COSTAS SFIKAS

Born in Athens in 1927.He was a postal employee from his adolescence. Costas Sfikas embarked on the adventure of the self-taught filmmaker in 1961 with his short film Inauguration It was followed by the documentary Wait in1962 and Dawn in Thera in1968 which he made in collaboration with the late Stavros Tornes and where the influence of the neorealistic school is prevalent. His aversion for representational film and the vision of a dialectical materialistic cinema, capable of giving form to the conquests of Marxist philosophical thought, led him to make the films Model 1974, (Award for best artistic film at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 1974). A copy of the film can by found at the Georges Pompidou Museum of Modern Art in Paris). This was followed by Cathedrals 1975, Allegory 1986, Paul Klee's prophetic bird of sorrows 1995, Prometheus enantiodromon (Prometheus Retrogressing) 1998 and THE WOMAN OF...AND THE COLLECTOR", ALLEGORY III,"VARIATIONS ON THE THEME OF CONTE DIONISIU SOLOMOU". Since 1976 the television program "Backstage" with its open investigative character offers the possibility of making a significiant number of essays: -The Violinist Tatsis Apostolides -Lament for Yanni Christou 1978 (20') -The Circus of Sofia 1979 (20') -The Gospel according to Saint Mark 1979 (20') -Voices and haunts of the rebetico music 1980 (20') -Expressionism in the cinema 1980 (20') -The montage of Eisenstein 1982 (20') -The poetry of A ndrea Ebiricu 1982 (25') -The misanthrope by Moliere 1982 (20') -The apocalypse of sovereign 1992 (25') -The enigmatic Mr Jules Verne-Nemo Allegory II 1992 (50')

 THE LONELY ROAD OF COSTAS SFIKAS:
 DOCUMENTARIES

 WAITING / Anamoni

Greece 1962. Direction-Screenplay: Costas Sfikas. Cinematography: Takis Georgopoulos. Editing: Stavrakas. Production: Anna Sfika. Beta B&W 22'

In the square in front of the Town Hall, a lonely painter waits all day long for someone to give him a job.

 THERAN MATINS / Thiraikos orthros

Greece 1968. Direction-Screenplay: Costas Sfikas. Cinematography: Yorgos Panoussopoulos. Editing: Panos Papakyriakopoulos. Sound: Costas Sfikas. Chanting by Pantelis Voulgaris' father. Production: Stavros Tornes, Yorgos Samiotis, Greek Film Centre. 35mm B&W 25'

A «visual social investigation" of the island of Santorini at a time when the primitive agrarian economy is gradually being replaced by the then rising tourist industry. The island's wretched and under-nurished inhabitants are juxtaposed to the awe-inspiring beauty of the island, against a musical background of the matins psalms. In the words of the director: "The film had to unite tragic, satirical, epic, and lyrical elements, which had to be free of any naturalistic sound, and instead to acquire a musical expression emanating from tradition, but which would, at the same time, express the modern-day, anti-metaphysical cry of the sufferer."

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