Episode 12 of renowned filmmaker Chris Marker's mythical masterpiece about…
The Owl's Legacy: Olympics, or Imaginary Greece
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
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“Every European era has formed its own image of Greece made up from its own imagination. There is so much self-projection and misinterpretation.” -- Cornelius Castoriades
We begin with the personal. In interviews, classicists Manuela Smith and Oswyn Murray, singer Angélique Ionatos, and filmmaker Theo Angeolopoulos discuss the sometimes unconscious ways ancient Greek thought have permeated their lives and work. (And Ionatos notes that those who fetishize ancient Greece either idealize or ignore contemporary Greeks.)
From there, the episode looks at this phenomenon writ large—exploring the exploitation of ancient Greece to promote current ideology. As early as the 2ndcentury CE, the Church began recasting ancient Greeks as proto-Christians. But it was the German re-imagination that had the deepest—and most destructive—impact. The Nazis saw themselves as heirs to the Greeks. Against the backdrop of chilling footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, this episode shows how philosophy, neo-Paganism and Greek aesthetic ideals were used to promote Nazi visions of purity, culminating in the displays of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.
“We should raze the Sorbonne and put Chris Marker in its place.” —Henri Michaux
“The primary pleasure of the series, which is incredibly inspiring, is linked to this great banquet of participants, the sum of knowledge they invoke, but above all to the playful flows the editing establishes between their ideas, constructing a formidable network of meanings, historical and cultural perspectives - a veritable encyclopedia of development." —Le Monde
“Why did we have to wait so long for this electrifyingly intelligent film?” —Le Point
“Thirteen words to uncover an entire civilization and reestablish its considerable influence on our modern societies.” —Les Inrockuptibles
“With erudition, Chris Marker questions in each episode what remains Greek within us.” —Philosophie Magazine
Citation
Main credits
Marker, Chris (film director)
Peck, Bob (narrator)
Other credits
Music, Eleni Karaindrou [and 4 others]; camerapersons, Andreas Sinanos [and 4 others]; editing team, Khadicha Bariha, Nedjma Scialom.
Distributor subjects
Historical Anthropology; Ancient Greece; Chris Marker; France; PhilosophyKeywords
"The Owl's Legacy"; Icarus Films; France; Chris Marker; Ancient Greece; culture; ,doc,art; history; shod
WEBVTT
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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On July 21, 1936, the Olympic
flame was lit in the Greece
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where a 14-year-old schoolboy,
Cornelius Castoriadis lived.
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He was born in Constantinople
like Elia Kazan, then,
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27 years old and just
arrived in Hollywood.
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Basilis Basilikos, two
years old and precocious,
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saw the flame as it
crossed Salonika on its way
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to open the games
at Berlin, just 38
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months prior to the start
of the Second World War.
00:00:53.190 --> 00:00:58.200 align:middle line:90%
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Just as in ancient
times, Greeks from all
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around the Mediterranean
gathered at Olympia.
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Visitors from all around the
world were gathered in Berlin.
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Many would come from France
when Michel Serres was
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six and reading Jules Verne,
where George Steiner was seven
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and watched from his window as
the right-wing groups paraded
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on their way to the
Left Bank, where
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Jean-Pierre Vernant awaited
them for a good punch up.
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Others would come
from the states,
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from Japan, others from
England, where Oswyn Murray was
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just minus one year old.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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And the flame would wander
across that now forgotten
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Europe made up of imaginary
kingdoms and fragile republics.
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It would brush the
border of Romania,
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where 14 years earlier, the
Greek Iannis Xenakis had been
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born and where, 21 years later,
a young lady would appear,
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Manuela [INAUDIBLE].
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Well, in fact,
it\'s very difficult
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to separate between
my personal history
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insofar as the
Greeks are concerned
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and my interest in Greece
and my present interests.
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Because what the
Greeks gave me from
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the start was a sense of
integration of personality,
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which, I\'m afraid, was what
I lacked most, especially
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in my context.
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This is also another
separation which
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is very difficult to make.
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However, I shall try to make it.
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I mean, to separate
my personal history
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from my personal background.
00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:59.870 align:middle line:84%
And I suppose the
history of one coming
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to understand about the
Greeks is, to a certain point,
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equivalent to the history
of all of us coming
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to understand the Greeks.
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We passed so many stages.
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I mean, we went through so many
stages of partly understanding
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them, of putting them to
pieces, and taking just one bit
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and focusing our interest
only on this or that,
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of misrepresenting
the Greek world.
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But then, I think we started to
have a more comprehensive view
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of them, which is, perhaps,
both truer and more adequate
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to our ourselves.
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And that\'s what I call
an integrating view
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of the Greek world.
00:03:57.845 --> 00:04:00.470 align:middle line:90%
00:04:00.470 --> 00:04:07.640 align:middle line:84%
And I\'m saying this
also in a personal way.
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If I\'m to speak
to the owl, that\'s
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how things happened with me too.
00:04:12.810 --> 00:04:15.528 align:middle line:90%
[SPEAKING FRENCH]
00:04:15.528 --> 00:05:40.450 align:middle line:90%
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It was rather from a lack of
the Greeks that I met them.
00:05:46.420 --> 00:05:51.070 align:middle line:84%
Because I wanted so much to
know that mysterious world.
00:05:51.070 --> 00:05:55.840 align:middle line:84%
And there were only
hints about it around.
00:05:55.840 --> 00:05:58.270 align:middle line:84%
There was no
classical education.
00:05:58.270 --> 00:06:02.080 align:middle line:84%
And so I just
embarked on the task
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of reading Homer
in original, well,
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of trying to come to that stage.
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This is how I came across Greece
because of what they generally
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came to embody in, perhaps,
in the European mind, that
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is freedom.
00:06:31.400 --> 00:06:36.470 align:middle line:84%
If you could say one
thing that the whole
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of the Greek civilization
left to the rest of the world,
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what could you
think it could be?
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00:06:45.680 --> 00:06:50.390 align:middle line:84%
Democracy, freedom,
and free thinking--
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that\'s three things,
but the same.
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I would hesitate to say that
there\'s anything that deserves
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to be called really Greek.
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Because to be called
Greek is to be ideal.
00:07:04.480 --> 00:07:14.680 align:middle line:84%
But on the other hand, I think
that maybe what we should
00:07:14.680 --> 00:07:19.240 align:middle line:84%
say rather is there anything
in the world which is not
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derived from that Greek
ideal with the same sort
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of relationship as
the good deriving
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from the platonic abstract
ideal of the good.
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It seems to me, difficult
to conceive of a world
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without the Greeks, even
though nothing in it
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any longer is Greek.
00:07:43.990 --> 00:07:46.370 align:middle line:90%
[SPEAKING FRENCH]
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I also think that one of
the most important things
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and interesting things
about the Greeks
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is the way we are always
concerned about them.
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We shall never come to
the truth about what
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the Greek world really was.
00:09:44.920 --> 00:09:48.100 align:middle line:84%
But certainly, we can
know more about ourselves
00:09:48.100 --> 00:09:56.050 align:middle line:84%
from studying this [INAUDIBLE]
way in which various centuries,
00:09:56.050 --> 00:10:01.540 align:middle line:84%
various cultures have been
concerned with the Greeks.
00:10:01.540 --> 00:10:02.970 align:middle line:90%
[SPEAKING FRENCH]
00:10:02.970 --> 00:22:53.180 align:middle line:90%
00:22:53.180 --> 00:22:57.260 align:middle line:84%
In 776 BC, a man named
Coroebus won a race
00:22:57.260 --> 00:22:58.540 align:middle line:90%
in the first Olympic games.
00:22:58.540 --> 00:23:03.380 align:middle line:84%
This is first recorded
date in Europe.
00:23:03.380 --> 00:23:05.690 align:middle line:84%
He would have been no
match for Ben Johnson.
00:23:05.690 --> 00:23:10.010 align:middle line:84%
But European history
begins with Coroebus.
00:23:10.010 --> 00:23:14.710 align:middle line:84%
The games of 1936 were a
meeting of imaginary Greeces.
00:23:14.710 --> 00:23:18.311 align:middle line:84%
After all, didn\'t Coubertin
say, \"Sport is war
00:23:18.311 --> 00:23:19.310 align:middle line:90%
reduced to its virtues\"?
00:23:19.310 --> 00:23:21.606 align:middle line:90%
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:23:21.606 --> 00:24:29.020 align:middle line:90%
00:24:29.020 --> 00:24:31.040 align:middle line:90%
This was an extreme example.
00:24:31.040 --> 00:24:33.500 align:middle line:84%
But the fact remains
that Greece, or at least
00:24:33.500 --> 00:24:36.080 align:middle line:84%
the idea of Greece,
has been used
00:24:36.080 --> 00:24:38.780 align:middle line:84%
to fuel the spirit
of totalitarianism,
00:24:38.780 --> 00:24:41.480 align:middle line:90%
and it still does now and then.
00:24:41.480 --> 00:24:44.300 align:middle line:84%
All the more need then to
look for that Greek word which
00:24:44.300 --> 00:24:48.410 align:middle line:84%
is, theoretically, the safest
antidote to totalitarianism--
00:24:48.410 --> 00:24:49.850 align:middle line:90%
the word democracy.
00:24:49.850 --> 00:24:55.250 align:middle line:90%
00:24:55.250 --> 00:24:58.000 align:middle line:90%
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Distributor: Icarus Films
Length: 26 minutes
Date: 1989
Genre: Expository
Language: French; German; English
Closed Captioning: Available
Interactive Transcript: Available
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