A film by Rea Walldén

(2022)

 

SYNOPSIS

An intimate confession of the Greek feminist avant-garde director Antoinetta Angelidi to her daughter Rea Walldén, and the world. On her gaze and life, her visions and films, and the devastating experience of going blind. A film made during lockdown inside a flat, about our inner space, at the most secret place of which one finds the Other.

 

Original (Greek) title:	Έμμονες ώρες στον τόπο της πραγματικότητας – Εξομολογήσεις της Αντουανέττας Αγγελίδη (ή ένα δοκίμιο για το βλέμμα της)
English title:	Obsessive Hours at the Topos of Reality – Antoinetta Angelidi’s Confessions (Or an Essay on Her Gaze)
Year of production:	2022
Country of production:	Greece
Duration:	88 min
Language:	Greek
Material:	digital, colour
Aspect ratio:	FLAT-189

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

A filmed confession of Antoinetta Angelidi, who has been a pioneer of feminist avant-garde cinema in Greece since the 1970s; who is also my life-long creative collaborator, and my mother.
This film is for her a self-revelation, but also performance and direction of the self, as confessions always are. A dialogue with the camera, with me holding the camera, but also with herself and the world. Her testament. An intimate speech about art and life, rape and blindness, but also about human solidarity and the liberating experience of seeing the world anew.
It is also a film essay on her gaze. It nodes to her filmmaking techniques. It uses variations and uncanny connections, long shots and jump-cuts, revealing its construction and discreetly incorporating its own metalanguage. For much of the film, Angelidi’s body is immersed in darkness, her face and hands coming out of it as if entering unmediated inside our unconscious and dreams.
The film was shot without a crew in the confinement of our flat in Athens, in a single room, during the lock-down. It is about our inner space, at the most secret place of which one finds the Other.

Rea Walldén

 

CREDITS

Performance:	Antoinetta Angelidi
Direction:	Rea Walldén
Scenario Planning:	Antoinetta Angelidi, Rea Walldén
Cinematography, Sound, Editing:	Rea Walldén
Production:	Rea Walldén
Funding:	Financed by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sport the Greek Film Centre

 

AWARDS/HONOURS

• Equality Award (Peloponnisos International Documentary Festival, 2023)
• Nominated for the Best Documentary Award (IRIS Awards – Hellenic Film Academy, 2024)

 

SCREENINGS

• “Open Horizons” programme, 25th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, Greece (2023)
• The film was screened for two weeks in the Greek Film Archives, Athens, Greece (2023). Introductions by academics and fellow directors
• Screened in the frame of feminist events against domestic violence, Athens, Greece (2023)
• 9th Peloponnisos International Documentary Festival, Kalamata, Greece (2023, competition)
• “Cinema Regained” programme, 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands (2024)
• “Greek Cinema Day” screenings, Greek Film Centre, Athens, Greece (2024)
• “Antoinetta Angelidi in New York”, tribute on the occasion of Angelidi’s reception of 2024 Ground Glass Award for outstanding contribution to experimental media, Prismatic Ground Festival, Anthology Film Archives, New York, U.S.A. (2024)
• IRIS Nominations screenings, Hellenic Film Academy, Athens, Greece (2024)
• “Tribute to Antoinetta Angelidi”, 13th Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival, Greek Film Archive, Greece (2024)

 

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

• “It is a soul balm this monologue by Antoinetta… And if the film concludes with a ‘Thank you’, we reciprocate.”

Leda Galanou, Flix 29/4/2023

• A study on the strength, resilience, intelligence, and tenacity of an authentic feminist.”

Yiannis Zouboulakis, Βήμα 4/5/2023

• “An achievement and a feat.”

Maria Katsounaki, Καθημερινή 14/5/2023

• “Antoinetta Angelidi: She is a capital for our culture.”

Stratos Kersanidis, Εποχή 7/5/2023

• “The persistence of a tenacious visionary to invent the cinematic language from scratch, every time she stood behind the camera.”

Christos Mitsis, Αθηνόραμα 4/5/2023

• “To those few, very few, who offer beauty to our world, we owe gratitude.”

Nora Ralli, Εφημερίδα των Συντακτών 28/4/2023

• “OBSESSIVE HOURS AT THE TOPOS OF REALITY feels like an invocation or incantation of a past and the ideas that grew from it. The future is unknown but it still needs the nourishments that these first thoughts provide.”

Olaf Möller, film critic

• “Le temps retrouvé of Antoinetta Angelidi. The daughter in synergy with the mother, a female co-creation, overthrowing all the stifling stereotypes of patriarchy. All power to the starry sky!”

Savvas Michael, philosopher

• “Unconditionally open to the unexpected visit of the Other. Pulsates with the question and the demand of how we can unlearn to see and how we can relearn to see differently.”

Athena Athanasiou, Professor of Social Anthropology
and Gender Theory, Panteion University

• “A cinema of rupture, with Antoinetta’s voice at its avant-garde.”

Eva Stefani, film director and Professor, University of Athens

• “Antoinetta comes as a protector of the lost dream of all those who believed in, and were crushed by, utopia. She takes by the hand every broken soul, every body that was violated, every subject who was made abject by societal violence, every queer person who had no chance to tell her story. She embraces all of us.”

Fil Ieropoulos, film director

• “Every time I watch one of the films by Antoinetta, I feel like I am ripped apart. At the same time, she gives me a bittersweet sense of power.”

Elena Hamalidi, Associate Professor of Art History, Ionian University

• “Antoinetta remembering her own memories as shots, that had already been forming in the distant past, as a cinematic future to come. Who sees in this film and who is seen?”

Dimitris Papanikolaou, Professor of Modern Greek
and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Oxford

• “Antoinetta’s narration itself, in-itself, narrated itself. For me, that’s great art.”

Theodoros Terzopoulos, theatre director

 

TRAILER