With the filming of Sotiros (1976-78) I moved away from the sources of my preceding films (From the Notebook of… or Ruskin) in Florence and Venice and came closer to the Present.  Athens and the Peloponnese and a friendship with the Greek painter, Diamantis Diamantopoulos, opened my eyes to other images.

The first filming of the shepherd near the temple of Apollo at Bassae set the scene. Editing this landscape in parallel to the details of a hotel room and the inter-titles, He said, and he said. led to the film’s silent visual dialogue. Mountainside and pillow are the beginning of this lyric. 

My impulse was both formal and narrative; different perspectives created by a camera angle or camera movement resonated with possibilities. The horizontal pans moved between interior and exterior scenes; I filmed into the room’s corners and juxtaposed this to the inter-titles on the left and on the right. This visual dialogue was a way to see the captive emotions of love and anger, to grasp their outline. For the most part, ‘the actors’ are not seen and events implied. The sounds of the room or landscape are not synchronous and are repeated for emphasis and texture. 

Certain images stand outside the flow: a goat, an olive tree, the hands of a blind-man, a full frame of red or Gregory Markopoulos seated quietly in the hotel room.

Originally the film was composed in three parts, and in the re-editing I kept the division of two. The unseen event between the first and second part was a serious traffic accident, but again what is accidental? 

When I was able to film the second part, I allowed the sound to guide me.