Theo Angelopoulos is one of Europe's major directors and the dean of contemporary Greek cinema. In his films he translates politics into art and vice versa, giving expression to the Greek tendency to carry the nation's history within the human heart. In collaboration with the great cameraman Giorgios Arvanitis, Angelopoulos has fashioned a vibrant film language consisting of long, almost mesmeric phrases and dazzling tracking shots in which past and present merge. Voyage to Cythera, winner of the prize for best scenario at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, tells of an old Civil War fighter who returns after years of exile in the Soviet Union to bedevil his son, a stage director in Athens, and his long-deserted wife. Shot in the rain-drenched mountain regions, in Athens, and on the stormy quay at Piraeus, the film is as much a dream journey as a real one, as much myth as contemporary drama. (The island of the film's title is the last stop for many elderly Greeks who go there to live on their pensions.) The fine stage actor Manos Katrakis, who died a few months ago, gave an extraordinary final performance in this film, as the eccentric old revolutionary on a mystical odyssey home.