The Cinematheque

“A summation of all its maker’s strengths, poetry, fears, and desires … One of the century’s revolutionary masterpieces—in any art form.”

Michael Wilmington, Film Comment

Described as ​“perhaps the greatest unseen film of the ​’70s” (Michael Wilmington, Film Comment) and ​“quite possibly the greatest film in the history of Greek cinema” (James Quandt, TIFF), Theo Angelopoulos’s stunning chef d’oeuvre takes a panoramic look at Greek history during the turbulent years of 1939 to 1952: the Metaxas dictatorship, the Italian invasion, the German occupation, the liberation, the civil war, the defeat of the left, and the ascendancy of Papagos and the right. This history is recounted through the adventures of a troupe of actors, whose efforts to mount a 19th-century pastoral drama are thwarted by the momentous events of the period. Epic in scope (as well as epic in the Brechtian sense), The Travelling Players is composed of only 80 shots. Angelopoulos, whose mastery of the sequence shot has never been more evident, keeps the action moving effortlessly back and forth in time—sometimes within the space of a single, unbroken take!

The March 30 screening of The Travelling Players will include a 30-minute introduction by Spyros A. Sofos, assistant professor in the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at SFU. This introduction will be followed by a short break before the film begins.