Angelopoulos Retrospective: The Weeping Meadow

The Weeping Meadow (To Livadi pou Dakryzei) Greece, 2004

A family history told in wide shot, The Weeping Meadow spans the turbulent decades between 1919 and the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949 as they buffet the lives of Eleni (Alexandra Aidini) and her adoptive brother and lover Alexis (Nikos Poursanidis). Taken in by Alexis’ family, Eleni and Alexis fall in love and flee his oppressive father with the help of itinerant musicians touring the country as it descends into war and chaos. Intended as the first installment in a trilogy of Greek history and with its clear echoes of The Traveling Players (1975), The Weeping Meadow feels like a summing up by a director who thought of his films as chapters in one continuous story.

35mm, color, 163 min. Director: Theo Angelopoulos. Screenwriters: Theo Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris, Giorgio Silvagni. With: Alexandra Aidini, Nikos Poursanidis, Giorgos Armenis.

For tickets (free of charge), click here.

This film is presented by The UCLA Film & Television Archive and the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture with support from the UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies and with the community partnership of the LAGFF. The retrospective is held under the auspices of the Consulate General of Greece in Los Angeles.