ROUGHCUT / ONE STEP AHEAD / A HERITAGE: IN DEEP AGONY/ WELCOME TO THE SHOW
A Press Conference took place on Thursday, March 21, 2013, as part of the 15th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. Present were directors Eliana Abravanel (Roughcut), Dimitris Athyridis (One Step Ahead), Kyriaki Malama (A Heritage: In Deep Agony) and Alexis Ponce and Costas Pliakos (Welcome to the Show-The Musical Heritage of Pavlos Sidiropoulos).
Kyriaki Malama was first to speak, explaining that her film is part of the ET3 nine-episode documentary series “The Heritage”. Referring to the way her documentary In Deep Agony connects the past with the present, the director introduced the two people appearing in it: Kyriakos Pimenidis, who remembers all that he lived through in 1920, when many Greek families were exiled from the outskirts of Samsun in southern Turkey, and another man who is portrayed by actor Akyllas Karazisis in the film - who tries to enter the world of a refugee today. “There is a mirror-like relationship between the actor and the narrator”, Ms Malama explained. And she added: “The motivational force behind the film was theater. Akyllas Karazisis was asked to portray, through his grandfather’s Odyssey, the way he himself is experiencing what he hears today. So we adapted the narrative to the present, giving meaning to what the Odyssey of the ‘20s meant as it is reflected by the Odysseys of today’s refugees”. Asked if the preservation of memory can contribute to avoiding mistakes today, the director noted: “History teaches us in any case, so that we can avoid collective mistakes. In other episodes in the series, this message for today is clearer. Whether we are speaking about the war in 1920 or the economic war of today, it is the same thing. War is war”.
In a completely different vein, Eliana Abravanel’s film Roughcut tells the fascinating story of an unusual heroine, Bambie from the Philippines, who works as a hairdresser in Athens. Speaking about the way she chose her subject, the director explained: “I ‘moved’ to the Philippines for 3.5 years, as my house is only a few minutes away from Bambie’s salon. I entered the beautiful world of this person, I observed her life and was impressed by her enthusiasm. Bambie is living through terrible survival problems and an underhanded racism, without letting anything get her down. She is a transsexual, and this makes her story even more complicated and interesting”. Asked whether the way Bambie lives her life could be an example, Ms Abravanel answered: “I think yes. Bambie doesn’t preach to the viewer, but tries to validate her own choices. In the mirror she can see her family, which is anything but traditional: it is made up by a mother – man, an adopted child, and a companion in the Philippines. Essentially she plays the roles of mother, daughter and long-distance wife, through Skype. But she is remarkably calm and decisive”.
Yiannis Boutaris, a unique personality particularly familiar to the people of Thessaloniki (he is its mayor), is the subject of Dimitris Athyridis’ film One Step Ahead. The film takes place in 2010, during the election campaign of the present mayor of Thessaloniki. Speaking of the filming process, the director explained: “I wasn’t so much interested in providing a picture of a politician as much as showing his human side. It’s easy to record the political game. I tried to express the management of emotions in an election campaign. Following the campaign I lived through a situation that was out of control, I had to work up to 12 hours a day, trying to get into someplace where essentially there was no room for me, and this was nerve-wracking”. The director’s relationship with Mr. Boutaris during the shoot was good. “I proposed making the film to him and he agreed. We didn’t talk much; I simply was where I was supposed to be. I gradually discovered that Yiannis Boutaris was enjoying my presence, I had become a kind of shadow to him, and sometimes he would look for me”. When asked whether the image of his protagonist that he had already had in his mind was changed after the film, the director answered: “Yes, it changed in a positive way. I knew about him, just like every other inhabitant of Thessaloniki, he was a well-known personality through his many activities”. As to whether there were any scenes that his protagonist asked to not be recorded, Mr. Athyridis answered: “He never asked me to do anything like that, but some of the people around him, yes. There were times when they asked me to turn off the camera, a request that I of course respected”.
A legend of Greek rock music, Pavlos Sidiropoulos, is the subject of the film Welcome to the Show by Alexis Ponce and Costas Pliakos, a thoroughly musical documentary. “We were not interested in presenting off-color stories, things which are more or less known, but to show the entire range of musicians from then to now. We incorporated a great deal of archival material in the film, as well as poetry and animation”, Mr. Ponce explained. Mr. Pliakos added: “Part of our archival material was given to us by Sidiropoulos’ family, some we obtained from his colleagues, some was forgotten in drawers – mainly texts, photos and a small video. We basically relied on stories told by people who had lived through that era, as well as others who took up the torch and continued his musical legacy”. According to Mr. Ponce, what made the artist so special was that “he did something revolutionary by adding Greek lyrics to rock music”. He said: “We didn’t try to prettify him, create a myth, but to show reality”. At this point, Mr. Pliakos said: “the myth of Sidiropoulos, the way it developed mainly after his death, can be explained in a simple way: it was the result of an alternative form of marketing. This man experimented with popular culture, folk songs in the ‘70s when this was difficult to do for other artists. He placed Greek lyrics in the rock music form in an integrated manner”. Asked whether Pavlos Sidiropoulos is still topical today, Mr. Pliakos noted: “The spirit of Exarhia square which fed the generations that followed with its energy is being reborn today. Many people are looking at the past and discovering these people. It is interesting that Sidiropoulos speaks about Ali, an immigrant from an Arab country in ’87-’88, a time when there was no immigration issue in Greece, but he could see it coming even from that time”.
The Greek films program of the 15th TDF is financed by the European Union’s Regional Development Fund for Central Macedonia, 2007-2013.
