PRESS CONFERENCE 18/3/10
Sugar Town – The Next Day, Plunder From A Bleeding Land, The Game Must Go On, The Call Of The Mountain
A press conference was given by the directors Angeli Andrikopoulou (The Game Must Go On), Stelios Apostolopoulos (The Call Of The Mountain), Kimon Tsakiris (Sugar Town – The Next Day) and Takis Papayiannidis with the co-writer of the film Vassilis Vassilikos (Plunder From A Bleeding Land), whose films are being screened at the 12th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
Angeli Andrikoupoulou (The Game Must Go On), speaking about her experience working with under age subjects, said that children can be unpredictable, but they easily forget the presence of the camera. “The shooting schedule was easily destroyed, but on the other hand the children get over their embarrassment before the camera very easily. Recently, the mayor of Patras announced that the stadium they wanted so they could play outdoors away from their computers will be ready in one month”.
Stelios Apostolopoulos, speaking about The Call Of The Mountain stressed that Yiannis, his leading character, takes on the traditional role of a shepherd in order to honor the memory of his cousin Elias. “Yiannis leaves the family he has created so he can support the family that gave him life. I follow him for about a year and a half while he lives the adventure of dealing with the mountain and animal husbandry”. The major difficulty, according to the director, was getting Yiannis and his fellow villagers to accept the presence of the camera.
Kimon Tsakiris, speaking about his film Sugar Town – The Next Day noted that he felt he could tell a different story from that broadcast in the media because of his ties with the area’s people. “My goal was to jump through time and tell a story about collective responsibility. If, after a natural disaster we don’t think about restoring the land but rather how to sell it so some people can make a quick profit, then we have a problem.”
“In every war there are victims, and people who lose their loved ones and their homeland and are forced to live in conditions they didn’t choose”, said director Takis Papayiannidis who visited Cyprus with Vassilis Vassilikos, describing what he lived through during shooting of his film Plunder From A Bleeding Land. “Everybody has a right to come home. It wasn’t only Greek Cypriots who were exiled, Turkish Cypriots had to move as well. The problem is that there aren’t only two ethnic groups in the area, there are in fact more than five. They have lived together for centuries, and they want to do so again. There was a great deal of plunder, which is an example of international smuggling and antiquities theft. We encounter plundering after every war, we’ve seen it in Baghdad, Kosovo, Iraq”.
Answering a question about the goal of his documentary Sugar Town – The Next Day, director Kimon Tsakiris noted that he wanted to sensitize the audience and make us realize that everything that is happening around us doesn’t come from some far off decision center, but starts from local societies and then reaches higher up.
