In memory of Gian Maria Volonté
And, if the soul is about to know itself,
it must gaze into the soul.
Plato, Acybiades 133B.
Weavers.
In Avdella, a Greek village, 1905.
The first film made by the brothers Miltos and Yannakis Manakis.
The first film ever made in Greece and the Balkans.
But is that a fact?
Is it the first film?
The first gaze?
It was the winter of 1954.
Yannakis saw a blue ship moored over there...
in the harbor of Salonica.
I was learning the trade with him in those days.
He had set his heart on photographing the ship...
as it left the harbor.
So he waited and kept watch.
One fine morning, the ship sailed away.
Yannakis died that same evening.
As I wrote he kept rambling on about three undeveloped reels.
A film which for some reason was never developed...
since then... since the beginning of the century.
I didn´t give it much thought at the time.
The three reels.
The journey.
Theo Angelopoulos, Eric Heumann Amedeo Pagani, Giorgio Silvagni
present
Harvey Keitel in ULYSSES´ GAZE
a film by Theo Angelopoulos
Good evening
Welcome.
We never thought you would agree to come.
People say you are not easy to get out.
Excuse me for my English.
What´s going on here?
We´ve got big probIems.
No sooner did the Organizing Committee announce...
that the film would be shown
and that you were coming here than all hell broke loose.
The religious groups and fanatics
threw us out... of the movie theatre.
We were desperate so we decided to show the film outdoors.
People would have to keep their coats on because of the cold.
We'd use a portable projector and a wall...a symbolic gesture.
In the end we decided to show the film in the market...
We installed loudspeakers in the town.
Do you hear the bells?
They're all on their knees in church, praying...
to exorcise the evil spirit.
Come with me.
We never thought that your film would cause the same hysteria
in our small town as it did everywhere else in the world.
Lost your way again?
I'm back.
I'm stiff.
Frozen.
Hanging on those phone poles all day like a bird.
Bad weather.
The wind's cut all the lines in the border zone.
Some of us left to work all night to fix them.
Our home is your home.
Our home.
We've crossed the border and we're still here.
How many borders must we cross to reach home?
Would you like to have dinner with us?
It's late.
I'm expected somewhere.
Good night.
We're afraid the situation may get out of hand.
You're from Athens?
The person in charge of the Film Archives?
The Mayor wants to see you.
Come with me.
Ptolemas. How it's changed.
Everything.
Over there there was army barracks.
You mean when?
Rain and mud in winter.
In summer, you couldn't breathe for the dust.
You mean when?
We got out on leave every Saturday night.
For 20 months. Every Saturday night.
500 soldiers.
500 cropped heads in a square,
hoping for a sign in the eyes of the local girls.
But they just laughed and passed on.
There.
They laugh and pass on.
But not always.
It was many years ago.
There was a house here.
It's still there.
It's unbelievable what's going on.
The mayor refuses to come in himself. He's scared.
The town is split in two.
The present TV crews are out looking for you everywhere.
I'm amazed you can keep so cool.
After all, you're the cause of all this fuss.
Excuse me, I'll see you later.
This is unheard of. Let's get outta here.
I smell trouble.
Looks to me as if you've come here for nothing.
Yes, I can see that.
Besides the screening,
I would like to stay here for personal reasons.
If you only knew how much.
But I can't. I...
I have to move on.
I used to dream this would be the end of the journey.
Isn't it strange?
Isn't it always the way?
And my end is my beginning.
What can I say? You've been away for years.
35 years is a long time.
The distance.
The homesickness. You've forgotten.
A Balkan reality is much tougher than
the sort of reality you knew in America.
You're sailing in dark waters now.
If I take just one step.
If I take just one step, I'm elsewhere.
Your taxi's waiting for you.
I've tried in my clumsy way to hold you back.
Anyway...
The reason for this journey's so absurd that it looks like...
A pretext, you mean?
You said it.
I can see how you're fascinated by the story of the Manakis brothers.
Only, I don't know, is that enough?
One more thing.
The Film Archives will not be able to cover you.
We just don't have the means to do that.
I thought you understood.
This is a personal journey.
Take care.
I didn't expect to see you suddenly, I guess.
For a moment, I thought I was dreaming of you
like I did all these past years.
Do you remember the railway station?
You were shivering in the rain, like now.
The wind was blowing hard.
I was going away, but I meant to come back soon.
And then I got lost, wandering along strange routes.
If I should be stretch out my hands
I will touch you.
And time will be whole again
But something is holding me back.
I wish I could tell you I returned.
But something is holding me back.
The journey isn't over, not yet.
Here we are. The border.
Have you decided?
Do we cross?
We cross.
Passport.
Excuse me, I saw the Greek license plate on your car...
The taxi driver who brought me here from Athens...
won't go into Albania.
They scared him here at Customs.
If you happen to be going through Korytsa...
I'm on my way to my sister's.
Come with me.
We haven't seen each other for 47 years, since the civil war.
Same old story with the illegal immigrants from Albania...
Here they call them rifugiati.
What's in the bags?
Various things...
Whatever you can imagine.
Some bought, others stolen...
Gas burners, canned goods, jeans, TV sets, cigarettes...
Mind if she comes with us?
Who me?
We entered Albania with snow and silence.
Your image, still damp,
unchanged since the day I left it, emerges once again from the night.
Am I leaving?
What's this place?
We're here... Korytsa.
Why did you stop?
Are you scared?
Who, me? I've been talking to the snow for 25 years.
It knows me. I stopped because the snow said so.
And you've got to respect the snow.
Behind those mountains lies the Skopje-Albanian border.
In two hours with the local bus you're in Monastir.
I want us to be friends.
In my village, to become friends...
we've got to drink from the same glass...
and listen to the same song.
Know something?
Greece is dying.
We're dying as a people.
We've come full circle.
I don't know how many thousands of years...
among broken stones and statues
...and we're dying.
But if Greece is to die she'd better do it quickly...
because the agony lasts too long makes too much noise.
Hey, Nature! You're alone?
I'm alone too. Have a biscuit!
What are you after?
You're looking for something.
Want me to come along?
No.
Drop me off at the border.
I may have a long way to go.
In early 1904 at Yannakis' insistence we left Yanena.
Our photographers' studio wasn't doing well.
We'd been in Yanena six years.
We came here to Monastir.
Things weren't too good here either.
Then war broke out.
First the Balkan Wars... and then the First Great War.
Hard times.
We packed up and headed for our village Avdella,
but the roads had been cut off.
Monastir became crowded with refugees and soldiers.
All the armies of Europe have trudged through this street...
and every time they changed its name.
Excuse me.
Now here, you see, is where we set up our first movie theatre,
after the First Great War,
when Yannakis came back... from exile in Philipoupolis.
We also brought a projectionist from Salonica.
We opened with a French film.
What are you looking for?
Who are you?
The Athens Film Archives have asked me to...
To supervise a documentary on the Manakis brothers.
I wonder if you have any connection with
the Film Archives in Skopje.
I wasn't able to contact them from Athens.
I'm looking for some undeveloped film by the Manakis brothers.
Three reels.
I'm not trying to prove anything,
if that's what's worrying you.
We opened with a French film, Rin-Tin-Tin...
but the print was in bad shape.
It kept falling apart.
We kept it together with pins.
The musicians we'd hired kept loosing track.
Business slowly picked up but we were up to our neck in debt.
Until 1939, just before World War II when it burnt down.
The film we were showing, a Chaplin comedy, caught fire...
and that was the end of our movie theatre.
Thank you.
Listen.
The Manakis' cinema in Monastir burnt down in 1939.
The two brothers parted.
Yannakis settled in Thessaloniki
and Miltos stayed behind with all the material.
In 1954, Yannakis died and Miltos
sold the material to the Yugoslav government.
Sometime later, this material was handed over
to the film archives in Skopje.
The question is...
Were the undeveloped reels part of this material?
The Manakis brothers went around photographing and filming people.
They were trying to record a new era.
A new century.
Over 60 years or more, they photographed faces,
events, and the turmoil of the Balkans.
Excuse me.
They weren't concerned with politics or racial questions,
whether friends or enemies.
They were interested in people.
They were always on the move,
all throughout the declining Ottoman Empire.
Recalling everything...
Landscapes, weddings, local customs,
political changes, village fairs,
revolutions, battles, official celebrations,
Sultans, kings, prime ministers,
bishops, rebels.
All the ambiguities.
The contrasts.
The conflicts in this area of the world
are reflected in their work.
You haven't answered my question.
We have all the material here in Skopje,
except what you're looking for.
Skopje.
If you people have those boxes, would you tell me?
Yes.
Yes?
Yes.
You know I would.
Now I would
I am getting to go
This is Skopje.
You want to find out if I'm telling you the truth?
I believe you.
The Skopje-Sofia-Bucarest Express is now departing.
Where will you go?
This train is going to Bucharest.
I'll tell you a story.
Two years ago, a midsummer,
I was the Delos location hunting for a film.
In some blaze right on the ruins,
I wondered around amongst the broken marble,
The fallen columns.
A frightened lizard slithered into hiding under a tombstone.
The miserable cicadas droned away,
adding a note of desolation to the empty landscape.
And then I heard a creaking sound,
a hollow sound, as if coming from the depths of the earth.
I looked up and on the hill I saw an ancient olive tree
slowly topping over.
An olive tree on a hill
slowly sinking to its death on the ground.
A huge solitary tree.
The gash made by the falling tree revealed an ancient head,
the bust of Apollo, dislodged with all the weight.
I walked on further past the row of lions,
and the row of phalli...
till I reached a small sacred place,
the birthplace of Apollo according to tradition.
I raised my Polaroid and pressed the button.
And when the photograph slit out, I was amazed to see
it hadn't registered a thing.
I shifted my position and tried again.
Nothing.
Blank negative pictures of the world.
As if my glance wasn't working.
I went on taking one photograph after another, clicking away.
Seeing empty squares, black holes.
The sun dipped into the sea,
as if abandoning the scene.
I felt I was sinking into darkness.
And when the Film Archives suggested this project
I was only too eager. It was a way out.
I'd have given up soon enough, only...
I discovered something.
Three reels of film.
Not mentioned by any film historian.
I don't know what came over me then.
I felt strangely disturbed.
I tried to shrug the feeling away to break free,
but l couldn't.
Three reels.
Perhaps the whole film undeveloped.
The first film perhaps.
The first glance.
A lost glance.
A lost innocence.
It turned into an obsession as if it were my own work.
My own first glance.
Lost long ago.
Passport.
Passports.
There is a small problem.
You must follow me.
Passport.
Come with me.
This way.
Your brother Miltos was smarter than you.
He got off to Albania in time.
Your brother Miltos was smarter than you and "He got off to Albania in time."
Monastir, January 7th, 1915.
Following information supplied by Ivan Malevsky, butcher...
men from our military police discovered in the house...
of Yannakis and Miltos Manakis or Manakias...
photographers and cinematographers...
an important cache of firearms and explosives.
It is believed that these were meant to be used in attacks...
and sabotage against the Bulgarian army...
and the allied Germany army...
to be carried out by terrorist and anarchist groups...
connected with the Federation organization based in Salonica.
The Military Court of the First Infantry Regiment...
of the Bulgarian army,
convened forthwith...
and sentenced to death in absentia...
the brothers Yannakis and Miltos Manakis or Manakias...
and issued orders for the confiscation of all photographs
and film found in their house and studio.
Attention!
Port arms!
Arm!
Take aim!
I don't understand!
In the name of His Majesty King Ferdinand of Bulgaria..
the death sentence against Yannakis Manakis or Manakias...
resident of Monastir, is commuted to exile in Plovdiv...
for the duration of the war.
Where are you going?
Philipoupolis.
Plovdiv.
What have you been doing all this time?
Did I really say Philipoupolis?
You said Philipoupolis.
Where will you go?
During his exile,
Manakis used to come here everyday and stare at this river.
The Evros flowing into the Aegean Sea.
What river are you talking about?
I don't understand.
I don't know what's the matter with me.
Touch me.
Save me.
Sophia
Novi-lskar
Svoge... Mezdra... Cerven...
Brjag... Plaven... Nikopol...
Bridge on the Danube...
Border...
Turnu-Magurele.
Rosiori de Vede...
Bucuresti.
What's the matter?
In Bucharest in the early months of 1905,
they told us we would...
We would...
We could buy in England or France machines for making moving pictures.
This was new. It was the...
That's an excuse. Just an excuse.
Why have we come here?
Why have you come?
You knew all along that there were Romanians
to cover the brothers' material from the Bulgarians.
The two countries broke off relations.
Isn't that right?
After Romania went over the ally side in the war.
So why have you come?
My footsteps.
Somehow they led me here.
Mother, what are you doing here?
Thank God we made it in time.
Come on, we have six hours to reach Costanza.
You're wasting time.
Good evening, Madam.
Finally! How was your journey?
We were worried.
You know... the trains...
Grandmother.
Come, my boy!
How did you like Bucharest?
You've come at last!
Grandfather.
Good evening, grandfather.
Good evening, my girl.
You're late, Katerina.
I was so afraid I'd miss him.
It was New Year's Eve, wasn't it when they took him away?
I don't even want to think about it.
Those camps were liberated some time ago.
Only Matthausen took them a long time.
Uncle Langilos.
Did you have a nice trip?
Did you have a good time, my boy?
Aunt Jenny from Breilla.
Uncle Nikos from Galantz.
The girls.
What did you see? Tell us.
How was Bucharest?
The whole family.
Is everything ready?
Yes, Madam.
I have prepared the soup.
The table will be ready in half an hour.
When do you want me to serve dinner?
He's on his way!
He's here!
He's here! He's here!
Father. How long it's been.
Aren't you going to kiss your father?
He's grown up.
He's grown so tall. He has your eyes.
Happy New Year!
Happy 1945!
Aren't you dancing? Don't tell me you don't know how.
One two three...
You're wasting your time, mother.
I never know how to dance.
Come on.
Happy 1948.
Take us away from here, Spyro.
I want to leave.
I can't bear it.
Mother.
I never got to dance with you.
You got the permit at last!
Let's see it! Show us!
How many of You are leaving?
About eighty Greek families...
but Jews and Armenians as well...
Constanza will be quite deserted.
Are you glad to be going to Greece, my boy?
The People's Confiscation Committee is here.
Ignore them.
Happy New Year Happy 1950.
A photograph.
One last photograph.
What was it you said, grandfather?
Here on this land, by these waters...
we lived happily for many centuries.
Come along. We're waiting for you.
I'm coming, Mother.
Odessa, Constanza, Danube, Germany.
Where the hell are you going?
Don't you know there's a war?
I've got to make a phone call.
And I'll...
I'm going to get something for the trip.
Don't cry.
I'm crying, because I...
Because I can't love you.
In the early months of 1905, in Bucharest, Romania,
we were told that in England and France
you could buy machines for making moving pictures.
We could hardly believe it.
It took our breath away.
But we had to believe it, because we saw
one of these moving pictures with our own eyes.
The people in these pictures looked like puppets.
They moved jerkily like puppets.
But that didn't matter. We were completely fascinated.
My brother Yannakis was so excited,
he couldn't rest until he got hold of this magic machine
and take it back to Monastir.
He saw it in his dreams. He raved about it.
So while I made my way home,
he got on the ship and went off to London
to find a Bioscope 300 camera made by the Charles Urban Company.
Tripartite Border Control.
Declare destination.
Destination: Germany
Have you anyone on board?
Nobody.
The first thing God created was the journey.
And then came doubt... and nostalgia...
How about some coffee?
Or do we go right now?
You know me.
I know you.
What are you looking for?
Signs of war? You won't find any.
The war's so close that it might as well be far away.
How long have you been here in Belgrade, Niko?
What attracts you? The war?
The danger?
The need for intensity?
What attracts me? I don't know.
I don't have any answers.
As for your other question...
I've been here almost three years and I think I'll stay.
But first I want to see an end to this war.
Where are we going?
You'll see.
You asked for the man in charge of the Belgrade Film Archives.
You'll see him.
Despite his age he's holding up pretty well.
Everyone referred me to him.
The man's a walking archive.
What do you want?
Who are you?
Good morning. We're here to see Mr. Yovisitsa.
Good morning.
I've been expecting you.
This is where I spend all my time.
I'm busy making an inventory of all the films
made between 1950 and 1955...
when Yugoslavia was Yugoslavia.
I know what you're looking for.
Those undeveloped reels.
I had them.
After Yannakis died Miltos sold all his material to us.
You know that.
I was young then, full of boyish enthusiasm.
One evening he brought me three reels.
He placed them in my hands.
He was moved...as if parting with something very precious.
For 20 years we tried to develop those reels.
Hopeless.
Nothing came through.
We couldn't figure out the chemical formula.
A few years ago a colleague from Sarajevo...
asked me if he could have them.
He was an expert in developing films of that period.
But then the war broke out and we lost touch.
You just have to wait till the war ends.
Did you find a hotel?
I must do something about it.
You've come all this way.
Balkan hospitality and all that...
I've taken care of it.
Goodbye.
Sarajevo.
Let's go get a drink to forget.
After all there's nothing you can do.
First thing you have to learn is where to change your money.
What's the problem?
They're arguing over who came to the Balkans first...
the Serbs or the Albanians... only to come to the conclusion
that it's all Hegel's fault for influencing Marx.
Something's happened at the Bosnian front.
I really should leave too.
But what the hell, I can't just leave you...
Let's drink...
To the years in Paris...
to Francoise, to Helga...
to Michele... to Monique...
to Antigone...
to all our busted hopes...
to the world that hasn't changed... for all our dreaming.
To Mikes...
to Kazuko...to Costas...
to all those who chose to leave early...
How do you journalists manage to get through...
to the war zone? Isn't it terribly risky?
A rhetorical answer... off-hand...
Danger is my business.
but the truth is that most of the correspondents...
when they want to send in a story or the latest news...
go to various army units outside Belgrade...
and stage the war there... at the cost of a few dollars...
Only a few of them actually enter the war zone.
Let's drink to the sea.
To the inexhaustible sea.
The beginning and the end.
To Charlie Mingus, to Tsitsanis, to Cavafy...
to Che Guevara,
to May of '68.
to Santorini.
To Morino, to Dreyer, Orson Welles.
To your three reels...
to Eisenstein..
Do we love him?
We loved him, but he didn't love us.
Let's drink to the two of us, then.
We fell asleep sweetly in one world...
and were rudely awakened in another.
Pity you came all this way for nothing.
But it's alright.
I got a chance to see you... though that's all that came out of it.
Here we are.
I've got to get to Sarajevo.
Are you out of your mind?
You're not serious, are you?
We'll get hold of a correspondent on his way there.
We'll ask him to get the information you need.
When?
Now.
The only way to get there without a permit...
is to follow the rivers.
There's a boat leaving every evening.
It sails from the Danube to the Sava...
and along the tributaries to Sarajevo.
Yugoslavia is full of rivers...
Only take care.
It's dangerous.
I've got to go to Sarajevo.
Greek, wake up.
The Philipoupolis police are looking for you.
Philipoupolis...
Evros... my house... Evros...
Bulgaria... border...
Greece.
Aegean... sea...
Vania!
Vania...
Vaniushka...
When spring comes...
what would you like me to plant there where your head rests?
A birch to keep you cool and remind you of home?
Tell me what you want, my love.
Or would you like both,
a birch...and a poplar...
from your Gomushka, Vania, my love...?
Vania, Vaniushka...
Vania... Vania...
English... French... Greek army...
German... Bulgarian... army.
I was lying asleep at the bottom of my little boat
when it bumped into the jutting edge of the wharf.
One, two bumps.
Then the boat came to a standstill.
For a moment, all I could hear was the lapping of the water.
Then there was the sound of a distant explosion.
It was a hollow sound
as if it come out of a deep pit.
I raised my head.
On the right and left of the canal were tall buildings
torn apart by the artillery fire.
Their blackened windows seem to be staring at me.
A large cloud of black smoke darkened the horizon.
Is this Sarajevo?
I'm looking for...Ivo Levy.
Do you know Ivo Levy?
Ivo Levy.
Ivo Levy?
I'm looking for Ivo Levy.
Are you Ivo Levy?
Come now.
Welcome to Sarajevo.
I've come...from far away.
I'm looking for something in your possession, I was told.
Three reels of undeveloped film by the Manakis brothers.
You have come all this way for that?
I suppose they sent you from Belgrade.
You know who sent me? I know.
All this way for the undeveloped reels.
You have come all this way looking for something
that's believed to be lost.
You...you must have a great faith.
or it is in despair
When I got hold of those reels, I was wild with excitement.
It was a challenge finding the old chemical formula.
I tried several combinations.
For six months, I tried.
I kept changing the fluids over and over again.
I sat in a small developing lab.
Endless nights listening to the golden fluids.
There are time that the golden fluids sound like a song.
You see, like a song, you know.
It...it sounds like a song.
Like a song.
I was doing fine.
I had almost gotten it right.
All I needed was one more adjustment in the formula.
Just a detail, really.
Then the war broke out.
I had to concentrate on saving the film archives.
It's our memory. I had to save it.
This place is my life, my whole life.
Besides, there was no point anymore.
What's the point now with all this slaughter going on?
This was our cinema.
Please. You can come with me.
Attention, please.
This is now our cinematheque.
Here. Here's my treasure.
"Birth of Nation"...
"Doctor Mabuse"...
"Falstaff"...
"Persona"...
"Metropolis""...
"Ordet"...
Sit down. Sit down.
Please.
You have no right.
In the beginning, there were times I thought
I had dreamt it all up.
Then it became something lost.
And now it's a gaze,
struggling to merge from the dark.
A kind of birth.
You have no right to keep it locked away.
That gaze.
It's the war.
The insanity.
Death.
All the more reason...
You have no right.
You are tired.
Upset.
Come and lie down. You're...
Try to get some sleep. You're...
You need it.
So you really need it.
Lie...down.
So...we'll talk it about it later.
Or tomorrow.
You have no right.
1994/12/3
I live my life in ever widening circles...
that rise above things...
I probably won't come last... but I'll try.
I circle around God.
Good morning... Father... where are you?
I don't understand.
I'm looking for my father.
They were here.
I have no idea. They were here not long ago.
Father... Father...
I wish I could wait for him.
I haven't seen him for days.
The siren will go off any moment now and...
we live at the other end of town.
Are you all right?
Your face...
It seems familiar.
As if I've known you for years.
Almost as if I've always known you.
What am I talking about?
Sorry I said that.
But it seemed to me...
Well...
I've got to go.
Tell him I waited for him.
Tell him we're expecting him.
Au revoir.
You are feeling better now?
I'm sorry.
I went into your lab while you were away.
But I heard the fluids sing.
And I saw the samples.
You were right.
Truly you were making headway.
I feel...
I'm touched. I...
I... I think...
You're shivering.
Probably got a fever.
Just... another try.
Just one more time.
You should drink something hot.
Child! Tea!
You have convinced me
You were right.
Besides...
What am I... if not a collector of vanished gazes?
1994/12/3
I live my life in ever widening circles...
that rise above things.
I probably won't come last... but I'll try...
I circle around God...
Come.
Come with me.
You'll have to wait before we screen it.
Out.
Out you go. Out with you.
It's done!
It's done.
Thanks for you insistence.
It needs to dry now.
But it will only take a few hours.
I've been hearing footsteps, voices outside
in the street for some time now.
And the boy is gone.
I tried to find him...
Don't worry.
He has a habit of disappearing like that.
He'll turn up again suddenly like an angel of the war.
Tonight perhaps or tomorrow.
Footsteps and voices?
Wasn't that what you said?
The fog.
I sensed it.
In this city, the fog is man's best friend.
Does it sound strange?
It's because it's the only time the city gets back to normal.
Almost like it used to be.
The snipers have zero visibilities.
Foggy days and festive days here, so let's celebrate.
Besides, we have another cause for celebration. A film.
A captive gaze, as you called it,
from the early days of the century,
set free at last at the end of the century.
Isn't that an important event?
Music.
Oh, yes.
A youth orchestra.
Boys.
Serbs, Croats, Muslims.
They come out when there's a seize fire.
They go from place to place and make music in the city.
How about it?
Shall we go out too?
I'll want you to meet my family.
We might go for a walk down by the river.
"Good night. Good night".
Parting is such sweet sorrow.
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
Sleep dwell upon thine eyes,
peace in thy breasts.
Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!
Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell,
His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell"
Shall we dance?
This is something I should have dreamt of.
Dancing in Sarajevo.
You were sleeping like a baby when I woke you up.
Will you wait for me?
Is it wrong not to love the city where you were born?
But this place stifles me.
Rain and mud in winter... dust in summer.
I'll be back to take you away from here.
I can hear my train coming in.
Stay a little longer...
Only a few minutes.
I can hear the train.
I must hurry.
Tell me that you care... that you'll come back.
I'll be waiting.
You see what I meant?
Foggy days are festive days here.
Strange.
The grass is sprouting through the snow.
I think so.
It looks like an early spring.
What are we celebrating, grandmother?
We're celebrating the fog and something more besides.
But there's nothing to see.
We'll listen to the river.
At least there's that.
The winds turn southerly.
In spring, the sound of music from the city...
Can you imagine what shape the clouds have?
This one on top of us is like a car.
That other one at the far end of the sky...
looks like grandfather.
Where are you? Where are you?
Dasha... Vide...
Didn't I say you should wait for me?
Dasha... Vide...
Won't you eat something?
Vide! Dasha! Won't you eat something?
Hey! Shall we dance?
We have been left behind. Where are the others?
We're gonna lose each other.
Naomi, go take a look.
Yes, father.
You look worried.
There are moments when I see shadows in your eye.
No, it's just that I'm tired.
It's been a long journey.
Then all this waiting.
Waiting to see that gaze.
We were just taking a walk by the river.
Don't go. No matter what happens.
Our Lord and Maker made a fine mess of things, Sir.
A fine mess!
The children first!
No! Not the children.
I won't let you.
Alright then. Would you mind going down to the river, too?
The boys here want a few words with you.
My children! My children!
Not my children! Please don't take my children from me!
Dasha...
Take her too and drop her in the river with the others.
Yes sir, that's the way it is!
Our Lord and Maker made a mess of it.
When I return, it will be with another man's clothes.
Another man's name.
My coming will be unexpected.
If you look at me, unbelieving and say,
You are not here.
I will show you signs and you will believe me.
I will tell you about the lemon tree in your garden.
The cool window that lets in the moonlight.
And then signs of the body.
Signs of love.
And as we climb, trembling to our old room,
between one embrace and the next,
between lovers' calls,
I will tell you about the journey... all the night long.
And then all the nights to come.
Between one embrace and the next.
Between lovers' calls.
The whole human adventure.
The story that never ends.