Antoinetta Angelidi is one of the most important representatives of modernism in Greek cinema, and in particular of feminist experimental cinema. Profoundly politicized and initiated into radical intellectual currents such as psychoanalysis, since the early 1970s she has been architecturally creating a visual language that deconstructs the patriarchal representation of women, but also offers poetic images of paradoxical awakenings, through the dream and the uncanny, to the depths of the unconscious and desire. In her first black and white film Idées Fixes / Dies Irae (Variations on the Same Subject) (1977), in which she denounces the commercialization of the female body, Angelidi’s mastery of the visual composition of the film frame and the orchestration of language, noise and silence is already evident. In Topos (1985), the filmmaker constructs dreamscapes with painterly references to the work of Masaccio and Balthus, and plays with polyphony and silence. The Hours: A Square Film (1995) draw inspiration from childhood memories and traumas as well as from historical experiences of the anti-dictatorship struggle, and show the redemptive value of artistic self-expression. In Thief or Reality (2001), the processes of dreaming intersect with the processes of mourning, and the film is a cinematic composition of audiovisual sublime. The films Noon Hour (2006), a study on Grandiva with elements of performance art, as well as 121280 Ritual (1980/2008), in which the images of the pregnant Angelidi are embedded with a poetic soundscape, are also screened. Moreover, the programme includes the documentary by Angelidi’s daughter and collaborator, Rea Walldén, Obsessive Hours at the Topos of Reality (2022), in which the autrice recounts her pioneering practices, her personal and political traumas, her relationship with feminism, as well as her advancing blindness and the eye transplants that provided her with a “new gaze”. It is worth noting that in 2024, Angelidi was awarded the Ground Glass Award at the American Anthology Film Archives, for her outstanding contribution to the field of experimental art.

Coordination: Jacob Skenderidis
Introduction: Ioulia Mermigka

Antoinetta Angelidi (b.1950, 30th April) is a pioneer of Greek feminist and avant-garde cinema, and a visual artist. She studied Architecture in Athens, Greece; Film Direction and Editing at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris, France; and Film Theory with Christian Metz. Her work includes four feature-length films – Idées Fixes / Dies Irae (1977), Topos (1985), The Hours - A Square Film (1995) and Thief or Reality (2001) –, as well as short films and art installations. It has been screened in international film festivals and contemporary art museums, as well as in theatres and national television. She uses art history and her dreams as raw material for her work, “distancing [herself] from reality in order to reach out to the Real”. The inversion and juxtaposition of codes, as well as the dream-mechanism and the uncanny, constitute her main creative strategies. The complexity of cinematic heterogeneity and the narrative multiplicity of the different filmic elements characterise her work. She taught for many years Film Direction in the Film School at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, as well as the Universities of Patras, Thessaly and the Aegean. She is a member of the European Film Academy; and a founding member of the Hellenic Film Academy, and Women in Film and Television Greece. A retrospective tribute to her work was included in the 46th International Thessaloniki Film Festival (2005), where she was given the Golden Alexander Award for her lifetime achievement in cinema. A retrospective tribute to her work was also included in the Prismatic Ground Festival (2024) at Anthology Film Archives, New York, where she was given the Ground Glass Award for her outstanding contribution to the field of experimental media. A volume on her work in Greek was published by Thessaloniki Film Festival, and the volume in English ReFocus: The Films of Antoinetta Angelidi was published in ReFocus: The International Directors Series of Edinburgh University Press. Her intimate confession about her life and work, Obsessive Hours at the Topos of Reality (2022), was shot by her daughter Rea Walldén.