Ulysses’s Gaze movie storyline. A successful Greek filmmaker A (Harvey Keitel) is returning home and sets out on an epic journey across the battered Balkans in search of three lost reels of film by the Manaki brothers, the pioneering photographers who introduced movies into the Ottoman Balkans at the beginning of the century.
The search for the reels of film works as a metaphor for a search for the common history of the Balkan countries, before the Balkan Wars split them along ethnic lines. The film ends in Sarajevo, where A finds both the lost reels and his true love (Maia Morgensten), who is executed by a death squad. The director laments both the lost love and the impossibility of building a new solidarity in the Balkans.
Ulysses’ Gaze (Greek: Το βλέμμα του Οδυσσέα, translit. To Vlemma tou Odyssea) is a 1995 Greek film directed by Theo Angelopoulos and starring Harvey Keitel, Erland Josephson, Maia Morgenstern, Thanasis Vengos, Giorgos Mihalakopoulos, Costas Santas, Dora Volanaki and Mania Papadimitriou. The film was selected as the Greek entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 68th Academy Awards but it was not nominated.
Director’s Comment
A, a Greek filmmaker living in exile in the United States, returns to his native Ptolemas to attend a special screening of one of his extremely controversial films. But A’s real interest lies elsewhere–the mythical reels of the very first film shot by the Manakia brothers, who, at the dawn of the age of cinema, tirelessly criss-crossed the Balkans and, without regard for national and ethnic strife, recorded the region’s history and customs.
Did these primitive, never-developed images really exist? If so, where are they? – “Why A? It’s an alphabetical choice. Every filmmaker remembers the first time he looked through the viewfinder of a camera. It is a moment that is not so much the discovery of cinema–but the discovery of the world. But there comes a moment when the filmmaker begins to doubt his own capacity to see things, when he no longer knows if his gaze is right and innocent.” —Theo Angelopoulos
Ulysses’s Gaze (1995)
Directed by: Theo Angelopoulos
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Erland Josephson, Maia Morgenstern, Thanasis Vengos, Giorgos Mihalakopoulos, Costas Santas, Dora Volanaki, Mania Papadimitriou
Screenplay by: Theo Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris, Giorgio Silvagni, Kain Tsitseli
Production Design by: Dinos Katsouridis
Cinematography by: Giorgos Arvanitis, Andreas Sinanos
Film Editing by: Takis Koumoundouros, Yannis Tsitsopoulos
Costume Design by: Giorgos Ziakas
Set Decoration by: Miodrag Nikolic, Giorgos Patsas
Music by: Eleni Karaindrou
Distributed by: Roissy Films
Release Date: September 13, 1995 (France)
Views: 161
