Zeta, Floretta, Niki | Day 2

18:30 | “The Beekeeper” by Theo Angelopoulos | 1986 | 120´ | DCP | In Greek & French with Greek subtitles

Introduced by Syllas Tzoumerkas

21:30 | “Absences” by Giorgos Katakouzinos | 118´ | 35MM | In Greek with French subtitles

Introduced by Themis Bazaka

Spyros, a man soured by a secret, incestuous love for his daughter, on the day of her wedding, gives up his position as a schoolteacher, his wife, his home and his city to take up again the profession of his father and grandfather before him traveling across Greece to the town in which he was born and first learned to tend the bees, following the traditional beekeeper's route, looking for flowers that will produce the best honey, a wanderer obsessed by his job. Like a bee returning to its hive after searching for food he visits his old friends and his childhood home looking for threads to bind him to the present. He drives from town to town revisiting his old haunts and comrades relighting and reliving his history in his memory, trying to reconcile his past ideals with a swiftly changing nation that makes him feel uncomfortable. At some point he picks up a promiscuous young hitchhiker who sporadically tags along with him during his journey and seems to represent a new generation without memory and unconcerned with the past, drifting from one place to the next, flitting between the blinking lights of motor vehicles, gas stations, diners, cheap hotels and traffic signs along the dark, wet glistening roadways of present-day Greece. He becomes obsessed by her. She both irritates and entices him. What he seeks in her is a contact with the future. But for her the future is a casual encounter with the next moment. In the impossibility of their relationship there is a profound despair of a man without a future. He senses a rupture, but it's not the traditional one of the conflict of generations. It's really a rupture of language. He cannot communicate, even with love, with the body. From that comes his crisis of despair. Toward his end, he takes refuge in an abandoned cinema called the Pantheon. There, mocked by the sterile white screen above him, he tries - and fails - to bring himself to life in an attempt to connect sexually with the young hitchhiker but there can be no connection between these people from different worlds, either physical or emotional. For Spyros the past is everything, for her it is nothing. In Angelopoulos' words, «It's the conflict between memory and non-memory.» In the long run she only reminds him of his loneliness and isolation. Unable to come to come to terms with the present, betrayed by the past, wary of the future, Spyros falls back into silence and isolation and returns to his hives, abandoning himself to the stings of his bees.

Awards/Distinctions

Nomination for the Golden Lion Award (Venice Film Festival 1986)

Best Film, Best Music, Best Set Design, Best Sound (Greek State Film Awards – Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Thessaloniki Film Festival 1987)

On the eve of World War I, a bourgeois family is found on the verge of collapse. The mother has already abandoned the family, whereas the father, who is a colonel, keeps his three daughters and the eldest daughter’s illegitimate son locked up in his mansion, in the belief that this is the way to save the remnants of his self-esteem. After the death of the father, the eldest daughter (Themis Bazaka), laden with guilt and driven by a strong sense of self-punishment, will take his place and try to perpetuate the order of things by imposing herself on her sisters. The combination of sexuality, “viscontean” lace, claustrophobia, passion, and the portrayal of gender with an unusually high intensity, is what infuses “Absences” with a unique caliber in the history of Greek cinema.

Awards/Distinctions

Best Cinematography & FIPRESCI Award (Mostra de Valencia 1988)