Dust of Time – The most poetic and personal film directed by Angelopoulos
“The Dust of Time”
Dust of Time: the most poetic and personal film directed by Angelopoulos
Angelopoulos describes himself as an intermediary who turns pre-existing stories into reality.
Angelopoulos did not say much by way of introduction, but he responded well to the many questions put to him.
He talked about commercial cinema which targets a large audience and also about the kind of cinema that tries to find an audience and communicate with people of particular sensitivity.
He described his student years as “a time of absolute innocence and a visionary relationship with the future which no longer exists.”
When discussing critics and criticism, he was unable to hide a tone of bitterness and anger: “Filmmakers are not chosen by critics or the audience. They are chosen by time.”
He commented on his films, the chapters of a long story on human destiny, on the time that has already passed and that which is now transpiring as well as the current era.
“We are experiencing a time with a closed horizon. It is the most locked-up period I have experienced, it is a 100 percent foggy landscape. We are living in a world that has no idea where it is heading.”
Next project Angelopoulos said he was the intermediary for turning existing stories into reality.
For the first time, he revealed the provisional title of his next film, “Tomorrow,” but refused to say more about it. “An idea needs to sleep until it is born. If you shake it, it is destroyed.”
“The Dust of Time” is described as a story without borders, a review of the past century through a love that challenges time.
“I hope the film will be seen for what it is and not as something else,”
he said, ending the meeting, two days before the film’s Athens premiere and three days ahead of its screening at the Berlin Film Festival.
The scenario is about an American director of Greek ancestry who is making a film that tells his story and the story of his parents.
It is a tale that unfolds in Italy, Germany, Russia, Kazakhstan, Canada and the United States.
The main character is Eleni, who claims the absoluteness of love.
The film is also a long journey into the vast history and the events of the last fifty years that left their mark on the 20th century.
The characters in the film move as though in a dream with the dust of time confusing memories.
Source Text: ANA–MPA – E-Kathimerini
Source Image: Christophe Penchenat
Through references to the Thebaid cycle, the three films that make up Theo Angelopoulos’ “Trilogy” follow the destiny of Hellenism as recorded in the relationship of two people, who first meet as children in 1919 during the flight of the Greeks from Odessa, only to lose each other and find each other again in different time periods in different parts of the world, living through the great historic events of the 20th century and the turn of the 21st.
The second film of the trilogy is entitled “THE DUST OF TIME” and takes place in the former Soviet Union, the Austrian-Hungarian borders, Italy and New York between 1953 and 1974, from the eve of Stalin’s death to Nixon’s resignation in the United States and the fall of the Greek junta.
The shootings of the film took place in Greece, Kazakhstan, Russia, Italy and Germany and finished in February 2008. It is a Greek-German-Italian-Russian co-production. Many international actors participate in the film such as: Willem Dafoe, Irene Jacob, Bruno Ganz and Michel Piccoli.
Source Text: CL productions
La Ivolution 