Periplus

Pictures of the Mediterranean made with bread, oil and wine. In one meal the history, geography, economy, climate, culture and people of the Mediterranean. Close up of threshing floors, threshing floors, mills. Dietary habits, production methods, daily routines together with the natural and built environment make up the cultural body of the most interesting, perhaps, man-made environment in history. A culture that runs as a commonplace even in seemingly different worlds. The Mediterranean emerges in a sea of convergence and meeting without, however, ignoring the dynamics of the different.

Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

The documentary presents rare photographic archives and hitherto unknown film documents documenting the unique case of Grigoris Lambrakis. Valuable first-time material that has been specially edited to be saved and shared with the public decades later. In the documentary - among other things - Grigoris Lambrakis himself appears in the Marathon Peace March, while footage of the popular pilgrimage to his body and the grand funeral-demonstration are presented, as well as testimonies of people who knew or worked with Grigoris Lambrakis.

Documentary that recounts the ups and downs of the shooting of Eternity and a Day (1998), focusing on the exhaustive preparation of the shot-sequence that closes the film, and the peculiar way in which Theo Angelopoulos works with his technical team and actors.

The Mountain Tears' follows the odyssey of a guild of stonemasons during the troublesome first years of the twentieth century. Far from their homeland, hunted, cut off by war and battles, slowly or quickly, they will perish one by one, and only Markos, the master builder, like another Ulysses, will continue his wandering.