Without fame (Antikleia)

Without fame (Antikleia)

USA , 2023, 8’50’’

Director: Elise Kermani – Producer: MiShinnah Productions

This film takes its inspiration from Homer’s Odyssey Book XI, and the moment before and after Odysseus meets his mother Antikleia in Hades. Etymologically, Antikleia means the opposite of fame (kléos) and indeed Antikleia dies of sorrow because her son, Odysseus, is away fighting the Trojan war for so many years.

‘Tzivaeri’ is a traditional song from the Dodecanese and means ‘my treasure’, a call of adoration from a mother to her child. Odysseus asks his mother: ‘What destiny brought you to the home of death’ and Antikleia answers with Alexander Pope’s poem: ‘For thee, I lived – for absent, I expired!’