Beyond Borders: Theo Angelopoulos’ Films of the Displaced Periphery

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Theo Angelopoulos’ films have been an exploration of traveling rituals as a form of exile and of the ramifications of return to a lost past. His films are a visual manifestation of the poetics of displacement. Angelopoulos’ work is deeply rooted in the troubled political and social history of Greece, especially of Greece’s periphery rather than of its centers. He returns to Greece to explore the forgotten in the past villages, at the borders of the country, and which are erased from the country’s current geography. In his films, Angelopoulos attempts to melt the past and the present in order to create an alternative reality of modern Greece. He is sincerely preoccupied with those displaced, especially by the Balkan wars, and suffered instability, exile and refugee. The paper will look at films such as Eternity and a Day, Ulysses’ Gaze, and The Traveling Prayers, and the ways in which Angelopoulos revives a lost identity for the abandoned outskirts of the mainland of Greece as well as a personal identity of displacement through his camera. His prolonged shots are not simply transcendental in the way they freeze and suspend time, but they are also an artist’s attempt to reclaim a memory of a homeland; “the inexhaustible homeland.” It is a memory sought by people who are now in displacement. The paper will further examine notions of exile and foreignness, center and periphery, travel and diaspora, within a contemporary framework that challenges previous polarizations of identities 'global' and identities 'local.'

Stream: Cultural Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Elena Stylianou holds a doctorate from Columbia University, Teachers College, New York with specialization in Art Theory and Aesthetics. She also holds a Masters degree in Museum Studies from Teachers College. She is a past recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and a Spencer Research Fellowship. She has worked in several museums in New York City, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Arts and Design and the Museum of the City of New York. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Arts and Humanities at the Institute of Education, University of London.