AMONG THE ROCKS - JOURNEY TO RAKHIV - CHARISMA X- IANNIS XENAKIS – THEO ANGELOPOULOS FILMS “DUST OF TIME” – FROM OLYMPUS TO EVEREST
The first Greek directors Press Conference was held at noon on Tuesday, March 17. The participating directors were: Alinda Dimitriou (Among the Rocks), Takis Touliatos (Journey to Rakhiv), Efi Xirou (Charisma X – Iannis Xenakis), Nicos Ligouris (Theo Angelopoulos Films “Dust of Time”) and Pavlos Tsiandos (From Olympus to Everest).
Alinda Dimitriou’s Among the Rocks, which is a continuation of Birds in the Swamp, follows the lives of 33 women after the signing of the Varkiza agreement: Some were taken to the Democratic Army to be saved while others were arrested, imprisoned, condemned to life imprisonment, were exiled, executed: “Now I use the words civil war with quotation marks. We have to look at who made this war, between whom and for what reasons”, she said and added: “What I wanted to do is give a voice to people who were ignored by history. I was moved to do this during a documentary festival in Kalamata, where I saw an incredible film about the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. Anything political interests me. When I saw the film I thought why shouldn’t we do something like this? I went to a well-known person who had been jailed and tortured during that period. But he had made a myth about himself and I wasn’t interested in something like this. I’ve always been on the side of barefoot people. When I found one of these women, I found them all”. As the director finally revealed, she has already began shooting her next film on women during the dictatorship.
Takis Touliatos’ film Journey to Rakhiv began with an article in a German magazine called “The adopted children of Europe”. “I’ve always had affection for everything adopted. I traveled the Ukrainian Carpathians, where a million people belonging to 40 ethnic groups live, each with its own language and its own God. But in Rakhiv, people don’t fight over ethnicity or religion. These people have the good fortune to suffer all the trials of the 20th century, and learned to deal with traumatic experiences not by complaining but with a bone breaking humor”, T. Touliatos said. What separates the “westerners” from the inhabitants of Rakhiv? Mr. Touliatos answered by recounting an incident: “A journalist meets a shepherd in Rakhiv and asks him why the people there are called “the adopted children of Europe”. And the shepherd answered that adopted children might not have as many rights, but they have fewer duties too. It’s duties that make life difficult”.
“I met Xenakis in Italy in 1975, when he presented a project on utopian cities. I met him again during D. Vernikos’ shooting on his life”, director Efi Xirou said, adding that her film «Charisma x – Iannis Xenakis» is the result of a 30 year long journey. The film is about the life and work of the composer Iannis Xenakis, the architect of sound, whose work reconciles Art with Science and makes music participate in world events once more. “The important work of Iannis Xenakis is known in Europe, but in Greece it remains unknown. He was a man who liked challenges and this is evident in his political ideology, his music, his stance on the environment”, Efi Xirou noted.
In the beginning of the ‘90s, Nicos Ligouris had done a portrait of Theo Angelopoulos for German television, although he had never been present at one of his shoots. In 2008, German television asked him to make another film on Theo Angelopoulos. “I didn’t want to make a hagiography, but to present the portrait of an artist while he is working”, said the director of Theo Angelopoulos Films “Dust of Time”. Speaking about his future plans, he revealed that he is planning a low budget fiction film.
In From Olympus to Everest, Pavlos Tsiandos records the journey of a team of Greek mountain climbers to the highest peak in the world. Mountain climber or director? Pavlos Tsiandos declares he is the first, according to his experience, as film directing came along much later. “In this film my two loves came together”, he said. During shooting and at an altitude of 7.000 meters he lived stunning experiences, among which was the death of a friend of his. “I couldn’t shoot my dead friend with the camera, so I turned it on myself. I wanted to show the rest of the mission members that I didn’t abandon him”.
