A film by Antoinetta Angelidi

(2001)

 

SYNOPSIS

Reality robs you of your dreams and you have to rob it in order to dream. A darkly optimistic film. Three versions of just one day. Three characters trapped in parallel universes. The invasion of the Thief will unite them. Each point of view produces a different story: fate-randomness-free will. What do they have in common? Mortality.

What I spent, I had. What I saved, I lost. What I gave, I have.

 

Original (Greek) title:	Κλέφτης ή η Πραγματικότητα
English title:	Thief or Reality
Year of production:	2001
Country of production:	Greece
Duration:	80 min
Language:	Greek
Material:	35mm, colour
Aspect ratio:	1.85[aspect ratio of the digitalisation FLAT 1.85]

 

STATEMENT OF THE DIRECTOR AND THE CO-WRITER

Main themes of the film are the multiplicity of reality and the consciousness of mortality. Its narration is a triple interpretation of reality. Three versions of different duration and style, of a single day. In each version the events differ, because our perception changes the world. Each version begins with a game (cards-dice-chess) and ends with a procession, evoking the chorus of ancient tragedy. The film concludes in a conversation, where all the characters comment on their roles, in a meta-linguistic game of self-awareness. All the three main characters of the film are Antigone, versions or sides of her – and the Thief is the screen on which they project their desire. Each of their viewpoints creates a different story. The Sculptress has visions of Judgement Day; the Scientist is bound to a shattering memory; the Actor sees Antigone everywhere. Three philosophical views of the world: fate-randomness-free will. What do they have in common? The Thief nods to an answer: mortality unites our fragmented viewpoints; the secret solidarity of the human condition.

The journey of creating the film started with the devastating suicide of the actor Nikos Skylodimos, who hanged himself when rehearsing for the role of Antigone. We travelled through the text of the tragedy and images of the Underworld, existential and epistemological questions. References for deconstruction and re-composition: from Sophocles’ Antigone to the Gospels, from Mantegna and Goya to Max Klinger and Max Ernst, from Dreyer’s Vampyr to Bergman Seventh Seal.

Our film demands your availability, your desire not only to discover it but also to re-invent it.

Antoinetta Angelidi and Rea Walldén

 

CREDITS

Film Direction, Art Direction:	Antoinetta Angelidi
Scenario:	Rea Walldén, Antoinetta Angelidi
Cinematography:	Elias Konstantakopoulos
Sets:	Antoinetta Angelidi, Constantinos Kypriotakis
Object Design:	Rea Walldén, Kostas Angelidakis
Costumes:	Christina Papoulia
Editing:	Ioanna Spiliopoulou
Music:	Thodoris Abazis
Sound:	Marinos Athanassopoulos
Sound effects:	Costas Bokos, Vassilis Kountouris
Cast:	Evri Sofroniadou, Parthenopi Bouzouri, Nikos Pantelidis, Angela Brouskou
Vocal:	Maria Georgakarakou, Parthenopi Bouzouri
Production:	Antoinetta Angelidi, Greek Film Centre
Support:	Supported by MEDIA II Development. Sponsored by the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation.

 

AWARDS/HONOURS

• Hellenic Ministry of Culture Quality Award (2001)
• Nomination for the European Film Award Méliès (2001)

 

SCREENINGS

• “Filmmakers of the Present” programme, 54th Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland (2001)
• 7th Athens International Film Festival, Greece (competition, 2001)
• 42nd Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Greece (2001)
• 22nd Fantasporto – Porto International Film Festival, Portugal (competition, 2002)
• 17th Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Argentina (2002)
• 3rd Lecce European Film Festival, Italy (2002)
• The film was screened in theatres in Athens and Thessaloniki (2002); and four times in Greek national television.
• Participated in the exhibition “Humans-Faces-Forms”, Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, Rethymno, Greece (2002)
• “Tribute to Antoinetta Angelidi”, University of Patras, Greece (2003)
• “Tribute to Antoinetta Angelidi”, 46th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Greece (2005) Golden Alexander Award for lifelong achievement in cinema
• “Tribute to Antoinetta Angelidi”, 2nd Athens Animfest, Greece (2007)
• “Tribute to Antoinetta Angelidi”, 8th Experimental Film Festival “Strange Screen”, Thessaloniki, Greece (2009)
• Participated in the exhibition “First Image”, Centre régional d’art contemporain, Sète, France (2009); Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece (2009-10)
• Screened as part of the Athens Pride events, Museum Alex Mylona, Athens, Greece (2011)
• Extracts from the film were incorporated in Angelidi’s installation Stitches Without Thread, 53rd Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Greece (2012)
• “Tribute: Greek Film Avant-Garde”, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece (2013)
• 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece (2013)
• “Initiations”, 9th Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival, Greek Film Archive, Greece (2018)
• “Tribute to Antoinetta Angelidi”, 32nd Panorama of European Cinema, Athens, Greece (2019)
• Screening and discussed in the framework of the Research Program “Antigones: Bodies of Resistance in the in the Contemporary World” [ANTISOMATA], Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation, Greek Film Archive, Athens, Greece (2022)
• “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)
• “Tribute to Antoinetta Angelidi”, 13th Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival, Greek Film Archive, Greece (2024)

 

CRITICAL ACCLAIM (when first submitted)

• “Exquisite images that get carved in one’s memory… by a creator who continues with persistence her lonely and unique work.”

Ninos Fenek Michelidis, Ελευθεροτυπία 15/11/2001

• “Visually brilliant film, which touches our souls like a piece of classical music.”

Ninos Fenek Michelidis, Ελευθεροτυπία 11/1/2002

• “A poetic commentary on the Human Condition… Angelidi’s films innovate and mobilize the visual language… THIEF OR REALITY is a visual meditation, infinitely open to multiple and multi-levelled interpretations.”

Niki Loizidi, art historian

• “In THIEF OR REALITY, the audience experiences a renewal of its relation to art…. It is a ritual, triumphant in its deeper meaning… THIEF OR REALITY gives the pleasure that one tastes when rereading Proust. I felt that I took part to a journey in the happy fields of European thought, made by books and art-works and music and cinema….”

Maria Maragkou, Ελευθεροτυπία 21/1/2002

• “THIEF OR REALITY proves how far cinematic language can go when invented anew, and kept away from dominant aesthetic and ideological models.”

Tassos Retzios, Αγγελιοφόρος 2/2/2002

• “An unprecedented art-work, bringing into being small novel universes… The security of the well-known is left behind and novel pleasures are vindicated.”

Manos Stefanidis, art historian, Ελληνομουσείον

• “Visual masterpiece…. We need this kind of cinema.”

Stratos Kerasnidis, Αυγή 16/11/2001

• “Antoinetta Angelidi is unique in Greek cinema… With her films she ‘excavates’ the history of European culture, revisits archetypal images and texts and develops a dialogue with what is crucial in our culture, ignoring all that is cheap and common place…. She incorporates in this film a comment on cinema history and the evolvement of its techniques.”

Kostas Terzis, Αυγή 11/1/2002

• “We rarely see in contemporary cinema such a consistency between content and form… A film about art or an art film or the art of filming?…
  A polyphonic composition coming from the future of the seventh art.”

Vassilis Mazomenos, Αντί 16/11/2001

• “Antoinetta Angelidi’s films are unique not only in the Greek filmography but also in the international one… Forget traditional narrative cinema or whatever else you may have seen, even experimental cinema, and let yourselves be seduced by a novel kind of filmic writing.”

Babis Aktsoglou, Αθηνόραμα 11-17/1/2002

• “This film is one-of-a kind, internationally.”

Vassilis Kehagias, Μακεδονία 15/11/2001

 

TRAILER