Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1989 • 26 minutes
“It’s the most Greek word I know. In a sense, it defines Greece.” --Vassilis Vassilikos
Nostalgia is there right at the start of the Greek literary tradition. Odysseus, after a decade of fighting the Trojan War, must wander another decade before finally returning home to Ithaca. For millennia to follow, nostalgia—a word drawn from roots meaning “longing for home” and “pain”--continued to mark the Greek experience.
Greeks feel nostalgia on many levels and in many capacities. They are immigrants who idealize their homeland. Citizens of the contemporary world who feel a longing for and connection with the glories of the past (naming their children Electra, Diogenes, or Archimedes, for instance). And a people occupied by invaders for centuries, left wondering what remains of their culture. Modern Greeks take pride in the enormous influence the ancients have had on the Western world. But are they really, as George Steiner would notoriously have it, “a parody” of the past?
Up Next in Season 1
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The Owl's Legacy: Amnesty, or History...
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1989 • 26 minutes
Western history is said to begin with the Greeks—more specifically, with Herodotus, credited as the first historian. But the ancient Greek conception of history, based on the idea of self-examination, is very different from current conce...
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The Owl's Legacy: Mathematics, or the...
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1989 • 26 minutes
“Historians say Utopia doesn’t exist. It does! It’s the geometric space where everything is proven.” --Michel Serres
There is a narrative about ancient Greece and math: That the Greeks invented mathematics as we know it, that men such a...
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The Owl's Legacy: Logomachy, or the D...
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1989 • 26 minutes
“The adventures of language may be the most meaningful thing in world history.” -- Nikos Svoronos
The word “logos” stands at the start of Greek philosophy. A word that defies simple translation, it lies at the root of terms including lo...
