The personal and cultural archives of famed Greek director Theo Angelopoulos were completely destroyed in the recent fires in Mati said his widow last week.
“The house has been completely destroyed. My husband’s books were burnt. His letters from acknowledged people, all his books that writers dedicated to him were here,” Phoebe Economopoulos told local news portal “in-gr”.
Economopoulos stressed that there were no sirens or bell sounds to warn people and evacuate the area.
Angelopoulos is considered of the greats of European contemporary cinema who was tragically killed in 2012 on set whilst shooting a film about the debt crisis in Greece.
Angelopoulos’s work, including “O thiasos”, “Landscape in the Mist” and the Palme d’Or winner “Eternity and a Day”, was characterized by slow, long takes, poetic scenes and great sensitivity.
The country’s deadliest blazes in decades broke out Monday and have claimed 81 lives, with over 2,000 homes destroyed or damaged, according to the latest estimates by local authorities.
