MOVIE • 2000

Dans le sillage d'Ulysse

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The description of the Greek world that Homer gave in the 8th century B.C. was long considered as a purely mythological account. However, in the 19th century, Schliemann's archeological finds at Mycenae and Troy changed the picture : it seems that the places described by Homer really did exist. In the early 20th century, Victor Bérard (educated at École normale supérieure, member of the French school of Athens and translater of the Odyssey) undertook to travel round the Mediterranean with the Genevan photographer Boissonnas. His aim : to show that the literary countries of the cyclopes, Aeolus, Circe, Charybdis and Scylla have a geographical reality. His hypothesis : the epic poem about Ulysses must be a sort of "manual" of information for settlers who emigrated to the East in vast numbers at the time of Homer. An invitation to travel? Jean Baronnet could not resist and put his film into the double wake : of Ulysses and of Victor Bérard...