The screening of the great success Stelios by Yorgos Tsemberopoulos in universally accessible terms, with the support of Alpha Bank, took place on Friday, November 7th, at the Stavros Tornes theatre, in the presence of the two-times Gold Medal winner in the Paralympic Games, Athanasios Ghavelas, director Yorgos Tsemberopoulos and the film's cast.
The Thessaloniki International Film Festival and Alpha Bank, the Festival’s accessibility sponsor, are continuing their collaboration within the framework of the programme “Cinema for All”, sharing the common goal to offer the audience the chance to take delight in the magic of cinema, with no exceptions or restrictions, but also to bring forth to a greater extent issues people with disabilities are faced up against. To this end, the Accessibility Award by Alpha Bank will be bestowed yet for another year either to a personality or a film featured in the Festival’s programme that brings the spotlight to accessibility issues in the field of the arts, accompanied by a 3,000-euro cash prize.
Orestis Andreadakis, the Artistic Director of the Festival, welcomed the audience: "I welcome you to another universally accessible screening of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Universally accessible screenings have been taking place for several years with the kind support of Alpha Bank, the accessibility sponsor of the Festival. We are very happy today, because a great track and field athlete, two-times Gold Medal winner in the Paralympic Games and Alpha Bank accessibility ambassador, Athanasios Ghavelas, is here with us. We are excited, because the tribute we hosted this year on Yorgos Tsemberopoulos, one of the most important filmmakers of contemporary Greek cinema, who received yesterday the honorary Golden Alexander for his overall contribution to cinema and culture, is calling it a wrap with this screening," Orestis Andreadakis said.
“Thank you very much,” Yorgos Tsemberopoulos replied. “We also have the film’s cast with us tonight. Μy life changed, three years ago, through a phone call from our producer, Dionysis Samiotis. “Can you make a film on Stelios Kazantzidis?” he asked me. “If you have a good script, I can,” I told him. I read Katerina Bey’s script, which was very good, and since then I have been swamped in a whirlpool of obligations, because the film was very demanding. Even today we continue there’s work to be done. Thank you very much for your presence, and I thank the Festival team for this tribute. Within a week, I watched all the films I have made over the last 55 years, a psychotherapy process for me in retrospect, but also a condition that left a strong imprint on me.”
Then, he added: "In this year's edition, with the help of Alpha Bank, the audience enjoys Take Care (1991) and Stelios (2024) in terms of universal accessibility. Today, therefore, is the premiere of the accessible version of Stelios. Thank you very much again."
Stelios (2024) by Yorgos Tsemberopoulos is a tribute to legendary singer, Stelios Kazantzidis, whose voice touched the hearts of all Greeks around the world.
The programme of the screenings in universally accessible terms will be available in Braille. Moreover, a total of 30 Greek films are screened with embedded dialogue-based subtitles, allowing the deaf and hard-of-hearing audience to watch the films. The movies will also be available featuring Greek subtitles on the Festival’s platform. After the curtain fall of its 66th edition, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and Alpha Bank will concede all the processed subtitles and the audio description to the films’ producers, in order for the films to be presented in universally accessible terms in their future screenings, in the movie theatres or in any other form or medium, hoping that through the Festival’s support the films will be distributed in universally accessible terms both in the movie theatres and in the home film distribution.
The Olympion, Pavlos Zannas, Tonia Marketaki, Frida Liappa, John Cassavetes, Stavros Tornes and Takis Kanellopoulos theatres are accessible to people with mobility impairments, while interventions have been made in the built environment, catering to specific types of wheelchairs. The Thessaloniki International Film Festival, with the support of Alpha Bank, has ensured accessibility conditions at the Festival this year as well. In this context, two films with audio description and SDH subtitles were screened, as well as 30 films with embedded intralingual subtitles, aiming to offer everyone equal access to cinema.
The Festival’s goal is to share the magic of cinema with the entirety of the audience, with no exceptions. To this end, the Festival hosts screenings of films with Audio Description for the Blind and the Visually Impaired and with Subtitles for the Deaf or Hard of Hearing both in the physical and the online screenings.
