Excursion

Εκδρομή

As an indeterminate war rages (World War II or the Greek Civil War?), the wife of a lieutenant fighting on the front line goes to be with him. She also becomes romantically involved with a young sergeant serving as her husband’s adjutant. Hopelessly in love, the sergeant contrives a way of convincing her to cross the border with him. Excursion, Kanellopoulos’ second feature- length film, marks the pinnacle of his career: with it, the director gifts us an iconic film that simultaneously unfurls as a popular melodrama centering on an archetypal pair of star-crossed lovers, as an epic Western set against the ruggedness and mud of the Macedonian landscape, and as a densely modernist work on an equal footing with the European vanguard of the time. Lili Papayanni’s appearance in Excursion cannot but sear itself indelibly on the memory. Without doubt one of the most felicitous moments in Greek cinema.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Takis Kanellopoulos
Script: Yorgos Kitsopoulos
Cinematography: Syrakos Danalis
Editing: Takis Kanellopoulos
Music: Nikos Mamangakis
Actors: Lili Papagianni, Angelos Antonopoulos, Kostas Katagiorgis, Kostas Lachas
Producers: Kostas Kanellopoulos
Color: B/W
Production Country: Greece
Production Year: 1966
Duration: 83'
Contact: Greek Film Center (info@gfc.gr)

Takis Kanellopoulos

Takis Kanellopoulos was born in Thessaloniki in 1933 and died in 1990 of a heart attack. He was one of the first Greek directors to make films in Thessaloniki. He was honoured at the 7th Thessaloniki Film Festival in 1966, on the occasion of his film Excursion, for his contribution to raising the quality standards of the Festival. At the 1968 Thessaloniki Festival, Interlude won the Greek Film Critics Association Award for Best Director, while the same film was awarded Best Art Film of the Year, jointly with Vassilis Georgiadis’s Girls in the Sun. Kanellopoulos’s filmography consists of three shorts and seven feature films.

Filmography

1960 Macedonian Wedding (short doc)
1961 Thassos (short doc)
1962 Glory Sky
1966 Excursion
1968 Interlude
1969 Kastoria (short doc)
1972 The Last Spring
1975 Memories of a Sunday
1978 Romantic Note
1980 Sonia