«Every filmmaker remembers the first time he looked through the viewfinder of a camera. It is a moment which is not so much the discovery of cinema but the discovery of the world. But there comes a moment when the filmmaker begins to doubt his own capacity to see things, when he no longer knows if his gaze is right and innocent.»

Theo Angelopoulos

«As always, Angelopoulos and Arvanitis create magic... As Always, their landscapes resonate with sadness and longing, everything trapped in the gaze of hero, wanderer, filmmaker, bystander and victim alike.»

«Theo's great spirit and talent is to take 'The Odyssey' and make a story that is not only relevant to our time, but is, in fact, our time.»

Harvey Keitel

«ULYSSES' GAZE is a triple odyssey. On one level it is a search for the roots of Balkan cinema and, really, of cinema itself. It is also a voyage through the history of the Balkans, leading up to and including the ongoing tragedy of Bosnia. Finally, it represents a man's individual journey through his life, his loves and his losses.»

Andrew Horton

ULYSSES' GAZE
(Greece/France/Italy/Germany. 1995. 176 minutes. Colour)

Directed by : Theo Angelopoulos
Screenplay by : Theo Angelopoulos
with the participation of Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris, Giorgio Silvagni
Cinematography by : Giorgos Arvanitis
Music by : Eleni Karaindrou
Violin solo by : Kim Kashkashian
Music production : Manfred Eicher
Edited by : Yannis Tsitsopoulos
Sound engineers : Thanassis Arvanitis, Marton Jankov-Tomica, Yannis Haralambidis
Sound Mixing : Bernard Leroux
Costumes designed by : Giorgos Ziakas
Production designed by : Giorgos Patsas and Miodrac Mile Nicolic
Executive producer : Phoebe Economopoulos
Executive producer (Paris) : Marc Soustras
Producers : Giorgio Silvagni, Eric Heumann, Dragan Ivanovic-Hevi, Ivan Milovanovic
Production : Theo Angelopoulos Productions, Greek Film Centre, MEGA Channel, Paradis Film, La Generale d'Images, La Sept Cinema, with the participation of Canal +, Basic Cinematografica, Instituto Luce, RAI, Tele-Muenchen, Concorde Films, Herbert Kloider and in association with
Channel 4
With : Harvey Keitel (A), Maia Morgenstern (woman in Florina/Penelope, Kali/Calypso, widow/Circe, Naomi Levi/Nausica), Erland Josephson (Ivo Levy), Thanassis Vengos (taxi driver), Giorgos Michalakopoulos (Nikos), Dora Volanaki (old lady in Albania), Mania Papadimitriou (the mother in A's memory).

SYNOPSIS
A Greek-American filmmaker, known simply as «A», returns to his hometown in northern Greece for a screening of his latest controversial film. His real reason for coming back, however, is to track down three long-missing reels of film by Greece's pioneering Manakia brothers who in the early years of cinema traveled through the Balkans, ignoring national and ethnic strife and recording ordinary people, especially craftsmen, on film. Their images, he believes, hold the key to lost innocence and essential truth, to an understanding of Balkan history Thus he embarks on a search that takes him across the war-torn Balkans, a landscape of spectral figures and broken dreams, right to the heart of darkness: a damaged film archive in Sarajevo where his quest ends. Like a latter-day Ulysses he finds his «Ithaca», the missing, undeveloped film and is at last united with the work of the Manakia brothers... his gaze communes with theirs and another journey begins.