PANTELIS VOULGARIS
GREAT EVENTS, SMALL PLAYERS

In the mid-1960s, when Greek cinema was dominated by the standardized products of an assembly line production of films intended for Greek audiences, two short films came along and caused a stir, introducing a renewal in both theme and expression. These were The Thief and Jimmy the Tiger (1966), by a twenty-five-year-old newcomer, Pantelis Voulgaris. Having learned useful lessons from his experience as an assistant director on commercial productions, Voulgaris put forth, with these two films, a proposition for a cinema that sheds light on moments; on everyday situations and behaviors, with respect for narrative rules, while at the same time adopting a sideways, critical point of view, which broaden-ed the horizon of the film towards the examination of ideo-logical and political issues, thus rising above the level of mere ethnography.

This proposition will find its first full expression in his first feature film, Anna's Engagement (1972), one of the first film to extricate Greek cinema from its international isolation.

In the films he directed after the fall of the dictatorship -and after The Great Love Songs (1973)-, Voulgaris' interest in Greek political reality and Greece's recent history is expressed more directly, but the films remain preeminently anthropocentric. In Happy Day (1976), Voulgaris was able to talk about con-centration camps for political prisoners during the Greek civil war. However, by choosing an abstract way of expression, he focuses on the people, on their emotions and on the relationships which develop between them. In Stone Years (1985), even though he refers to the period between 1954 and 1974 which was politically charged, he does not describe the dramatic political events of that time, but rather he documents the behavior and reactions of his heroes. Even in the historical tapestry of Eleftherios Venizelos (1980) it is clear that Voulgaris places great importance on the recording of the human re-actions and everyday behaviors of historical figures.

In The Striker with the Number 9 (1988), Voulgaris addresses football and attempts, through the rise and fall of an ambitious young soccer player, to describe the microcosm revolving around that sport, which, at the same time, is such a popular spectacle. An equally popular spectacle in Greece is the Athenian revue theater, to which Voulgaris turned some years later with his film Acropole (1995), where he will use the story of the fleeting success of an actor as a pretext in order to docu-ment what goes on both on and back-stage in such a theater.

In Quiet Days in August (1991) and It's a Long Road (1998), Voulgaris returns as a more mature and consummate filmmaker to the form of his earlier films. Each one of them comprises three stories which develop independently of each other, though con-verging thematically. In these stories, he approaches his heroes during a critical moment in their lives and succeeds in shedding light on their reality and communicating their deeper truth, as he follows an austere but absolutely effective mise-en-scene.

Pantelis Voulgaris' films may appear very different, if glanced at superficially. But if we examine them a little more closely, we will see that they all have a common aim, and that is to bring together small things, i.e. individual, everyday things, with great things, i.e. History and social reality. And that is a worthy aim for an art which respects itself and its audience.

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