Theo Angelopoulos: The Great Poet of Cinema

The 24th of January marks the death anniversary of the acclaimed Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos. He was killed by a motorcycle on January 24, 2012, while he was attempting to cross a busy road in Piraeus.

Being one of the last and most characteristic representatives of modernism in Cinema, Angelopoulos was, without any doubt, the most internationally respected Greek filmmaker and one of the greatest directors of his generation. He received numerous awards with the most notable being the prestigious Palme d’Or award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for his remarkable film “Eternity and a Day”. 

"Peterloo": A very British massacre (Review and Trailer)

Peterloo (2018) Film Review.

Director: Mike Leigh. Stars: Rory Kinnear, Maxine Peake and Neil Bell. 

Waterloo – a field in Belgium where in 1815 the armies of Britain, Prussia and other European powers defeated the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. St Peters Field – a square in Manchester where on 19 August 1819 cavalry charged a crowd of unarmed protesters killing around 20 people. The closeness of the two events led to the latter being called the Peterloo Massacre; an event now the subject of a feature film, Peterloo, directed by Mike Leigh. The events in the field in Belgium were made into a film almost 50 years ago, in a film entitled Waterloo. A film about the events closer to home is long overdue.

The Death of Stalin: Vulgar anticommunism under the veil of "comedy"

"The Death of Stalin" is the title of the anticommunist film which is going to be screened on cinemas. The two-minutes trailer of the movie is enough for someone to understand that it is another case of crude and vulgar anticommunism, of distortion and counterfeiting of History, as long as it shows Stalin as the "fear and terror of the nation" and other personalities of the time (e.g. Marshall Zhukov) as miserable caricatures.

But the text of the [film's] synopsis by the distribution company ODEON which accompanies the movie and has been published in the media is also revealing. Promoting the film, the distribution company refers to it as "a comedy based on real events": "On the night of March 2, 1953, a man is dying. A terrible stroke is wracking his entire body. He is drooling. He is pissing himself... The man is Joseph Stalin, dictator, tyrant, butcher as well a Secretary General of USSR. ‘The Death of Stalin’ is a satire about the days before the funerals of the Nation’s Father. Days that shine a sardonic light on all the madness, depravity and inhumanity of totalitarianism. Days that will see the men surrounding him fight to inherit his supreme power. And it’s all based on true events."