"Bridge to
the East"
Sir Steven Runciman
Award: 23rd Chicago International
Film Festival
With Readings by Alan Bates
Produced and Directed by Lydia Carras
Edited by John Veal
Music by Robert Boyle
The Financial Times
A film like Bridge to the East (1987) raises
one's estimation of television as an art form... Lydia Carras'
exquisite study of the work and study of Sir Steven Runciman
shows her particular talent for bringing alive the past.
 Sir Steven Runciman is surely one of our
greatest historians ... We see him first in his Scottish baronial
home, then in a boat on the Bosporus, then wandering from Hagia
Sophia to the Sokullu Mosque, lamenting the while that the Crusades,
which set out to save Eastern Christendom, ended up destroying
it -- 'one of the last, most disastrous of the Barbarian invasions?'
and finally in the ethereal setting of Mistra, the most purely
Byzantine city of mainland Greece which in a touchingly appropriate
tribute has named one of its streets after him...
Sunday Telegraph
"Fascinating and beautifully made programme in which this
respected historian radically alters our view of the Crusades'.
Guardian
'One of our leading historians traces the lingering influence
of the Byzantine workd on the relationship between Eastern and
Western Europe, Christianity and Islam'.
The Times
'Visual magic is achieved by moving from the austere landscape
of Scotland to the warm glow of the Mediterranean... But the
film is very far from being a travelogue. It is, rather, the
past seen through the eyes of one man, and at the same time the
self-portrait of an outstanding scholar and artist with words.
Runciman is a natural TV star.
The commentary was in the class of the late
Lord Clark's famous programmes on Civilisation. One could hardly
say more.
And a marvellous commentary it is -- rich
in information, but also clear and easy to follow; subtle, evocative
and witty'.
An Amaranthos Film
In association with Channel 4 Television
(UK) and ERT-1 (Greece)
The producers gratefully acknowledge that this film has been
made possible thanks to the
generous contribution of the A.G. Leventis Foundation
tape# 194 SIR STEVEN RUNCIMAN: BRIDGE TO THE
EAST
To order call: 800-888-6835
A look at Byzantium through the eyes of one of Britain's greatest
historians, Sir Steven Runciman, who guides us from the mosaics
of Ravenna, to the beauty of Monemvassia, to the Ecumenical Patriarchate
of Constantinople, to spectacular Mistra and the harmony of its
architecture.
Length 54:00
$29.95
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
8-10 East 79th St. · New York, NY 10021
TEL: (212) 570-3500
FAX: (212) 570-3569
E-MAIL: archdiocese@goarch.org |||
A Bates Archive footnote:
Quite apart from all of the above; and the fact that Alan does
a few off camera readings... Steven Runciman is an astonishing
person in a low-key, amateurish English gentlemanly way. When
he visited the Mediterranean as a child, it was on his father's
yacht (no big deal). When he lived for some time in China, he
played piano four-hands with the last Emperor. He was at some
point made an honorary Dervish. In short, he is a great raconteur,
and this is a LOVELY video!
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