The 51st edition of the Thessaloniki Film Festival honoured the memory and rich contribution of Yorgos Tziotzios, a lover of cinema and great friend of the Festival, who passed away last October. The ceremony was held on Thursday December 9th in the Zannas Cinema and was attended by the director of the Festival, Dimitri Eipides.
At the opening of the ceremony, Dimitri Eipides said wanted to commemorate ‘Yorgos Tziotzios first as a friend and then as a professional’. “Yorgos was dedicated to cinema, he was an active cinema critic, a film distributor, but above all he was a cinephile. I shared a wonderful friendship with him, we were neighbours, and I miss him; I am sure we all miss him.”
Yorgos Tziotzios’ wife, Yota, and their son, Apostolos, were present and received the commemorative plaque from the hands of Dimitri Eipides. Yota Tziotzio express her gratitude and added: “Yorgos loved the Festival and knew how to discover small diamonds in the dark theatres. After his love for Apostolos, what he loved most was cinema”.
Three close friends who shared Yorgos Tziotzios’ love of cinema then talked about his life and work. Christos Mitsis, a cinema critic, recalled how Yorgos Tziotzios managed to unhook cinema criticism from the theories that weighed it down for years and to turn it into a cinephile adventure of creative writing. “Yorgos made cinema part of his life. His career began in the seventies and, throughout his life, he supported new ideas and new films; he was conscious of the fact that pleasure was to be found as much in writing as in reading. His magazine Cinema brought forth a new generation of cinema lovers and his work is for all of us a source of fundamental lessons about life and cinema.”
Film distributor Zinos Panayiotis gave his speech a more personal touch, saying that Yorgos Tziotzios played an important part in his daily life. He shared a story with the audience: “For the first Asterix film, Yorgos had made a bet with someone that the box office would sell 30,000 tickets. The loser would take the winner out to dinner. I remember that 27,987 tickets were sold, so to win, we had to fiddle a bit with the numbers. Today is the first time this story is being revealed.”
Finally, Alexandros Moumtzis talked about Yorgos Tziotzios saying he was a cinema esthete and an intellectual aristocrat who was not able to complete one of his projects which was to create an art Cineplex. “Yorgos had an innate nobility and a fresh eye that was always ready to appreciate things anew; he welcomed surprises and in turn constantly surprised us. He felt passionately about everything and always respected the others’ points of view.”
