PASSINGS: Theo Angelopoulos, Wesley Brown
Theo Angelopoulos
Award-winning Greek filmmaker
Theo Angelopoulos, 76, an award-winning Greek filmmaker known for his slow and dreamlike style as a director, was killed in a road accident Tuesday in Athens.
Police and hospital officials said Angelopoulos sustained serious head injuries and died at a hospital after being hit by a motorcycle while walking across a road near a movie set. The accident occurred while Angelopoulos was working on his upcoming movie “The Other Sea.”
Angelopoulos had won numerous awards for his movies, mostly at European film festivals, during a career that spanned more than 40 years.
In 1995, he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for “Ulysses’ Gaze,” starring Harvey Keitel.
Three years later, he won the main prize at the festival, the Palme d’Or, for “Eternity and a Day,” starring Bruno Ganz.
Born in Athens in 1935, Angelopoulos lived through the Nazi occupation of Greece during World War II and the ensuing 1946-49 Greek Civil War — recurring themes in his early films.
He studied law at Athens University but eventually lost interest and moved to France, where he studied film at the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris.
After returning to Greece, he worked as a film critic for a small, left-wing newspaper and started to make films during the 1967-74 dictatorship.
Described as mild-mannered but uncompromising, Angelopoulos’ often sad and slow-moving films mostly dealt with issues from Greece’s turbulent recent history: war, exile, immigration and political division.
Angelopoulos mostly attracted art-house audiences, using established actors including Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau in two of his most widely acclaimed films, “The Bee Keeper” and “The Suspended Step of the Stork.”
Wesley Brown
Oldest sitting federal judge in history
U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown, 104, the nation’s oldest sitting federal judge in history, died Monday night at an assisted living center in Wichita, Kan., said his law clerk, Nanette Turner Kalcik.
Brown was appointed as a federal district judge in 1962 by then-President Kennedy.
In 1979, Brown took senior status, a type of semiretirement that allows federal judges to work with a full or reduced case level. But he continued to carry a full workload for decades.
“I do it to be a public service,” Brown said in 2011. “You got to have a reason to live. As long as you perform a public service, you have a reason to live.”
It was not until March 2011 that Brown removed himself from the draw for assignment of new criminal cases, and by the time he died he was no longer presiding over hearings.
Brown had asked his colleagues years before his death to notify him if at any point they felt he was no longer able to serve.
Brown — born June 22, 1907, in Hutchinson, Kan. — was six years older than the next-oldest sitting federal judge. At least eight other federal judges are in their 90s, according to a federal court database.
Brown started his career with the law firm of Williams, Martindell and Carey in Hutchinson. He graduated from the Kansas City School of Law, which later became the law school for the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He took two brief breaks from the firm — one at age 27 when he was elected Reno County attorney and the other 10 years later when he joined the Navy. In 1939, he became a partner.
He received his first federal appointment as a bankruptcy judge in Wichita in 1958 and four years later was appointed a federal district judge in Wichita.
-- Los Angeles Times wire reports
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