I ekpombi

A painfully underrated short. It subtly contains much of what makes Angelopoulos so fascinating.

The premise is unclear... and to reveal it would give the game away. But the question is here: what is an ideal man? What is the ideal man in a Greece that is divided by class? Western facing vs. Traditional Greeks? What is an ideal man in an increasingly individualistic society? Is the "traditional" man nothing more than an identityless individual? Something to be elevated by the upper class, Westernised, trendy, urban Greek youth?

Angelopoulos already has this "something". A heaviness, a calm European existence where the world seeps into you. A calm humility towards the world around you. A world of senses and textures. In Voyage to Cythera, an audition is held to find the right actor for the father. An audition for the man who can say "it's me" the correct way. Both self-confident and self-effaced at once.

This aesthetic contrasts with the beginning: a rapid and flowing cinéma direct style, filled with audio contamination. It is filled with speech, with words. Much of it is hesitation and emptiness. It will return at the end, morphed by Angelopoulos' style.

There is something of an inter-colonial view. Something present in La Palisiada and Calle Mayor: a discomfort with an antiquated European self. A cultural cringe towards traditions and old ways of being. In 1967, a fascist coup will capitalise on these feelings and an over exulted, fake traditional Greece will be "revived".

Broadcast seems to answer that we should appreciate and cherish ourselves and our heritage. Angelopoulos is firmly Greek and modern. The ordinary Greek man is an object of empathy and identification more than the yuppies who look at the world without seeing it.