JUST TALKING 21/11
The participants of the Just Talking session that took place on November 21st at the Old Pump Station were: director Corinna Avraamidou (The Last Homecoming/Greek Films), actress Gracie Otto (Three Blind Mice /International Competition), director Diasteme (Sunny Spells/International Competition), director Abdolreza Kahani and actor Mazdak Mirabedini (Over There/International Competition).
‘My film is a love story which takes place in 1974’, said Corinna Avraamidou. ‘It’s a story of people whose lives are about to change because of war, a film about the loss of innocence and the end of an era. Some of the people who have seen the film said that they were touched by the story because something similar may happen to anyone who has lived, loved and lost everything. While the script was in process people would ask me if I was making a love story or a political film. The answer was that it’s a love story with a political background. Love is the element that gives strength to the story because in the end everything is lost, even the country and the personal differences’.
‘Matthew Newton, directed a film about Australian men and the lack of communication between them, they don’t talk like women do’, said director, actor and film editor Gracie Otto. When asked which of her three capacities she prefers she answered: ‘I may have directed only short films but this is what I want to do. In Three Blind Mice I worked as an actress because every other job was already taken and I started editing because we had all the film’s footage in our house anyway. I enjoyed it, but I prefer being a director’.
‘When you write a book or make a film, you try to create certain feelings’, pointed out Diasteme. ‘In this film I used art because all of the characters are artists; they sing, dance and do theatre plays. I tried to connect art with life because life equals feelings. I also wanted to show the relationship between the feelings that the characters are showing to the world and the ones they actually feel’. He also added that the reaction of Thessaloniki’s audience was a big surprise, since this was the first screening of the film outside France. ‘At the screening we noticed that the Greek audience was laughing at different moments than the ones the French did. But even for a foreign audience it’s a film easy to connect to as the emotions created by art, music and dance are universal’.
‘I have learned that when you don’t try to force feelings and relationships, they get a life of their own’, explained director Abdolreza Kahani. ‘I wanted to focus on the routine of everyday life and how a couple may lose important parts of their lifes because of it. I hope I have succeeded in making a simple, intense low budget film’.
‘Some parts of the film are based on my real life and our common imagination as co-scriptwriters’ said Mazdak Mirabedini. ‘We had seen each other’s films and we had wanted to work together. Over There was the result of this collaboration’, said Mazdak Mirabedini.
