The Owl's Legacy

1. E1. Symposium, or the Received Ideas

   Jun 12, 1989 · 26m

   In Paris, Tbilisi, Athens and Berkeley historians have played with reconstitutions of the "symposium" - the Greek banquet - around tables laden with food and wine.

2. E2. Olympics, or the Imaginary Greece

   Jun 13, 1989 · 26m

   Greece's inheritance was recomposed in contemporary mythology. This sometimes led to terrible misappropriations for the benefit of totalitarian ideologies - of which Nazism was born.

3. E3. Democracy, or the City of Dreams

   Jun 14, 1989 · 26m

   What exactly does the word mean “democracy” mean? Does it designates the ancient city-state or our contemporary political systems? What are the analogies or, on the contrary, the radical differences between realities separated by more than twenty centuries? Are certain functions suitable for all civilizations? Τhe third episode of Chris Marker’s legendary documentary series – which first aired on British state television in 1991 but remained in the dark for decades – returns to classical antiquity to make a bold parallel, familiarizing 21st-century audiences with a concept of the commons that seems primordial yet innovative, reinventing itself in every single manifestation.

4. E4. Nostalgia, or the Impossible Return

   Jun 15, 1989 · 26m

   Ithaca is the iconic distant home that no one should forget: such would be the universal lesson of Homer's Odyssey.

5. E5. Amnesia, or the Sense of History

   Jun 16, 1989 · 26m

   Built on the testimony or "autopsy" - which literally means "seeing oneself" - our conception of History has deeply shifted since Herodotus.

6. E6. Mathematics, or the Realm of Signs

   Jun 19, 1989 · 26m

   The geometrical space and the mathematical language constitute a universal legacy the Greeks have bequeathed us with. How do we articulate its perfect logic to the complexity of contemporary sciences?

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