Feature film
The Distant Times
Kohë e largët
Spartak Pecani · 1983
Synopsis
In the Middle Ages, in an Albania subject to foreign masters, the icon painter Andrea Selca carries on his work. Around him appear a monk, a man from Selenica and a peasant sowing his field. The painter's fate is that of many advanced minds of his time, caught between the occupiers and a clergy that refuses all change, and the story unfolds through the portraits of those he meets and who judge him.
Context
The national film archive presents it as a medieval drama, in colour. The attention goes to the psychological analysis of the characters, and the dialogues answer one another in counterpoint, the portraits crossing from one scene to the next. The relation to painting is constant: a destroyed fresco, a sower filmed like a painting, references to post-Byzantine church painting and to figures of the Bible. The promotional photographs, which the archive holds, are by Faruk Basha.
Who it is for
In Albanian, little distributed outside the country; a film of images as much as of dialogue, which demands attention.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by Albanian critics as the film that reveals its director as a filmmaker of experimentation.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.