The Electra Festival offers a free Monday night film series on Greek tragic heroines, featuring Cacoyannis' Electra (with Irene Papas, music by Mikis Theodorakis); Cacoyannis' “prequel” to the Electra story, Iphigenia (based on Euripides' play Iphigenia at Aulis); Friedrich's explosive film of the Strauss/ Hofmannsthal opera Elektra (with Leonie Rysanek, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm); Visconti's haunting Vaghe Stelle dell'Orsa (“Dim Stars of the Big Bear,” released in the US as Sandra of a Thousand Delights, with Claudia Cardinale), drawing on the myth of the house of Atreus; and Margarethe von Trotta's Die bleierne Zeit (released in the US as Marianne and Juliane, in the UK as The German Sisters), a brilliant study of Germany's “Red Army faction,” using the tragic conflict between sisters (Antigone/Ismene, Electra/Chrysothemis) as background to revolutionary violence. A discussion follows each film, led by Stanford faculty and SST artists.
Performance Schedule:
Iphigenia (Cacoyannis 1979), July 13, 7:00 pm
Electra (Cacoyannis 1962), July 20, 7:00 pm
Elektra (Friedrich 1982), July 27, 7:00 pm
Vaghe Stelle dell'Orsa (Visconti 1965), August 3, 7:00 pm
Die bleierne Zeit (von Trotta 1981), August 10, 7:00 pm
For more information, please visit: website, call 650-725-5838, or email email.
Sponsored by Stanford Continuing Studies, Stanford Classics and Drama Departments, the School of Humanities & Sciences, the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, and the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts.