Theo Angelopoulos’ Early Films and the Demystification of Power
Theo Angelopoulos’ Early Films and the Demystification of Power
This chapter examines the ways that Theo Angelopoulos forged a cinema of demystification, whose individual films ‘contested history as the justifying discourse of power and authority’. Angelopoulos' trilogy of History includes Days of '36, The Travelling Players, and The Hunters. This trilogy is one of the most radical ‘political’ interventions attempted within the established visual poetics of World Cinema. Both historically and culturally, these films were produced at the beginning and the end of a period of extreme experimentation with visual representation, becoming in their own distinct ways meditations on the limits of representability, on the function of cinematic images, and on the visualisation of collective memory. The chapter offers a reading of Angelopoulos' historical trilogy and shows that all three films articulated an integrated vision of how structures and institutions work together to deprive contemporary citizens of their agency and self-determination.
Keywords: power, Theo Angelopoulos, demystification, trilogy, Days of '36, The Travelling Players, The Hunters, World Cinema, collective memory
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