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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INTERNATIONAL THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL
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The International Thessaloniki Film Festival has found a place among the myriad festivals worldwide. It has carved out an identity for itself that is reinvigorating interest in cinema, both in Greece and throughout the Balkans.
From its birth in 1960 as a "week of Greek cinema" until about 1970, the festival attracted large audiences. "At the time cinema was the most meaningful form of entertainment," recalls festival director Michel Demopoulos. "Tons of movies were made each year, and there were hundreds of movie theaters. The festival as such was successful for some time".
Various attempts over the years to introduce an international section met with little success. And from 1970's to 1980's, with the arrival first of television in more Greek homes and then of videocassette players, interest in both the festival and the cinema dwindled. By 1991, realizing the festival had become a costly endeavor that was not living up to its potential, the organizers approached Demopoulos, inviting his suggestions on how to make the Festival more meaningful. He was given the chance to transform the event, and jumped right in.
Demopoulos was a well-known and accomplished film critic, and the director of foreign programming for ERT, the Greek national broadcasting company (and currently the Festival's primary sponsor)/ From the beginning, what he envisioned was an international competition of first or second features by new filmakers. "I' ve seen many festivals, and am familiar with most of them, and I thought it would be a good idea to give Thessaloniki' s festival this identity," Demopoulos says.
So in 1992 the International Film Festival opened with 15 films from 12 countries in the International Competition section, as well as the nearly 50 films in the New Horizons programme -- a section created and directed by the highly-regarded programmer Dimitri Eipides. New Horizons was envisioned as a programme that would offer Greek audiences a diverse selection of independent films from around the world.
New Horizons started as, and continues to be, a showcase for film "marked by their originality, their opposition to conventionality and the commonplace, and ones taking stand against movies made for profit alone," Eipides notes. "I wanted to bring to the public' s attention a cinema that was not accessible, a more direct cinema that would show those movie goers a strong and very interesting kind of film. Not films with a lot of money backing them, but ones with very apparent personal touches."
The Greek film section remains a part of the programme as well -- naturally, since the event is a Greek festival, which began 39 years ago as a panorama of Greek films.
Even since acquiring its international status in 1992, the Festival boasts a more diverse selection of films afact that, foreign guests -- from filmmakers, to critics, to journalists, to film lovers -- have taken notice. 900 plus foreign guest attended last year' s Festival, including approximately 85 film critics and journalists.
It was a challenge to attract people to Thessaloniki initially, particularly the filmmakers. But today, given the Festival' s growing recognition, guests have come to see that they will get more attention than at many other international festivals.
Also, the participation of such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Istvan Szabo, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Manoel de Oliveira, Claude Chabrol, Ken Loach and Pedro Almodovar in various retrospectives and programmes is a big draw. Retrospectives provide Greek audiences the opportunity to see the entire filmography (or close to it) of both legendary and emerging filmmakers. And in New Horizons, spotlight programs such as the ongoing "3X3" (three directors, three films) introduce audiences to the work of directors never before seen in Greece -- 1999' s "3X3" included Lea Pool, Ildigo Enyedi, Claire Denis.
With Greece' s largest university located in Thessaloniki, the city is full of young people. But in the first three years as an international event, the Festival organizers were surprised to find that students, primarily, were not curious to attend a screening of, say, a Hungarian film or a Taiwanese film or an Iranian film. Audiences remained victim to the strong promotion of local Greek films and Hollywood blockbusters.
Those habits today have been broken, and ticket sales for Festival screenings run high, with most films selling out. Admissions for 1999 were 62.000 up from 48.000 the previous year. Slowly, those in Thessaloniki have come to see that they will learn something new and see something different. It may be strange, or complex, or difficult to follow, but it might open a whole a whole new world, or simply open a window onto a world one knows little about.
A further effort to draw in a wider audience has been the screenings of portions of the Festival throughout northern Greece -- so far the Festival has traveled to Alexandroupolis, Florina, Kastoria, Kilkis and Edessa. "We thought this would be a good way to try to reinvigoratee film and cinema n these areas," Demopoulos says. And that is exactly what is happening. Audiences in these more remote parts of Greece can see the film of a young, emerging talent from Europe or elsewhere.
The International Thessaloniki Film Festival continues to grow and gain greater recognition. This year has been a busy one for the Festival staff, such as among others the highly successful Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman and Kenji Mizoguchi retrospectives, following the introduction of a new legal framework and the ensuing administrative reshuffle of the event.
A new addition to the busy schedule of the festival has been the introduction on March 1999 of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival - Images of the 21st Century under the guidance of Artistic Director Dimitri Eipides.
The acclaimed film maker Theo Angelopoulos is since 1998 the President of the Festival while the renovated Olympion Cinema Complex has been confirmed as the permanent headquarters and the main venue of the Festival- the Olympion I and II cinema houses.
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