaze and Eternity and a Day, he turned the lens on the Balkan wars that killed thousands of innocents. These films are a tribute to those human beings trapped in a situation not of their making.
According to Angelopoulos, his own country is no exception. He has accused the Greek rulers of killing innocent Albanians who were human beings first and refugees later. The depiction of these brutalities has found strong expression in his films which have gone on to become winners of successive Grand Prix at the Venice and Cannes film festivals.
Of course, Angelopoulos is acutely conscious of the complexities. Says he, 8216;It is a very difficult time for artists of all kinds and writers, of course, in the Balkans today. Nobody wants to listen. Nobody. With the killings, the wars, the struggles, troubles, no one can listen and art, true art, demands listening8217;.
In his last three films 8212; The Suspended Step of the Stork, Ulysses8217; Gaze and Eternity And A Day 8212; there is clear evidence of his partisan stand where he voices his human concerns, cool and yet angry, over ethnic cleansing, destruction, the civil wars and finally a vacuum in Central Europe.
Having experienced the dark scenario of the elegiac Balkan tragedy, Angelopoulos is at pains to remark: 8216;8216;One era is ending and another is about to be born. We are very much 8216;in-between8217;, all of us here.8217;8217; His films speak for himself; it says a new epoch is beginning and borders, attitudes, relations, nations, everything is set to change.
His artistic sensibilities are manifested through his protagonist, Alexander, a character who appears in every film, and Spyros, another Greek mythic hero, who makes us aware of a terrible time when our individual lives are affected by the terrible problems we face.
As the conscience of the times, Angelopoulos appears to capture something of the melancholy we feel today, surrounded by murder here and there and catastrophes in general.
