Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae: collectible documentary before the temple is covered! It is the first film about the temple of the epicurean Apollo that Iktinos built on top of a mountain.
The director (Jean-Daniel Pollet) was enchanted and said that this temple was the center of the world for him. So he filmed him with the rhythm of a sacred ritual and the result rewarded his efforts. The temple is built mainly with limestone stone and is without the statue of the god Apollo. Impressed by the charm of the archaeological site of Basso, the excellent director Jean-Daniel Pollet, as soon as he discovered it, found an existential refuge saying "Here you can exist".
He characterized the place as the unheard end of magic and for a decade considered it the center of the world. He visited it many times and three of his films have references to the temple of the Epicurean Apollo. One of these "Vasses" is dedicated to the temple. It is a cinematic poem. The director himself has described his relationship with Vasses as follows: "I first saw the temple of the Basses while circumnavigating the Mediterranean. So I have to say why I left, why I did this round. I had marked the temple in a lithograph (not a photo) of some book because it said that it was the only one built on the heights of the Peloponnese and without a view of the sea.
He also wrote that this temple was the last work of the architect of the Parthenon. This work, in its tiny dimensions compared to the Parthenon, gives the impression of someone who has grown old, who no longer has arrogance, who is almost no longer Greek, but only knows how to build like a Greek. Besides, the stones used to build this temple were quarried from this same area; you can see that they are gray like the others that are around. In other Greek temples, a specific marble was used, from a specific quarry, but I believe they all had more or less the same origin, the same color, the same density, and the same strength.
For Vasses, there is undoubtedly evidence – I could know more if I had studied the temple's history more thoroughly. Of course, they will be written somewhere. What I gathered was that it was built to ward off a famine, a disease (perhaps plague) that, at the time, had ravaged the area. Many clues support this guess, but I don't remember them anymore.
I remember, however, another peculiarity: usually, in the center of each temple there is a place where a statue is inserted: the statue of some god to whom the temple is supposed to be dedicated (Apollo, etc.). Well, there was no such pedestal in Vasse. I thought it might be some kind of atheistic temple, but it was probably airborne. I was told that all Greek temples had the same orientation – but this one is an exception. It's one of the few places I've been back to (at least seven times; five times, in fact, without a camera). It is a place that speaks to you, that Sollers says is full of the words of the dead, and the dead speak to him, they tell him the same things - like an echo. I filmed this temple once, quickly, two or three shots for the Mediterranean, and after two years I returned to Vasse for a short film. It was cloudy - a rare thing. The shoot lasted two days."
This film, shot in 1964 and awarded at the Paris Biennale in 1965, was never shown in cinemas. It's screening at the event "Epicurius Apollo by the Moonlight" was one of the rare ones and combined with the place where it was filmed and dedicated, it was a unique experience for the viewers.