UB to Host Buffalo Premiere of Prize-Winning Greek Film

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- An epic odyssey through the Balkan Peninsula will unfold in the Buffalo film premiere of the 1995 Theo Angelopoulos film, "Ulysses' Gaze," a modern rendition of Homer's "Odyssey" starring Harvey Keitel. The film will be screened on Saturday, Nov. 1, in the Center for the Arts Screening Room on the University at Buffalo North (Amherst) Campus.

Admission for the premiere is $20 per person and includes a champagne reception beginning at 2 p.m., followed by a lecture and the film.

Two additional screenings of the film will be held at 3 and 7 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 2. Admission will be $5.50.

The event will be sponsored by Kerry S. Grant, dean of the UB Faculty of Arts and Letters, and the Hellenic Cultural Committee of Western New York. Proceeds will benefit the Program in Modern Greek offered through UB's World Languages Institute.

"Ulysses' Gaze," filmed in Greece, Italy, France and the Balkans, won the Grand Jury Prize and International Critics Prize at the 1995 Cannes International Film Festival.

Angelopoulos, considered one of the most influential directors in contemporary cinema, has received numerous prizes for his films, including the European Felix Award for Best Picture -- the equivalent to the American Oscar -- for "Landscape in the Mist" in 1988.

In "Ulysses' Gaze," Keitel stars as a Homeric Greek film director who embarks on a quest from Athens to Sarajevo to find three long-lost reels of undeveloped film shot by two Balkan brothers in another era. The journey portrayed in the film gives viewers a compelling eyewitness account of war-torn Sarajevo, while addressing the conflict that is still unraveling in the Balkan states. It also reflects the demise of communism in Eastern Europe.

The lecture preceding the screening will be presented by Peter Pappas, a noted authority on Greek cinematography, who will discuss the film's historical implications, as well as the connection between the film and modern culture.

For more information or tickets for the premiere screening, call Stefanos C. Papazaharias, coordinator of the Program in Modern Greek, at (716) 645-6902, ext. 1494.