Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos dies in accident Filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, aged 76, hit by motorcycle while working on new movie The Other Sea.
Greece's award-winning film director Theo Angelopoulos died on January 24, 2012 after being hit by a motorcycle while crossing a street, a hospital official said. He was 76. Photo: AFP/Getty10:45AM GMT 25 Jan 2012
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Theo Angelopoulos, an award-winning Greek filmmaker known for his slow and dreamlike style as a director, was killed in a road accident yesterday while working on his latest movie. He was 76.
Police and hospital officials said Angelopoulos suffered serious head injuries and died at a hospital after being hit by a motorcycle while walking across a road close to a movie set near Athens' main port of Piraeus.
The driver, also injured, was later identified as an off-duty police officer.
The accident occurred while Angelopoulos was working on his upcoming movie The Other Sea.
Angelopoulos had won numerous awards for his movies, mostly at European film festivals, during a career that spanned more than 40 years.
In 1995, he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Ulysses' Gaze, starring American actor Harvey Keitel.
Three years later, he won the main prize at the festival, the Palme d'Or, for Eternity and a Day, starring Swiss actor Bruno Ganz.
Born in Athens in 1935, Angelopoulos lived through the Nazi occupation of Greece during World War II and the ensuing 1946-49 Greek Civil War - recurring themes in his early films.
He studied law at Athens University, but eventually lost interest and moved to France where he studied film at the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris.
After returning to Greece, he worked as a film critic for a small, left-wing newspaper and started to make films during the 1967-74 dictatorship.
Described as mild-mannered but uncompromising, Angelopoulos' often sad and slow-moving films mostly dealt with issues from Greece's turbulent recent history: war, exile, immigration and political division.
It was not until 1984 with "Voyage to Kythera" that his scripts were written in collaboration with others.
Angelopoulos mostly attracted art-house audiences, using established actors including Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau in two of his most widely acclaimed films, "The Bee Keeper" and "The Suspended Stride of the Stalk."
Bleak landscapes, the slow editing pace, and the long spells without any dialogue, common in Angelopoulos movies did not always please filmgoers or critics.
The American film critic Roger Ebert wrote of "Ulysses' Gaze": "There is a temptation to give 'Ulysses' Gaze' the benefit of the doubt: To praise it for its vision, its daring, its courage, its great length. But I would not be able to look you in the eye if you went to see it, because how could I deny that it is a numbing bore?"
In a rare television interview last year, Angelopoulos said his next film was to be about Greece's major financial crisis, and he publicly called on rival political parties to work together to try and ease the hardships facing many Greeks.
"I remain a leftist in total confusion," he told state-run NET television, in the interview given several months before the country's two main rival political parties agreed to form a coalition government.
"This is an emergency situation. We must realize this. So we must all examine what can be done - the left and right. This is my plea," he said.
"I am afraid of what tomorrow will bring."
「エレニの旅」に登場したOSE(ギリシャ国鉄)のLb-964蒸気機関車とその列車:ネストス川の鉄橋にて。2005年3月Geogre Togias氏撮影。
『テオ・アンゲロプロス監督が事故死 ギリシャで撮影中、バイクにはねられる 76歳』
2012.01.25 朝日新聞東京夕刊 12頁
「旅芸人の記録」などで知られるギリシャの映画監督、テオ・アンゲロプロスさん(76)が24日、交通事故に遭い、アテネ近郊の病院で死亡した。
AP通信などによると、アンゲロプロスさんはこの日、20世紀を振り返る三部作の3作目「もう一つの海」を撮影していた。トンネル内で道路を渡ろうとした時、バイクにはねられて頭を強く打ったという。
1935年アテネ生まれ。留学先のパリから帰国後、60年代から映画制作を始めた。神話を下敷きにギリシャの現代史を批判的に追った「旅芸人の記録」(75年)でカンヌ映画祭の国際批評家賞、「アレクサンダー大王」(80年)でベネチア映画祭の最高賞である金獅子賞、「永遠と一日」(98年)でカンヌ映画祭の最高賞パルムドールなど、様々な国際的な賞を得た。
極端な長回しや曇天での撮影など、独自のスタイルを貫いた。三部作の1作目「エレニの旅」(2004年)では実際に二つの村を建設。CGを使わずに洪水で水没した村を描き出すなど、徹底した絵作りで従来の常識を超えた作品を生み出した。
●ギリシャの歴史を踏まえつつ、それを突き破り、新しい映画芸術に挑戦した人だった。強く静かなカメラの力で現代を反映した映像美は、圧倒的だった。悲劇的な最期に驚いている。