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Michael

Dalaras and his songs for films

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Olga asked for the songs Dalaras has sung in films of Thodoros Angelopoulos.

There a two:

- "Taksidi sta kythira" (from the film with the same title)

Music and lyrics by Eleni Karaindrou

http://www.dalaras.com/songs/to_ellhniko_p...sta_kythhra.htm

- "Ta vourkomena matia mou" (from the film "O melissokomos")

Music by Eleni Karaindrou, lyrics by Lefteris Papadopoulos (a fact that is not so well-known)

http://www.dalaras.com/songs/symmetoxes/o_...a_matia_mou.htm

Watching the films, concerning the songs I was disappointed: You do not hear very much from them (only in the background, very vague and while the actors are speaking). :D

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Danke, Michael! Could you then tell more about the action of the films themselves? Please?

The songs are at least well known from the recordings. OK, "Vourkomena" less than the other one.

Do they at least suit the action?

I am now on the page 430 of the book "Vammena kokkina mallia" (Geske, how about you?) and can still not get, how such a music Giorgos Dalaras recorded to this (especially "Vammena" itself and "Tha'rthis"), can refer to such a strange and irritating book.

How is it possible, that it was compared to Zorba in the reviews?

Or is the "Zorba" just the only Greek book the journalists can refer to? The only read by them?

And, what, on earth, can be shown in this particular film? Spiders on the curtains and continual f.....?

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Could you then tell more about the action of the films themselves?

Olga, you require a lot from me:

1. I am not good in telling stories (I am not Hatzidakis :rolleyes::pity: ) 2. It was a long time ago that I have seen the films. 3. At least concerning "Taksidi sta Kythira" I did not understand its meaning.

So perhaps someone else here in the Community knows the films and is a better story-teller than me. Moreover I will look in the Internet for some description and (if I am successful in finding) I will post it here.

The songs are at least well known from the recordings. [...]  Do they at least suit the action?

I would not say "Do they at last suit the action" but "... the atmosphere" (as there is almost no action in Aggelopoulos' films). My answer: Not really (especially in the case of music and lyrics for "Ta vourkomena matia mou" I would have expected a more "romantic" story). In general, both films seem to me less emotional than the songs.

But in order to avoid misunderstandings: Surely both films are worth of being seen.

Concerning "Vammena kokkina mallia": As you know, I fully agree with your opinion :D . (But that would be again another topic.)

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Olga, you require a lot from me:

Concerning "Vammena kokkina mallia": As you know, I fully agree with your opinion :rolleyes: . (But that would be again another topic.)

I know I require a lot, Micha.

Θέλει δουλεια και υπομονή :D I can wait.

But this another matter is not necessarily out of topic here, if we think about Dalaras' songs for films. That the film has a book as a basis - umso besser!

Olga

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In general, both films seem to me less emotional than the songs.

I was about to go and have dinner when I saw your sentence, Michael. I don't know about "O Melissokomos", but "Taksidi sta Kythira" is a VERY emotional film. It is the story of an old Greek man coming back to Greece from his Ukrainian exile after the "Ethniki antistasi" was at last recognized by the Greek Parliament. It is the story of the confrontation of the Greek past of this old man (played by Manos Katrakis) and the the reality of his coming back to Greece (seeing his wife and children after so many years, meeting people who can't stand former members of the EAM-ELAS, etc...) I must say that I was so moved when I saw that film for the first time that I did not sleep at all. That was back in 1986 or 1987. I must also say that I didn't notice the song then. I noticed it "only" when I heard "To ellhniko proswpo" a few years later, and from my "emotional" point of view, the song is as emotional as the film and vice versa.

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I don't know about "O Melissokomos", but "Taksidi sta Kythira" is a VERY emotional film

Yes, Francois, maybe you are right. (And I could imagine that you would regard "O Melissokomos" even more emotional.). What I wanted to say is the following: When I must concentrate too much on trying to find out what a director, an author, a lyrics-writer wants to tell me, what could be the meaning of certain symbols, metaphors he uses etc. with other words: if I must concentrate permanently on the intellectual components of a film, story, song etc. then I have difficulties to deal at the same time with its (possible) emotional, sensitive character. (The same applies when for wide parts of af film, text etc. simply nothing happens. :music: ) And these are my personal experiences with the films by Aggelopoulos that I know. (More with "Taxidi sta Kythira" than with "O Melissomokomos".)

Anyway, thanks Francois, for your interesting and useful description of the film. Concerning the song with Dalaras, I knew that it would be to hear somewhere within the film before I watched it. Otherwise probably I would not have noticed it too because it is so much in the background.

[concerning "Vammena kokkina mallia":] But this another matter is not necessarily out of topic here, if we think about Dalaras' songs for films. That the film has a book as a basis - umso besser!

Correct Olga. I simply thought primarily of our opinions about the book as we do not know its film version (the TV-serial diladi). Concerning the music, I agree with you too:

[...] and can still not get, how such a music Giorgos Dalaras recorded to this (especially "Vammena" itself and "Tha'rthis"), can refer to such a strange and irritating book.  

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Here a short description for the film "O melissokomos" ("The beekeeper"):

In THE BEE-KEEPER, alienation and despair have so mestastasized in the film's central figure that he's virtually one of the walking dead. Spyros, a man soured by a secret, incestuous love for his daughter, on the day of her wedding, gives up his position as a schoolteacher, his wife, his home and his city to take up again the profession of his father and grandfather before him traveling across Greece to the town in which he was born and first learned to tend the bees, following the traditional beekeeper's route. Like a bee returning to its hive after searching for food he visits his old friends and his childhood home looking for threads to bind him to the present.

At some point he picks up a promiscuous young hitchhiker who seems to represent a new generation without memory and unconcerned with the past, drifting from one place to the next. What he seeks in her is a contact with the future. But for her the future is a casual encounter with the next moment. In the impossibility of their relationship there is the profound despair of a man without a future. He senses a rupture, but it's not the traditional one of the conflict of generations. It's really a rupture of language. He cannot communicate, even with love, with the body. From that comes his crisis of despair. For Spyros the past is everything, for her it is nothing. In Angelopoulos' words, "It's the conflict between memory and non-memory." In the long run she only reminds him of his loneliness and isolation. Unable to come to come to terms with the present, betrayed by the past, wary of the future, Spyros falls back into silence and isolation and returns to his hives, abandoning himself to the stings of his bees.

Source: http://www.musicolog.com/m_beekeeper.asp

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Here a short description for the film "O melissokomos" ("The beekeeper"):

Source: http://www.musicolog.com/m_beekeeper.asp

An from the same site, about "Takidi sta Kythira":

"A director attempts to make film about a political refugee who returns to Greece almost forty years after the Civil War. He follows the old man as he sells flowers, and, soon, imagination comes to invade reality and vice-versa. Thus begins the voyage in the landscapes of love, death, imagination and memory. Cythera, both an island and a painting, constitutes a utopia, while the course of the film follows personal experiences, existential anxiety and the traces of the history of the last decades. Everything is changing, with the result that the old refugee feels exiled in his own homeland. Heard over the ashes of past dreams, are the strains of a sad elegy for a lost generation and a lost time, for the crisis in creativity and the essential content of humanism. The film is huge in conception, a reflection on contemporary mythology and reflects Angelopoulos' recognisable style, in spite of his discernible shift from a dialogue with history to an anthropocentric axis. The film won the award for the Best Screenplay and the FIPRESCI International Critics Award at the Cannes Film Festival."

http://www.musicolog.com/m_voyage.asp

+ soundtracks by Eleni Karaindrou:

http://www.musicolog.com/eleni_audio.asp

I had forgotten this beautiful site. Thanks a lot Michael. :music:

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