Stavros Tornes passed away at the age of 56, in July 1988. Thirteen years later, at a moment that can in no way be combined with the round number of an anniversary, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival has decided to remind the film-going public of this creative figure. The retrospective of his oeuvre is an ideal opportunity for the re-evaluation of the work, the ideas, and even the obsessions which he defended. Younger viewers, hopeful young filmmakers and many of the younger film critics who are not familiar with Stavros Tornes' films will have the opportunity to come face to face with the "beast": the cinematic expression; the complexity of thought that leads to simplicity; the clarity and power of formulation; the fighting spirit which is invested wholly in artistic expression; the idea of life being a straight-lined, creative course, inexorably connected to reality and the narrative art that he served; from Theraic Dawn, the first surviving film he made with Costas Sfikas, to the films of the Italian period, to the television and fiction films which he produced, with extremely limited means, during his last years in Greece.

This tribute is not being held because of any anniversary. Thus it takes on a greater importance, since, given the adverse conditions facing audiovisual culture today, the work of an artist that is past but not forgotten acquires a dynamic timeliness; a timeliness which was not devised as a memorial but emerged from things, from the need to revise audiovisual certainties which, more and more frequently, more and more regularly, on an ever increasing scale, are becoming responsible for the world domination of the great illusion that turns our gaze away from what is important, focuses it on the frivolous, makes it indiscreet and cheap. And it's no wonder. Stavros Tornes never sought simply to express the spirit of his time. His images, albeit time-worn, disconnected, "dirty", have succeeded in going beyond the time in which they were produced, and are capable of addressing our own age and, perhaps, those to come, with the same relevance; just like the images of the pioneers of film, which we constantly discover and rediscover.
Elias Kanellis

[ STAVROS TORNES ]