Statistics and Cultural Context in Theo Angelopoulos's Camerawork: The
FILMICON: Journal of Greek Film Studies ISSUE 3, October 2015 Statistics and Cultural Context in Theo Angelopoulos’s Camerawork: The Case of the Film Eternity and a Day Ioannis Skopeteas University of the Aegean ABSTRACT This paper applies a statistical style analysis on one of Theo Angelopoulos’s most prominent stylistic features, camerawork, in his acclaimed film Eternity and a Day (1998). Then, it contextualizes the results in order to trace Angelopoulos’s cultural background and his limits as filmmaker. At the end, through the statistics it is revealed the signature style of Angelopoulos, that is a ‘real’ complicated space and a concrete piece of time, lasting minutes, with no effects and no editing, which is depicted by a moving camera in a constant process of forming an artificial ‘stage’ for contemplation. This paper is a contribution to how Angelopoulos further developed film auteurism and the political cinematic modernism of his generation. KEYWORDS Angelopoulos camerawork cinematography Greek cinema statistics style 65 STATISTICS AND CULTURAL CONTEXT ISSUE 3, October 2015 Since 1970 and the first feature film of Theo Angelopoulos (Anaparastasi/Reconstruction), there have been plenty of academic and journalistic texts commenting on themes and concepts of his cinematic image: the Journey, the Exile, the Political and the Historical, the Myth, the Utopia and the Allegory, the Melancholy, the 20th century tragedy, the history of Greece, the Balkans and Europe. Similarly, and according to the background of the authors, in a considerable number of reports, headlines, articles and reviews, Angelopoulos has occasionally been characterized as poet, auteur, philosopher, ambassador of the Greek spirit or the last modernist, as for example, in compilations such as Stathi’s (2000) or Horton’s (1997).
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