JUST TALKING 15/3
The themes of documentaries are varied, just as the filmmakers’ approaches vary. Loules’ Children in Hiding records the testimonies of five Jewish Greeks who were spared certain death thanks to the protection offered to them by Christian Greek families. “I was inspired to make the film thanks to a coincidence. The birth of my son coincided with an exhibition of documents and photographs in 2004 at the Athens Jewish Museum”, said the director. Detiger’s idea for The New Saint came from a news report about a 19 year–old Russian soldier, who was taken captive in Chechnya and was decapitated when he refused to convert to Islam. He then became a sort of saint in the Russians’ collective mind.
In The Other City, director and teacher Nefin Dinc tried to locate the source of the mutual prejudices between Greeks and Turks. She worked on the script with Hercules Millas, who had lived in Istanbul until 1970, before moving to Greece. Together they spent a year shooting in the Greek town of Dimitsana and the Turkish town of Birgi, recording mutual stereotypes. “When I first presented my idea to Hercules, after he had read the first part, which recorded the Turkish arguments, he immediately dismissed it. It took me weeks to convince him”, said Mrs. Dinc. Totally different was the case of The Life and Death of Celso Junior. The director, Panagiotis Evangelides, met the artist Celso Junior at a festival in Lisbon and made him his protagonist. “His uniform and leather boots outfit caught my eye. When they later introduced me to him, he told me he had a collection of 600 pairs of boots!” said the filmmaker. Celso’s boot fetish stimulated the director, who spent two weeks as his guest, to capture his portrait on film.
Cristina Colissimo didn’t need much motivation to start working on her film One Lucky elephant, since she is the daughter of the first circus owner in the USA who did not keep the animals in cages. The film tells the story of a circus manager who wanted to make sure that his beloved female elephant spent her retirement years happily. “At first, we thought the film would be over in a year, but it took us nine years. That’s how long it took David to find Flora a home, a place where she could live happily in the company of other elephants, after her 16 years in the circus. David’s story is a love story, talking about relationships between humans, the relationship between humans and animals and our responsibilities towards animals. When the film was screened before an audience of animal activists, they said that we didn’t take a tough enough stance against David for animal mistreatment. From our part, we tried to avoid taking anyone’s side and wanted to stick to the facts. It is not a film for animal-rights advocates, it is a film for people who love animals”, said Mrs. Colissimo. Commenting on the promotional channels available to a documentary, she said that international festivals “are a means for films to reach a larger audience”. Commenting on the reception of her film, she said that a deal was signed with Oprah Winfrey’s cable channel, and that it is included in an educational program about wild animals..
According to Panagiotis Evangelides, festivals are an opportunity for filmmakers, not only to show their work to a wider audience, but also to come into contact with each other, exchange experiences and create bridges of cooperation. Having spent two weeks as a guest at Celso Junior’s house, he was asked by other directors whether this influenced him, making him favorably biased towards his subject. “Celso is not interested in this sort of thing – to give you a hint, he is a man making films about his own death. When building a portrait, you always have to decide what to show. It wasn’t my intention to make a journalistic portrait, but the portrait of an unusual man. My only compromise was to share a room with the couple’s cat. Celso had warned me that he didn’t know how his Swiss husband would react to my staying there. It turned out that Titian was comfortable and hospitable – he was a game changer in the film”, said the director. His film opens with a 15-minute section on Celso as an artist and fetishist and then presents the couple’s everyday life. “I had not planned the development of the film beforehand, it was like reading a book, not knowing what comes up in the next page”, said the filmmaker.
On the contrary, Vassilis Loules had a plan from day one for his film, a plan he adhered strictly to throughout shooting. His five protagonists became his daily companions in the three year filming period. “Sometimes the thought of giving up did cross my mind, because I could not handle the emotional burden”, confessed the filmmaker. In the end, after five years, having spent two trying to decide which footage to keep, his film made it here -however, the filmmaker feels that his work is not finished.
Commenting on the Greek-Turkish differences recorded in her film, Dinc said: “Sometimes we avoided revealing that I am from Turkey, since we were afraid we would not get the sincere answers we wanted from the interviews. Hercules Millas, who was born in Turkey but knew Greek, did not have any problems. The director expressed the view that mutual prejudices will take time to overcome. she added that In Turkey, the film will be screened at the Istanbul festival and perhaps also at Birgi. Commenting on audience reception, she said that the wider TV public will avoid watching it “because of the film’s critical stance to nationalism”. However, the film will be included in the educational companion of the guide Mr. Millas has written on avoiding Greek-Turkish tensions.
“When I started making the film, I wanted to focus on whether the story of the soldier was pure propaganda or not, and also to show that Russians needed a new idol, a new saint in military uniform, equipped with a Kalashnikov”, said Allard Detiger about his film The New Saint. The biggest obstacle he faced was convincing the soldier’s mother to talk. “There had been many Russian films on the same story, but they were all propaganda films. His mother was afraid I might distort the story, because I wouldn’t be able to understand it as a foreigner. However, my film was the only chance this story had to make it outside Russia. I was concerned about the mother’s reactions after the screening of the film. I am happy that she liked it and that she didn’t criticize me, but the things other people said of her son”, said the filmmaker. The hardships of shooting for 19 days in Russia, especially given the lack of any funding, the mother’s initial negative reaction and her subsequent illness, made the director doubtful about ever finishing the film. “But even if this had been the case, it would still be a good experience”, he added.
