A highly interesting conversation on the Festival fifty year-long history was held on Tuesday November 17 at the Tonia Marketaki Theatre. The participants were TIFF members, members from the Macedonian Artistic Society ART and members from the Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki.
TIFF Director Despina Mouzaki first talked about the fundamental contribution of the Macedonian ART Society to the Film Festival throughout its history. “Every year the Festival has an appointment with ART, and this is hardly surprising since we owe it to the Society to have come up with the idea of organising a Week of Greek Cinema in 1960. Clearly our conversation today is a priority in the context of the Festival’s anniversary.”
Athanasia Tsatsakou, ART President and Aristoteleion University vice-rector presented the participants. She then added: “In the course of our collaboration with the Festival there have been screenings of films, master classes, all kinds of exhibitions. This year we decided to go deeper into our common scope and our scope in ART is to link the political life of Thessaloniki with the University. In this context, University post-graduate students from the Faculty of Media and Journalism and from the Faculty of Cinema have carried out a research on how the Thessaloniki Press has covered the Festival events through the years.”
Athina Kartalou, in charge of the TIFF publications and coordinator of the talk said: “We tried to see how to work on the motto Why Cinema Now with all the dynamic elements of cinema since 1960.”
Professor Christina Adamou from the Faculty of Cinema talked about ‘Modernism in worldwide post-war cinema and the foundation of the film festival’. She explained that “modernism is an umbrella term in the world of cinema which includes a rupture with Hollywood compromises as well as encouraging the audience to actively react to any film product. American avant-garde, French nouvelle vague and Italian neorealism have all left their mark in what is known as modernism in cinema. Cinema clubs and associations and various film magazines sprung up and the narrative in cinema underwent a change.” She then went on to make a historical reference on the evolution of the Venice, the Cannes and the Calcutta film festivals.
Professors Tessa Doulkeri and Giorgos Tsakmakis from the Media and Journalism Faculty presented the post-graduates’ research work on ‘Cinema in the Thessaloniki Press from 1960 to the present’. Ms Doulkeri said that “the TIFF, the greatest film festival in the Balkans, is not just a film event, it is a political event with a significant communication impact and this is why it has always been given much importance by the Thessaloniki Press.” The research is based on several local newspapers and comprises five periods: the TIFF first crucial years from 1960 to 1967, the years of dictatorship in Greece from 1968 to 1974, the period after the fall of the military regime from1975 to 1981, then the years 1982 to 1990, and finally the current period from 1991 to 2008.
Ms Doulkeri went on to give details about the results of the research some of which were particularly interesting. To wit, in the 1960-67period the Press shows a high interest (37%) in the Festival. This is due to the presence of famous foreign cinema artists. During the years of the military regime the Festival faces several obstacles. The following period the audience is more demanding and cash awards are more frequently mentioned in the press. From 1982 to 90, the audience is more knowledgeable about cinema and has become more demanding. Newspapers begin to openly talk about a crisis in the Festival. In the last period the Festival has reached its lowest press support (5%) though on the other hand parallel festival activities are emphatically mentioned. Negative comments bring forth suggestions on how to face the problems that the Festival is facing.”
Professor Angeliki Mylonaki then presented the ‘Film Festival and Art: The first weeks of Greek cinema in Thessaloniki’ paper. She said that in 1960 “the Week of Greek Cinema, as it was then called, had very little time to get ready. The press was pessimistic and producers were not happy, and yet it turned out to be a success. In 1961 we face the first censorship problems and on the following year the organisation was made a legal institution and critics’ awards were established. In 1963 the Awards Ceremony became open to the public. 1965 was marked by a first retrospective into science fiction films and finally in 1966 the organisation officially acquired the title of Festival and launched the international competition section with many important guests from other countries.”
To conclude, Ms Mylonaki reminded the participants of what the founder of the Festival, Pavlos Zannas, had stated in an interview for TO VIMA one of Greece’s most widely-read newspapers in 1966: “The Greek world of cinema has acquired greater importance thanks to this event which provides us all with a unique opportunity to judge and compare the various results in Greek cinema.”
