“When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth... and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible.”
- Richard Linklater, Waking Life
“They accuse me of ‘nostalgia’. When I say that the city has changed, they accuse me of not being able ahead with the times. When my heart breaks, with that most delicate of human emotion, when she says ‘goodbye, see you in five years’, they accuse me of not being on ‘Facebook’. When I refuse to enter Peco’s with its new playlist and its hideous new neon sign, they accuse me of playing ‘misanthrope’. I have only this to say to them, “Look around you and tell me in one true breath- what have you got that is real and human and living?
If I could only take them back to that time and place of arcane and forgotten Bangalore that is in my head, perhaps I could show you. You can say that my memory of the city is deluded, corrupted by yearning, fantasized out of proportion by longing. But it is all there for me- the memory, the longing, the yearning, the love, the dream. All I ask is for you to explain how an image so rapturous, sublime and full-of-life could take seed and how I could once dare to hope and live so gloriously if the city had not been so loving, teeming and so very alive. It is not the story of paradise lost, it is not a critique and there’s no one to blame, not even time. It’s just a lament.”
- Notes from the Bangalore Underground
There is no treachery in the images of Theo Angelopoulos. It is the cinema of myths and dreams where the image is free of all constraints and dissolves into pure illumination. It is the cinema of the unbearably sublime and intangible. It is the cinema of the human condition. Bangalore Film Society is proud to present 'The Moon and the Tide' three meditations on cinema, history, time and life by, arguably, the greatest living filmmaker of our times – Theo Angelopoulos.
Friday 24th April, 2009 Time: 6.15pm
Landscape in the Mist (1988/126min) Dir: Theo Angelopoulos
“Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river.”
- Jose Luis Borges
Angelopoulos’ masterpiece ‘Landscape in the Mist’ chronicles the journey of a brother-sister duo as they attempt to cross into Germany in an attempt to seek out the father they have never known or seen but have only heard about from their mother. A road movie, a coming of age tale, the story of life imagined as dream, myth and poetry, Angelopoulos pursues his grand, immortal themes even as he casts a compassionate gaze on the mortal characters that inhabit his brilliant and startlingly composed dreamscapes. Winner of the Silver Lion at Venice ’88.
Saturday 25th April 2009 Time: 6.15pm
Eternity and A Day (1998/137min) Dir: Theo Angelopoulos
“We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings?”
- Jose Luis Borges
Regarded by most as Angelopoulos’ greatest work, Eternity and A Day follows Alexandre, a celebrated Greek writer as he embarks on the last day of his life on a mythical journey through time, through landscapes past and present, in a melancholy search of all that he has lost. Winner of the Palm D’Or and the Jury Prize at Cannes ’98, the film features not just the trademark sublime compositions of Angelopoulos but a mesmerizing central performance by one of the greatest actors of our time, Bruno Ganz.
Sunday 26th April 2009 Time: 6.15pm
Voyage to Cythera (1984/120min) Dir: Theo Angelopoulos
“Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.”
- Jose Luis Borges
Angelopoulos re-imagines Homer’s Odyssey as a film-within-a-film modern fable of a Greek political refugee who returns to his motherland after years of exile in Russia. As the exile searches for his roots among the desolate and war-torn landscape, he realizes that he has to come to terms with the fact that the place he called home has long been buried in the sands of time. Winner of the FIPRESCI award and Best Screenplay at Cannes’ 84.
Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India
Tel:25493705/9886213516
Email:bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com
ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)
Links:-
The Theo Angelopoulos Great Director Page
Theo Angelopoulos Interview
(Special thanks to Haridas and Baburaj for contributing their DVDs for the screening)
2 comments:
worse than a feeling, huh?
Great to see BFS back at its old ways. Meditative, lesser heard, important, powerful cinema. Films that leave you with an heavy sky, suspended, waiting to pour down.
Landscape in the Mist was a true revelation, I found it very referential in its grand cinematic themes and elements. Theo truly suspended time and the other parameters to dissect films. Images and the all-pervasive and timeless musical theme took over, and it all went in a blink, and came back in another.
Great, great film. One that leaves you with a feeling of watching something great but you can't get a straight answer. Truly worth battling any amount of rain or depression Bangalore can offer as a hurdle. Looking forward to the remaining films in the retrospective.
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