Theo Angelopoulos at the Cité Universitaire in Paris

Philippe Lefait

"Mémoire des Lieux", Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, golden palm in Cannes for "Eternity and a Day", which will be released in approximately ten days, has agreed to play the "Mémoire des Lieux" game with us. Theo Angelopoulos happened to be a student in Paris and he agreed to remember the times when he was a student at the Cité Universitaire. It was during 1962-1963, we followed him, and he also found the man who was principle at that time.

Théo Angelopoulos

There is change here.

Unknown

There is change here, huh.

Théo Angelopoulos

I remember there, I worked at that lodge to earn a bit of money.

Unknown

You know who also worked in the lodge recently? The Greek ambassador who just left three months ago. He worked there the first time that he visited here [?]

Théo Angelopoulos

I remember him. He was here during the same time period.

Unknown

It was a bit before.

Théo Angelopoulos

Myself, I remember, I worked here with Slavos, you remember, the sculptor who fell from his window.

Unknown

He first threw all of his sculptures through the window and then he jumped. The former principle's wife said - because she saw the resident placing mattresses: "no, no, no, you're going to get the mattresses dirty".

Théo Angelopoulos

This great sculptor, I tried to reproduce this scene, and it's a scene borrowed from Voyage to Cythera. A naked man who looks like a gull and tries to fly. He jumped and he said a few incomprehensible words, and then he jumped. The words could have been "everything that is born is born in the dark". And he was in the dark, really in the dark when he... And then he committed suicide a few years later, with one of his sculptures. I saw his sculptures in New York.

Unknown

They're fantastic.

Théo Angelopoulos

They are massive. And he also won the biennial in Venice. And I remember, he had won a sum of money, and in this room, he invited everyone to dance. And he spent all of the money he won to have this party. He invited everyone, but he didn't know how to dance, so he did it right there, during the entire time.

Unknown

He was a forefather. Because right now, do people do anything different?

Théo Angelopoulos

You remember something else? The revolution, with [?].

Unknown

It was after the [?].

Théo Angelopoulos

Yes, the principle, I was in charge of going to tell him that he was being fired as the principle, that he was being kicked out. But there, well! There was a change. So I went up, I had room number 29.

Théo Angelopoulos

Hello.

Théo Angelopoulos

I get the impression that they changed the numbers.

Unknown

That's number 29, 33 was mine, so I still remember it.

Théo Angelopoulos

The bedrooms are the same, the same sizes.

Unknown

The only thing that we didn't change is the wall, in 1975.

Théo Angelopoulos

So it means that, there, that's the distortion of youth. There. I thought that the bedroom was bigger. And I see that it's very small, how could we live in there with a second person? You know, one time I was living with a German, there was a German in the other bed. In the morning, the German would get up and do gymnastics. And he played Beethoven every morning. But me, at night, I was there, I was there, I also worked in a hotel as well, as a night auditor. To save a bit of time, I would come home in the morning. So in the morning, he would wake me up with his gymnastics, and with Beethoven. I was crazy, I told him: "Listen, this isn't possible". He told me: "Come on, you Greek people, you're a bunch of barbarians".

Unknown

Because, suppose that he played some Wagner, for example, would you have been ready to invade Poland, so to speak?

Théo Angelopoulos

There was another one as well, who had many girls. So every time I got back there, I would see a little note: "Excuse me, I'm busy, come back after two o'clock". So I would walk around the park, I don't remember anymore. I would come back and knock, silence, he would tell me: "a little bit more, another half-hour". This is where I wrote my first script. It was a short script for the IDHEC. And that's also the reason I made fun of the IDHEC. They threw me out.

Unknown

You weren't a good student.

Théo Angelopoulos

Not a good student at all. No discipline. I remember that with certain friends from the IDHEC, we would go see "The Adventure" at that time, I don't remember how many times. Much later, when I met Antonioni, I gave him the thirteenth ticket. At the time, we would say: "We're going to take the Antonioni dose. My Parisian years, those were the best years of my life. Everything was free, all of the roads were open, absolute freedom, incredible. And Paris, Paris, it was more, I don't know, I get the impression that the streets and the people were more joyful.

Philippe Lefait

Are you nostalgic?

Théo Angelopoulos

We're always nostalgic about our youth.

Philippe Lefait

They aren't just memories?

Théo Angelopoulos

Yes, well, in any case, you live with that. Memories aren't, I mean the past isn't really the past. It's present, it conditions us. We live with it. But I'm a bit moved, you know.