Original subtitles

In memory of Gian Maria Volont�

And, if the soul is about to know itself,

it must gaze into the soul.

Plato, Acybiades 133B.

Subs prepared by pryll and fixed by goodguy666@gmail.com

Weavers.

In Avdella, a Greek village, 1905.

The first film made by the brothers Miltos and Yannakis Manakis.

The first film ever made in Greece and the Balkans.

But is that a fact?

Is it the first film?

The first gaze?

It was the winter of 1954.

Yannakis saw a blue ship moored over there...

in the harbor of Salonica.

I was learning the trade with him in those days.

He had set his heart on photographing the ship...

as it left the harbor.

So he waited and kept watch.

One fine morning, the ship sailed away.

Yannakis died that same evening.

As I wrote he kept rambling on about three undeveloped reels.

A film which for some reason was never developed...

since then... since the beginning of the century.

I didn�t give it much thought at the time.

The three reels.

The three reels.

The journey.

Theo Angelopoulos, Eric Heumann Amedeo Pagani, Giorgio Silvagni

present

Harvey Keitel in ULYSSES� GAZE

a film by Theo Angelopoulos

Good evening

Welcome.

We never thought you would agree to come.

People say you are not easy to get out.

Excuse me for my English.

What�s going on here?

We�ve got big probIems.

No sooner did the Organizing Committee announce...

that the film would be shown

and that you were coming here than all hell broke loose.

The religious groups and fanatics

threw us out... of the movie theatre.

We were desperate so we decided to show the film outdoors.

People would have to keep their coats on because of the cold.

We'd use a portable projector and a wall...a symbolic gesture.

In the end we decided to show the film in the market...

We installed loudspeakers in the town.

Do you hear the bells?

They're all on their knees in church, praying...

to exorcise the evil spirit.

Come with me.

We never thought that your film would cause the same hysteria

in our small town as it did everywhere else in the world.

Lost your way again?

I'm back.

I'm stiff.

Frozen.

Hanging on those phone poles all day like a bird.

Bad weather.

The wind's cut all the lines in the border zone.

Some of us left to work all night to fix them.

Our home is your home.

Our home.

We've crossed the border and we're still here.

How many borders must we cross to reach home?

Would you like to have dinner with us?

It's late.

I'm expected somewhere.

Good night.

We're afraid the situation may get out of hand.

You're from Athens?

The person in charge of the Film Archives?

The Mayor wants to see you.

Come with me.

Ptolemas. How it's changed.

Everything.

Over there there was army barracks.

You mean when?

Rain and mud in winter.

In summer, you couldn't breathe for the dust.

You mean when?

We got out on leave every Saturday night.

For 20 months. Every Saturday night.

500 soldiers.

500 cropped heads in a square,

hoping for a sign in the eyes of the local girls.

But they just laughed and passed on.

There.

They laugh and pass on.

But not always.

It was many years ago.

There was a house here.

It's still there.

It's unbelievable what's going on.

The mayor refuses to come in himself. He's scared.

The town is split in two.

The present TV crews are out looking for you everywhere.

I'm amazed you can keep so cool.

After all, you're the cause of all this fuss.

Excuse me, I'll see you later.

This is unheard of. Let's get outta here.

I smell trouble.

Looks to me as if you've come here for nothing.

Yes, I can see that.

Besides the screening,

I would like to stay here for personal reasons.

If you only knew how much.

But I can't. I...

I have to move on.

I used to dream this would be the end of the journey.

Isn't it strange?

Isn't it always the way?

And my end is my beginning.

What can I say? You've been away for years.

35 years is a long time.

The distance.

The homesickness. You've forgotten.

A Balkan reality is much tougher than

the sort of reality you knew in America.

You're sailing in dark waters now.

If I take just one step.

If I take just one step, I'm elsewhere.

Your taxi's waiting for you.

I've tried in my clumsy way to hold you back.

Anyway...

The reason for this journey's so absurd that it looks like...

A pretext, you mean?

You said it.

I can see how you're fascinated by the story of the Manakis brothers.

Only, I don't know, is that enough?

One more thing.

The Film Archives will not be able to cover you.

We just don't have the means to do that.

I thought you understood.

This is a personal journey.

Take care.

I didn't expect to see you suddenly, I guess

For a moment, I thought I was dreaming of you

like I did all these past years

Do you remember the railway station?

You were shivering in the rain, like now

The wind was blowing hard

I was going away, but I meant to come back soon

And then I got lost, wandering along strang routes

If I could stretch out my hands

I would touch you

And time will be held again

But something is holding me back

I wish I could tell you that I'd return

But something is holding me back

The journey isn't over, not yet

Here we are. The border.

Have you decided?

Do we cross?

Do we cross?

We cross.

Passport.

Excuse me, I saw the Greek license plate on your car...

The taxi driver who brought me here from Athens...

won't go into Albania.

They scared him here at Customs.

If you happen to be going through Korytsa...

I'm on my way to my sister's.

Come with me.

We haven't seen each other for 47 years, since the civil war.

Same old story with the illegal immigrants from Albania...

Here they call them rifugiati.

What's in the bags?

Various things...

Whatever you can imagine.

Some bought, others stolen...

Gas burners, canned goods, jeans, TV sets, cigarettes...

Mind if she comes with us?

Who me?

We entered Albania with snow and silence.

Your image, still damp,

unchanged since the day I left it, emerges once again from the night.

Am I leaving?

What's this place?

We're here... Korytsa.

Why did you stop?

Are you scared?

Who, me? I've been talking to the snow for 25 years.

It knows me. I stopped because the snow said so.

And you've got to respect the snow.

Behind those mountains lies the Skopje-Albanian border.

In two hours with the local bus you're in Monastir.

I want us to be friends.

In my village, to become friends...

we've got to drink from the same glass...

and listen to the same song.

Know something?

Greece is dying.

We're dying as a people.

We've come full circle.

I don't know how many thousands of years...

among broken stones and statues

...and we're dying.

But if Greece is to die she'd better do it quickly...

because the agony lasts too long makes too much noise.

Hey, Nature! You're alone?

I'm alone too. Have a biscuit!

What are you after?

You're looking for something.

Want me to come along?

No.

Drop me off at the border.

I may have a long way to go.

In early 1904 at Yannakis' insistence we left Yanena.

Our photographers' studio wasn't doing well.

We'd been in Yanena six years.

We came here to Monastir.

Things weren't too good here either.

Then war broke out.

First the Balkan Wars... and then the First Great War.

Hard times.

We packed up and headed for our village Avdella,

but the roads had been cut off.

Monastir became crowded with refugees and soldiers.

All the armies of Europe have trudged through this street...

and every time they changed its name.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Now here, you see, is where we set up our first movie theatre,

after the First Great War,

when Yannakis came back... from exile in Philipoupolis.

We also brought a projectionist from Salonica.

We opened with a French film.

What are you looking for?

Who are you?

The Athens Film Archives have asked me to...

To supervise a documentary on the Manakis brothers.

I wonder if you have any connection with

the Film Archives in Skopje.

I wasn't able to contact them from Athens.

I'm looking for some undeveloped film by the Manakis brothers.

Three reels.

I'm not trying to prove anything,

if that's what's worrying you.

We opened with a French film, Rin-Tin-Tin...

but the print was in bad shape.

It kept falling apart.

We kept it together with pins.

The musicians we'd hired kept loosing track.

Business slowly picked up but we were up to our neck in debt.

Until 1939, just before World War II when it burnt down.

The film we were showing, a Chaplin comedy, caught fire...

and that was the end of our movie theatre.

Thank you.

Listen.

The Manakis' cinema in Monastir burnt down in 1939.

The two brothers parted.

Yannakis settled in Thessaloniki

and Miltos stayed behind with all the material.

In 1954, Yannakis died and Miltos

sold the material to the Yugoslav government.

Sometime later, this material was handed over

to the film archives in Skopje.

The question is...

Were the undeveloped reels part of this material?

The Manakis brothers went around photographing and filming people.

They were trying to record a new era.

A new century.

Over 60 years or more, they photographed faces,

events, and the turmoil of the Balkans.

Excuse me.

They weren't concerned with politics or racial questions,

whether friends or enemies.

They were interested in people.

They were always on the move,

all throughout the declining Ottoman Empire.

Recalling everything...

Landscapes, weddings, local customs,

political changes, village fairs,

revolutions, battles, official celebrations,

Sultans, kings, prime ministers,

bishops, rebels.

All the ambiguities.

The contrasts.

The conflicts in this area of the world

are reflected in their work.

You haven't answered my question.

We have all the material here in Skopje,

except what you're looking for.

Skopje.

If you people have those boxes, would you tell me?

Yes.

Yes?

Yes.

You know I would.

Now I would

I am getting to go

This is Skopje.

You want to find out if I'm telling you the truth?

I believe you.

I believe you.

The Skopje-Sofia-Bucarest Express is now departing.

Where will you go?

This train is going to Bucharest.

I'll tell you a story.

Two years ago, a midsummer,

I was the Delos location hunting for a film.

In some blaze right on the ruins,

I wondered around amongst the broken marble,

The fallen columns.

A frightened lizard slithered into hiding under a tombstone.

The miserable cicadas droned away,

adding a note of desolation to the empty landscape.

And then I heard a creaking sound,

a hollow sound, as if coming from the depths of the earth.

I looked up and on the hill I saw an ancient olive tree

slowly topping over.

An olive tree on a hill

slowly sinking to its death on the ground.

A huge solitary tree.

The gash made by the falling tree revealed an ancient head,

the bust of Apollo, dislodged with all the weight.

I walked on further past the row of lions,

and the row of phalli...

till I reached a small sacred place,

the birthplace of Apollo according to tradition.

I raised my Polaroid and pressed the button.

And when the photograph slit out, I was amazed to see

it hadn't registered a thing.

I shifted my position and tried again.

Nothing.

Blank negative pictures of the world.

As if my glance wasn't working.

I went on taking one photograph after another, clicking away.

Seeing empty squares, black holes.

The sun dipped into the sea,

as if abandoning the scene.

I felt I was sinking into darkness.

And when the Film Archives suggested this project

I was only too eager. It was a way out.

I'd have given up soon enough, only...

I discovered something.

Three reels of film.

Not mentioned by any film historian.

I don't know what came over me then.

I felt strangely disturbed.

I tried to shrug the feeling away to break free,

but l couldn't.

Three reels.

Perhaps the whole film undeveloped.

The first film perhaps.

The first glance.

A lost glance.

A lost innocence.

It turned into an obsession as if it were my own work.

My own first glance.

Lost long ago.

Passport.

Passports.

There is a small problem.

You must follow me.

Passport.

Come with me.

This way.

Your brother Miltos was smarter than you.

He got off to Albania in time.

Your brother Miltos was smarter than you and "He got off to Albania in time."

Monastir, January 7th, 1915.

Following information supplied by Ivan Malevsky, butcher...

men from our military police discovered in the house...

of Yannakis and Miltos Manakis or Manakias...

photographers and cinematographers...

an important cache of firearms and explosives.

It is believed that these were meant to be used in attacks...

and sabotage against the Bulgarian army...

and the allied Germany army...

to be carried out by terrorist and anarchist groups...

connected with the Federation organization based in Salonica.

The Military Court of the First Infantry Regiment...

of the Bulgarian army,

convened forthwith...

and sentenced to death in absentia...

the brothers Yannakis and Miltos Manakis or Manakias...

and issued orders for the confiscation of all photographs

and film found in their house and studio.

Attention!

Port arms!

Arm!

Take aim!

I don't understand!

In the name of His Majesty King Ferdinand of Bulgaria..

the death sentence against Yannakis Manakis or Manakias...

resident of Monastir, is commuted to exile in Plovdiv...

for the duration of the war.

Where are you going?

Where are you going?

Philipoupolis.

Plovdiv.

Plovdiv.

What have you been doing all this time?

Did I really say Philipoupolis?

You said Philipoupolis.

Where will you go?

During his exile,

Manakis used to come here everyday and stare at this river.

The Evros flowing into the Aegean Sea.

What river are you talking about?

I don't understand.

I don't know what's the matter with me.

Touch me.

Save me.

Sophia

Novi-lskar

Svoge... Mezdra... Cerven...

Brjag... Plaven... Nikopol...

Bridge on the Danube...

Border...

Turnu-Magurele.

Rosiori de Vede...

Bucuresti.

What's the matter?

In Bucharest in the early months of 1905,

they told us we would...

We would...

We could buy in England or France machines for making moving pictures.

This was new. It was the...

That's an excuse. Just an excuse.

Why have we come here?

Why have you come?

You knew all along that there were Romanians

to cover the brothers' material from the Bulgarians.

The two countries broke off relations.

Isn't that right?

After Romania went over the ally side in the war.

So why have you come?

My footsteps.

Somehow they led me here.

Mother, what are you doing here?

Thank God we made it in time.

Come on, we have six hours to reach Costanza.

Come on, child.

You're wasting time.

Good evening, Madam.

Finally! How was your journey?

We were worried.

You know... the trains...

Grandmother.

Come, my boy!

How did you like Bucharest?

You've come at last!

Grandfather.

Good evening, grandfather.

Good evening, my girl.

You're late, Katerina.

I was so afraid I'd miss him.

It was New Year's Eve, wasn't it when they took him away?

I don't even want to think about it.

Those camps were liberated some time ago.

Only Matthausen took them a long time.

Uncle Langilos.

Did you have a nice trip?

Did you have a good time, my boy?

Aunt Jenny from Breilla.

Uncle Nikos from Galantz.

The girls.

What did you see? Tell us.

How was Bucharest?

The whole family.

Is everything ready?

Yes, Madam.

I have prepared the soup.

The table will be ready in half an hour.

When do you want me to serve dinner?

He's on his way!

He's here!

He's here! He's here!

Father. How long it's been.

Aren't you going to kiss your father?

He's grown up.

He's grown so tall. He has your eyes.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Happy 1945!

Happy 1945!

Aren't you dancing? Don't tell me you don't know how.

One two three...

You're wasting your time, mother.

I never know how to dance.

Come on.

Happy 1948.

Take us away from here, Spyro.

I want to leave.

I can't bear it.

Mother.

I never got to dance with you.

You got the permit at last!

Let's see it! Show us!

How many of You are leaving?

About eighty Greek families...

but Jews and Armenians as well...

Constanza will be quite deserted.

Are you glad to be going to Greece, my boy?

The People's Confiscation Committee is here.

Ignore them.

Happy New Year Happy 1950.

A photograph.

One last photograph.

What was it you said, grandfather?

Here on this land, by these waters...

we lived happily for many centuries.

Come along. We're waiting for you.

I'm coming, Mother.

Odessa, Constanza, Danube, Germany.

Where the hell are you going?

Don't you know there's a war?

I've got to make a phone call.

And I'll...

I'm going to get something for the trip.

Don't cry.

I'm crying, because I...

Because I can't love you.