As it enters its second decade as an international event, the Film Festival remains open to the exploration of the issues which concern cinema today. However, the general situation does not appear very promising. There seems to be a certain blurring and obscuring of the values of the art of film; the game is being increasingly played on a level of conformism; brave, independent, unconventional film ecriture is on the decline. These are strange times for cinephiles searching for original fiction, stylistic experimentations and real feelings, while surrounded by a melting pot of images, where reality shows pile up on vulgar game shows, TV series, etc.!

The major film festivals try to maintain a "balance of terror" between established filmmakers and the films of the big American studios. Once temples of cultural and artistic community property, movie theaters have become, thanks to the way multiplexes are built and run, into complementary spaces for the exploitation of free time. And, of course, television has altered the criteria, warping the way in which filmmakers and filmgoers approach and communicate with each other.

Nevertheless, in the face of this dark environment, the Thessaloniki International Festival keeps going! And we believe that, slowly and arduously, we are beginning to no longer be an isolated cultural island in the autumn of this city, but a living organism, which communicates with film culture all year round, throughout Greece. The Festival in Thessaloniki is the culmination of a course which evolves through the preceding twelve months, with tributes to major film directors, as with Shohei Imamura this year, to film schools and to the film production of various countries.

This year's international selection is varied and multifarious. Variety is in fact the hallmark of the Fsetival, since there are over 40 countries being represented in its program.

We have selected first and second films by young filmmakers hailing from regions of a relatively unknown cinematic presence, such as Palestine, Thailand, Slovenia, as well as works from, among other countries, Germany, France, Italy, Argentina, Korea, and Mexico. These are bold, radical films, which pose essential questions as much to the social body that produced them as to the very medium they serve.

As always, there are also extensive tributes to leading filmmakers and, at the same time, unexpected discoveries. Sidling up next to Marco Bellocchio, a topranking director of the second post-war generation and ancestor of the great masters of Italian Cinema, and Bob Rafelson, that special maverick friend, the poet of the forgotten and the proud, is the unknown, at least in Greece, figure of Hungary's Bela Tarr, the most surprising and demonic artist of our time, and, a little further away, lies the lyrical and earthy microcosm of the French outsider, Jean-Francois Stevenin. These are great figures of world cinema, both past and present, representating and continuing its creative aspect. Nowadays, when the image of the shining, powerful, undefeated hero is beginning to lose its haughty superiority, the anti-heroes of these filmmakers take on a preeminently moral significance. Their varied, realist approaches clear the air for us (albeit temporarily), reminding us of their relation to another favorite of the Festival and an old acquaintance, John Cassavetes. But even our more familar Pantelis Voulgaris moves in harmony with their spirit; he is our own moralist of Realism, the Greek filmmaker who embraced, with true emotion, the wronged and the persecuted, the lonely and nostalgic.

Another section of particular interest in this year's program is the vision we offer of Asia, the region of our planet that puts out the most dynamic, contemporary and radical examples of an innovative film ecriture, as well as the Balkan Survey which, this year, displays a variety of themes and an added maturity. As it does every year, Greek Cinema once again attracts our attention and arouses our interest. The renewed way of promoting Greek films, the securing of avenues of communication with the international film market, and the existing contact between Greek filmmakers and trends from all over the world, have given a new impetus to national film production. Finally, the separate tributes to Yannis Dalianidis, an important representative of a cinema which had the good fortune to entertain millions of Greeks, and Costas Hadzichristos, one of the greatest figures of an illustrious generation of comics who defined popular comedy in Greek cinema.

New Horizons, the parallel program of aesthetically and dramaturgically challenging films selected by Dimitri Eipides, always provokes great interest among the Festival's audiences.

We are confident that again this year the Thessaloniki public will be at our side, as it always is. The International Film Festival feels justified precisely because, both in numbers and in insight, it enjoys the support of and engages in communication and discourse with the public of this city.

Michel Demopoulos
Director of the Festival