Inner Landscapes.
While Canada may have changed a lot in the last twenty years, Lea Pool, whose latest film "Set me free" is screening tonight at 8pm, noted yesterday that the territory she is concerned with--the vast landsape inside of people--hasn't. She continues to make films about the constant of "people in cities, in moments of crisis." Pool described her latest work as "extremely autobiographical, but still fictional." The film is set in 1963 in Montreal, and is about a young woman who identifies with a character from a Jean-Luc Godard film.

Sex Roles.
Tino Schrader plays a woman trapped in the body of a man (who craves doctor Magnus Hirschfeld's affections) in the "The Einstein of Sex." Ms. Schrader, who was in Thessaloniki for the screening of the film on Sunday, shocked audiences by telling them that the restrictive law against homosexuality (paragraph 175) that gay rights pioneer Hirschfeld combats in the film in the 1930s, was only repealed in Germany three years ago. The performer added that while some have accused director Rosa von Praunheim of being too tame in producing a film that unfolds in a straightforward narrative manner, the film is not limited in its intentions. "The film is for everybody, and it was intended to praise those who fought for gay people," added Schrader.

Mind-Altering.
Try raising money to make a film about young ecstasy users. It isn't easy, according to Justin Kerrigan, director of the international competition's "Human Traffic." No one wanted to fund a film about drug taking that didn't end in death (alcohol kills more, the yellow-haired director noted). But Kerrigan was determined to make a film that expressed a way of life which he described as "the biggest ever mainstream youth culture." The director ultimately had to find non-UK funding to produce a film that expressed the reality of his generation. "I wrote a film about me and my friends, our sexual insecurities and paranoias," said Kerrigan. "Everyone can relate [regardless of their history with drug- taking] to some weekend when they lost it with their friends."

Soul-Searching.
Alejandro Springall is no stranger to Greece, having worked on a film shoot near Meteora, back in film school. However, he was surprised to find aspects of Thessaloniki reminding him of Mexico. Springall, whose "Santitos" is in the international competition, was very proud of his film's massive distribution within Mexico, as well as a new venture with Universal films for outside distribution. Making films on his own terms, according to Springall, means, making films in his own language, and then distributing them. A few years ago, he rejected a Miramax proposal to make his film in English. "The day when we start shooting in another language in Mexico, we are gone," pointed out the director. Springall wants Mexican cinema to return to the heights of the 1940s and 50s, when the country was producing over 300 films a year for all of Latin America. Last night, the Embassy of Mexico celebrated this era, as well as the promise of new works such as Springall's with a reception yesterday evening showing off the exhibition of posters from Mexican cinema's Golden Age. (If you've walked by the exhibit take another look at the "Women's Prison" poster for some real drama.)

Hidden criminality.
Things like formats and genres don't stop director Alexis Kardaras. He had to shoot his first feature "The Robbery" on video, and so he did, enlisting the talents of an excellent cast including Yiannis Bostantzoglou. The robbery ends up being a secondary point, for instance, according to the director. There are moments in the film (say when there is happy Indian film music pumping, or the family is out shopping for rows of generic cereals) when his humour is a unique mix of parody and satire. What was more important was showing the characters and their zany preoccupations and drives. Kardaras hopes audiences will latch onto the film's simplicity and honesty.

National psyche.
"The Flower of the Lake" director Stamatis Tsarouhas was moved by so many young people connecting with his film at its Thessaloniki screening. The film's makers had expected an older generation to connect with the film set in Kastoria, which digs into the region's ethnic collisions at the turn of the last century. The star of another Greek film, the made-for-television "...And Peace on Earth," touched on the Greek national landscape as well, underscoring the film's goal of combatting racism. "Just as we preserve our history and memory, we must preserve the role of foreigners in our country" she noted.

Self-fulfilling prophesies.
Amos Gitai knows that images matter in shaping reality. At a press conference yesterday, he pointed out that not only are exoticized images of the Middle East imposed from the outside dangerous, but so are oversimplified, "safe" images of one's own country. The danger of both is to feed apocalyptic images. So what is left? For the past five years, Gitai has been working on a trilogy about Israeli cities which seeks out the realities of everyday life within small microcosms. While it is not always comfortable for him, vis-a-vis the powers that be, Gitai feels it is vital to seek out the contradictions in his own culture. The result with his latest "Kadosh" is that it has been sold in thirty countries, drawing 300,000 audience members in France alone, and being one of many links the director has formed with directors from around the world, including colleagues throughout the Middle East. Gitai's kind of cinema "is subversive and poses questions rather than being self-satisfactory." His next task? "A big pacifist war film, to remind those who want to go to the next war, what the last one was like."

Rational behavior.
3,348 viewers attended screenings the first day of the festival, vs. 1,900 last year.

Quote/unquote:
"Every film is independent." Alexis Kardaras, director, "The Robbery." "In order to make films, you need a strong conviction that what you do is worthwhile and you have to create your own universe of friends and family who support your work and think its important." Amos Gitai, director, "Kadosh".

Angelike Contis
First shot, #59, 16/11/1999