The Theo Angelopoulos Collection: Volume 3 (Greek, DVD)

A collection of four dramas by Greek film maker Theo Angelopoulos. 'Ulysses' Gaze' (1995) stars Harvey Keitel as a Greek film maker journeying across the Balkans to return home after 35 years, confronting various demons from his past along the way. In 'Eternity and a Day' (1998), ailing Greek poet Alexander (Bruno Ganz) is preparing to put his affairs in order, resigned to the fact that he is not long for this world. After a visit to his daughter, however, Alexander finds himself thinking of his late wife, remembering happier times. When he encounters a small boy (Ahilleas Skevis) who has been abducted by an illegal adoption ring, Alexander determines to rescue the child and return him to his home. En route he rediscovers his zest both for writing and life itself, making an inspiring journey of self-discovery in which past and present are intertwined. 'The Weeping Meadow' (2004) is the first film in Angelopoulos's loosely-connected 'Dust of Time' trilogy. The film traces the childhood love affair of Spyros (Vasilis Kolovos) and Eleni (Alexandra Aidini), two children from Odessa who grow up in a refugee encampment near Thessaloniki in the 1920 and '30s. As they grow up together, the two fall in love - but war is looming and difficult times lie ahead. The second film in the trilogy, 'The Dust of Time' (2008), continues the love story of Spyros and Eleni (played in this instalment by Michel Piccoli and Irène Jacob). Willem Dafoe stars as A, the couple's son, an American-born film maker who sets out to make an autobiographical film charting his life story from the day he was born in 1953 until the present day. Sifting through long-buried memories, A drifts into a dream-like narrative that unfolds in the former Soviet Union, the Austrian-Hungarian borders, Italy and New York, and takes in historical events from Stalin's death to Nixon's resignation and the fall of the Greek junta.