Some may have been surprised by the Thessaloniki Festival’s decision to include in its tribute to Theodoros Angelopoulos a single film by the great Greek director who died suddenly 10 years ago. Neither “Thias”, nor “Eternity and Day”, nor “Alexander the Great”. Only Performance, his directorial debut, is more than half a century old. But it is this film that sums up his work so completely that you can understand what Angelopoulos is without even knowing the rest of his filmography.

It was quite obvious that many of those who packed the Olympion in Aristotelous Square last Sunday night had never seen Angelopoulos before—certainly not on the big screen. The festival made the screening public and free, and Representation took care of the rest. The wild, rocky landscape of Epirus, its heavy songs, the myth of the Atreides, and the elaborate manner in which it is captured in a detective story and at the same time in an immigration drama. While the screening lasted, I thought that this particular film, despite the poverty of material resources and man-made nature, cinematically surpasses the vast majority of what we see today, and not only in our country.

The festival also asked 12 Greek and foreign artists to reflect on the concept of “Representation” and its various incarnations, capturing their thoughts in original works. The related exhibition, which is accompanied by the discreet background music of “Kontoula Lemonia”, Angelopoulos’ favorite song, will be open until November 27 at the Momos Center for Experimental Art in the port of Thessaloniki.

A few tens of meters further, in the Glass House, another exhibition is running these days called “Sea in the Port”, which this time is connected not with the first, but with the last – and unfinished – film of Theodoros Angelopoulos. . There is something exciting and eerie about Nikos Nikolopoulos’ photographs from the set of The Other Sea. There you can see the director gesturing to enclose an invisible frame, giving directions while talking to the actor, or simply looking into the lens while holding a coffee mug. It is access to the workspace and inspiration of an unfinished project. The photographs do not have titles or other explanations, only the date and time they were taken. The tragic end was too close.

And if this is a vivid look at the world of a man and a professional Angelopoulos, then something even more interesting awaited those who watched the premiere of the documentary film by Yiannis Soldatos and Antonis Kokkinos “Theodoros Angelopoulos – Nikos Panagiotopoulos: Everyone and His Music”. There we hear two great Greek directors talk about their craft in a previously lost recording from 1985. The creators of the documentary cleverly wrap this unique sound with both expert commentary and rare archival materials from rehearsals, behind the scenes of filming, past interviews. etc. The unspeakable helps both the initiated and the novice viewer to understand a little more about the genius of the two masters of the Seventh Art.