Book on The Life and Work of Theo Aggelopoulos To Be Published in Iran

“Conversations with a Painter-Director” is the name of a book on the life and work of late Greek filmmaker Theodoros Aggelopoulos, to be published in Iran.

Mehran Behrouz-Faghani has been translating and working on the three volumes of the book for three years, but the sudden death of the internationally acclaimed director has put a new momentum on the publication. “I am trying to complete the volumes as soon as possible” Mr. Faghani told Iran Book News Agency (IBNA).

The book consists of three volumes, which revolve around presenting the life and thoughts of Aggelopoulos to the Persian audience, and will be published as soon as possible after the director’s death on January 24.

The book includes many speeches and interviews of Aggelopoulos with cinema critics and journalists, a bibliography and informatory details about Aggelopoulos’ expression and opinion on conceptual cinema.

“By reading this book, one can learn about his techniques, skills, music approach, and philosophical perception of cinema, and how he mingles these with various Greek myths.” Faghani told IBNA.

Aggelopoulos, born in Athens on April 17, 1935, studied law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, but after his military service went to Paris to attend the Sorbonne. He soon dropped out to study film at the Institut des Hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) before returning to Greece. There, he worked as a journalist and film critic.

Aggelopoulos began making films after the 1967 coup that initiated the Greek military dictatorship known as the Regime of the Colonels. He made his first short film in 1968 and in the 1970s he began making a series of political feature films about modern Greece: Days of ’36 (Meres Tou 36, 1972), The Travelling Players (O Thiassos, 1975) and The Hunters (I Kynighoi, 1977). In 1978, he was a member of the jury at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival.[1]

He quickly established a characteristic style, marked by slow, episodic and ambiguous narrative structures as well as long takes (The Travelling Players, for example, consists of only 80 shots in about four hours of film). These takes often include meticulously choreographed and complicated scenes involving many actors.

Theodoros Angelopoulos was awarded honorary doctorates by the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium in 1995, by Paris West University Nanterre La Défense, France, by the University of Essex, UK in July 2001,[4] by the University of Western Macedonia, Greece in December 2008,[5] and by the University of the Aegean, Greece in December 2009.[6]

The 77-year-old director was seriously injured after being hit by a motorcycle while crossing a street in Keratsini, Athens, during the screenings of his new film “The Other Sea”. He was transported to the hospital, where he died in the early morning hours on January 24.