GREECE & MACEDONIA
GREEK CITY STATES
Mycenaean Period (1600 BC to about 1100 BC) Mycenae when Mycenae dominated much of southern Greece
Crete:
X Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete (1960) – Italian film legendary exploits of supposed Athens founder Theseus in Minoan Crete. c. 1,500 BC.
X Minotaur (2006) – loosely based on the legend of Theseus (set in the iron age instead of the bronze, c. 1,500 BC)
Fight against Troy:
Helen of Troy (2003) -- Troy falls to the Greeks (with Sienna Guillory)
Helen of Troy (1956) -- with Rossana Podesta
X La guerra di Troia (The Trojan Horse (1961) -- stars Steve Reeves and Edy Vessel
X The Trojan Women (2004) -- with Shelley Delayne
The Trojan Women (1971) -- grieving women after fall of Troy (with Irene Papas)
X Troy (2004) -- Troy VII (1275-1240 B.C.) with Diane Kruger
X Troy (2004) -- starring Brad Pitt
X The Odyssey (1977)
X The Odyssey (1997) TV miniseries -- based on the return voyage of the Greeks from Troy
Ulysses (1954)
Persian-Greek Wars:
Giant of Marathon (1959) – actor Steve Reeves as Phillipides in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC)
300 (2006) -- Spartan King Leonidas and a force of 300 Spartans fight the Persians (under King Xerxes) at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.
The 300 Spartans (1962) -- Greeks stand against the Persians at Thermopylae
Golden Age of Greece (Age of Pericles) (448 to 429 BC):
X Socrates (1970) TV -- last days of Socrates, a philosopher who was a social gadfly in Athens
X Barefoot in Athens (1966) TV -- Socrates
Battles between Athens, Sparta and Thebes:
Seven from Thebes (1964) -- a group of Thebans fight to rid Thebes from the control of Sparta,, 382-379 BC
Alexander the Great (336 to 323 BC):
Alexander the Great (1968) -- the great Macedonian empire builder (with William Shatner); made for TV
Alexander the Great (1956) -- with Richard Burton
Alexander the Great (2004) -- with Colin Farrell
X Sikander (Alexander the Great) (1941) -- Alexander the Great's conquests in North-Western India. 326-225 BC (in Urdu language)
Il colosso di Rodi (The Colossus of Rhodes) (1961) – 280 BC a Greek military hero joins a group of rebels to overthrow the tyrannical King Serse on Rhodes
X I megali stigmi tou '21: Papaflessas (1971) – the Greek revolution against the Turks (1821)
X Manto Mavrogenous (1971) – she (1796 - July 1848) was a heroine of the Greek War of Independence(1821-1829)
PRE-WORLD WAR II GREECE:
X To homa vaftike kokkino (aka Blood on the Land) (1966) -- hard life of poor Greek land workers in Thessalia at beginning of 20th century; and Marinos Antypas, socialist critic assassinated
X Dust (2001) -- at the turn of the 20th century, one brother fights for the Ottoman sultan and the other is a Macedonian rebel
Before the Rain (1994) -- in Macedonia interwoven tales against a backdrop of ethnic hatred
X Eleftherios Venizelos (1980) -- famed Greek politician of the 1909-1920 period
Meteor and Shadow (1985) -- poet Napoleon Lapathiotis and his shocking lifestyle
Trilogia I: To Livadi pou dakryzei (The Weeping Meadow) (2004) -- roughly spans the period from the end of World War I to post World War II, 1919-1949
X Meres tou '36 (Days of 1936) (1972) – drama with background the 4th of August Regime, a military dictatorship under General Ioannis Metaxas that ruled Greece from 1936 to 1941 (currently unavailable)
Rembetiko (1983) -- 40 years of the life of Greek popular singer Marika Ninou (1922-1957) covers a great deal of Greek history
POST-WORLD WAR II GREECE
X O thiasos (The Traveling Players) (1975) – some traveling actors recount the terrible events that happened in Greece, 1939 to just before 1952 ($64.99)
Eleni (1985) -- a grown-up Greek-American son searches for the executioner of his Greek mother in the Greek Civil War
X Petrina Chronia (Stone Years) (1985) -- 1954-1974; a couple is separated by the Greek Civil War
Politiki Kouzina (A Touch of Spice) (2003) -- unrequited love for a young Greek-Turkish boy who has to leave his love when his family is deported from Turkey back to Greece
Z (1969) -- 1963 killing of the Greek liberal politician Gregorios Lambrakise
X I Dokimi (The Rehearsal) (1974) -- indictment of the Greek military junta (1967-1974)
X Haromeni Imera (Happy Day) (1976) -- the story of the director’s exile to an island by the Greek military dictatorship
X Telos Epochis (End of an Era) (1995) -- 1969-1970 Greece as seen through the eyes of a group of high school seniors
X O anthropos me to garyfallo (1980) – Greece between 1949-1974
X Ap’to Hioni (From the Snow) (1993) -- 1990 Greece as seen through the eyes of travelers heading from Corfu to Athens
X Ouloi emeis, efenti (All of us, Efendi) (1998) – civil war in Greece
To Vlemma tou Odyssea (Ulysses' Gaze) (1995) -- in search of lost film reels, a Greek-American director travels across the Balkans, ending up in bomb destroyed Sarajevo
Before the Rain (1994) -- ethnic conflict in Macedonia
X Kako ubiv svetec (How I Killed a Saint) (2004)-- 2001 ethnic conflict in Macedonia involving the country's Albanian minority seen through the eyes of two siblings with opposing views
X Golebama Voda (The Great Water) (2004) -- elderly Macedonian politician has heart attack & has flashbacks of his youth: orphaned by WWII, in the orphanage he went through "reprogramming" to be pro-communist; rebellious, he busts a statue of Stalin & is punished
X Jas sum od Titov Veles (I am from Titov Veles) (2007) -- portrait of post-communist Macedonia in which three sisters try to escape from their dying community
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