Pilgrimage into Greek's past

This is the film that brought Greek director Theo Angelopoulos to international attention, a lengthy and sporadically successful intellectual pilgrimage into Greece's complex political past told through a troupe of travelling actors.

By combining real history with mythical drama, in particular the Oresteia, Angelopoulos shuttles the story back and forth between 1936 and 1952 when Greece suffered a series of invasions - Nazi, British - as well as a civil war and the establishment of the military junta.

Driven by the music and songs of the actors, the film combines elements of Pasolini's cinematic primitivism with Miklos Jancso's ritualistic composition in a mesmerising cri de coeur for the director's fatherland.

The Travelling Players (O Thiassos)
Cert: NC