Top-notch names in the fields of music and TV series will attend the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival to deliver masterclasses, within the framework of the Meet the Future and Agora Series actions of the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
We are welcoming:
Our international guests, composer Zbigniew Preisner, lifelong collaborator of Krzysztof Kieślowski, music editor Suzana Perić, with prolific films by Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig and Peter Jackson under her belt, and showrunner and executive producer Anna Winger, known among others for the smash hits Unorthodox and Transatlantic, as well as acclaimed casting director Ellen Lewis, announced a few days ago.
Our Greek guests, acclaimed artists Nikos Kypourgos, Evanthia Reboutsika and Tassos Boulmetis, Kostas Christides and Coti K. (Constantino Luca Rolando Kiriakos), beloved by the audience through their outstanding work both in Greece and abroad.
Meet the Future
The successful initiative Meet the Future, a collaboration between the Greek Programme and the Agora of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival that was launched in 2019, aiming at bringing forth the up-and-coming Greek professionals from different sectors of the film industry, is back in action for yet another year within the framework of the 65th TIFF. This year’s Meet the Future foregrounds the art of film scoring through the tribute “Music in Motion: The Art of Film Scoring”, welcoming film composers of the younger generation from Greece, taking the baton from film directing, cinematography, editing, acting and screenwriting that took center stage over the last years.
The 65th TIFF’s Meet the Future is addressed to emergent film composers who have composed a music score for at least one short film and up to one full-length fiction film or documentary or TV series. The participants will have the chance to attend a series of intriguing masterclasses, with free admission for the public, on a first-come-first-served basis, delivered by renowned names of the field, such as Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner, Croatian music editor Suzana Perić with a longstanding career in the USA under her belt, as well as Nikos Kypourgos, Evanthia Reboutsika and Tassos Boulmetis, Kostas Christides and Coti K., which will shed light on the intricate role and the pivotal function of film music.
This year’s Meet the Future lines up eight rising musicians-composers, making their first steps in the art of film scoring: Ermis, Nick Athens, Greg Eleftheriou, Pélagie Hatzinikitas, John Konsolakis, Stavros Markonis, Panos Tsamouras, Vasilis Zlatanos.
This year, for the first time, the Thessaloniki State Orchestra is launching a new award bestowed within the framework of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, undertaking the full recording of symphonic music for the awarded film. The film composers taking part in the Meet the Future section are competing for this year’s award, which pertains to their next work in cinema. Starting from the following year, the award will be bestowed to a film taking part in the Works in Progress section of TIFF’s Agora. The recording of symphonic music for a film is a costly process that often deters film composers from writing orchestra music. The establishment of this award aims to encourage and boost the composition of symphonic orchestra music for films. The jury of the newly established award is composed of: Simos Papanas (Director of the Thessaloniki State Orchestra), Antonis Sousamoglou (concertmaster of the Thessaloniki State Orchestra), and Miltos Logiadis (orchestra director).
Moreover, as in the previous years, one of this year’s Meet the Future participants will receive the Crew United Prize, a 5-year free Premium membership subscription on Crew United, the leading online networking platform connecting audiovisual professionals in Europe, also operating in Greece.
Don’t Think Like a Composer
Coti K.
Sunday November 3rd, Pavlos Zannas, 10:30-12:00
Admission free, on a first-come-first-served basis
Μusician, sound engineer, composer, installation artist and record producer Coti K. will focus on improvisations, insecurities, randomness, failures, and out-of-body experiences.
Costantino Luca Rolando Kiriakos, better known as Coti K., has been involved in the electronic music scene since the mid-1980s. He has composed music and designed sound for theater, cinema, television, dance theater, as well as audiovisual installations. He has collaborated with many artists, including Tuxedomoon, Stereo Nova, Dimitris Papaioannou, Yorgos Lanthimos, Angelos Frantzis, Nikos Veliotis, Michalis Delta, Giannis Aggelakas, Blaine Reininger and others. Since 1992, he has released seven albums under the name Coti K. and three more as The Man From Managra.
The Role of Film Music
Zbigniew Preisner
Monday November 4th, Pavlos Zannas, 11:00-12:30
Admission free, on a first-come-first-served basis
Prolific Polish film composer Zbigniew Preisner, one of the best of his generation in the field, will delve into the role of music, the way the task of a film composer is intertwined with the work of the film director, as well as into whether a film composer has the room to develop initiative within the context of a film production.
Zbigniew Preisner gained worldwide reputation through his collaboration with his fellow countryman director Krzysztof Kieślowski, composing the score for the latter’s films No End, Dekalog, The Double Life of Véronique, and the acclaimed Three Colors Trilogy. Requiem for My Friend (1998), Preisner’s first large-scale work specially written for recording and live performance, was dedicated to the memory of Krzysztof Kieślowski, who had passed away two years earlier, whereas two of its tracks are heard in the soundtrack of the films The Tree of Life (2011) by Terence Malick and The Great Beauty (2013) by Paolo Sorrentino, respectively. Preisner has also teamed up with many more famous directors, among whom Hector Babenco, Jean Becker, Louis Malle, Agnieszka Holland, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Fernando Trueba, Thomas Vinterberg, whereas his most recent work was for the Greek production Man of God (2021) directed by Yelena Popović.
The Polish composer has countless awards under his belt, among which stand out the Berlinale Silver Bear for the music in the film The Island on Bird Street (1997) by Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, as well as two César Awards for his music in the films Three Colors: Red (1994) by Kieślowski and Élisa (1996) by Jean Becker.
Thoughts on Music in Cinema
Nikos Kypourgos
Monday November 4th, Pavlos Zannas, 13:00-14:30
Admission free, on a first-come-first-served basis
Nikos Kypourgos invites us on a brief tour through the history and role of music in cinema, the stages of its production, collaborations with the director, editor, and sound designer. Thoughts and reflections drawn from the composer’s many years of personal experience.
Nikos Kypourgos studied Music Theory and Contemporary Techniques with Yannis A. Papaioannou, while also studying Law and Political Science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He continued his music studies in Paris with a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation at the Conservatoire de Paris, studying under Max Deutsch and Iannis Xenakis. He also studied Ethnomusicology and Music Pedagogy. He was a close collaborator and orchestrator of major works by Manos Hadjidakis. He has composed works for orchestra and choir, music for dance, and songs. He has worked extensively in musical theater (opera, musical comedy, musicals) and has composed music for more than seventy theater productions and an equal number of films, both Greek and international. He has received numerous awards for his music in Greece and abroad.
Scoring a Life Between Hollywood and Greece
Kostas Christides
Moderator: Eleni Mitsiaki
Tuesday November 5th, Pavlos Zannas, 11:00-12:30
Admission free, on a first-come-first-served basis
An open discussion about scoring for cinema and TV in Hollywood. From “how to get the job” to “how to get the job done”. The composer will talk about the process and how to make the original music to be an important and essential element of the narrative. A process that is not only “composing the score”, but also building the right working relationship with the director, being efficient and punctual on the time schedules of the production, working in a successful way with a team of people that is helping you get through the finish line. The main differences in scoring for cinema or TV and how the composer adjusts and applies their methods when working on a Greek project. Audio-visual material will be used during the presentation, including among others, actual footage from recording sessions, scenes “before and after” music and original working files showing the actual work.
Kostas Christides was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. Being passionate about film music since he was a teenager and after completing his musical studies in London, Kostas moved to Los Angeles, where he met and worked beside the acclaimed Hollywood composer Christopher Young. After a few years he started working independently as a composer and an orchestrator. His list of credits includes among others the Netflix productions Benji, Love and Gelato, Baytown Outlaws, Love Happens, Dark Ride, having also orchestrated for numerous films such as Spiderman 3, The Hurricane, Swordfish, Sweet November, The Core, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, A Quiet Place: Day One. He has also teamed up with a handful of very prominent Greek filmmakers, such as Christopher Papakaliatis. After their collaboration on two films, What if and Worlds Apart, they just completed the second season of the very successful mini TV series Maestro In Blue, which happens to be the first Greek TV series distributed worldwide by the streaming giant Netflix.
The Director's Sound and the Composer's Vision
Evanthia Reboutsika & Tassos Boulmetis
Tuesday November 5th, Pavlos Zannas, 13:00-14:30
Admission free, on a first-come-first-served basis
Tassos Boulmetis and Evanthia Reboutsika present and discuss their method of collaboration. Topics include the role of music during scriptwriting and preparation, the relationship between the director and composer before and after filming, themes, motifs, and transitions, sound clips, sound design, and music.
Composer Evanthia Reboutsika studied violin at the Patras Conservatory. She continued her studies at the Athens Conservatory, and later in Paris at the École Normale de Musique. From an early age, she performed as part of a quartet with her brother and sisters, traveling across Greece and abroad. Her music has won many international awards, including the Rome International Movie Awards, Cannes Indies Cinema Awards, and the Greek Film Festival of London Award. The World Soundtrack Academy awarded her the “Discovery of the Year 2006 Award” for the film Babam ve Oglum by Çağan Irmak, which also won the Soundtrack of the Year award from Bosphorus University. The music she composed for Tassos Boulmetis’ film A Touch of Spice (Politiki Kouzina) won the State Award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, and the film's soundtrack gained international recognition. They reunited for the films Notos and 1968.
Director Tassos Boulmetis studied Physics at the University of Athens and Film Production and Direction at the University of California (UCLA), with scholarship support from the Onassis Foundation. At UCLA he taught, as a teaching assistant, classes on directing actors for film and television. In Greece he started his career as a director/producer of TV shows. In 1990 he wrote, directed and co-produced the film Dream Factory which was shot on video and then transferred to 35mm film. The film obtained 8 awards in Greece and the Golden Award of Fantasy Movies in the Houston Film Festival. For several years he has directed many TV Commercials for Greek and European agencies. His second feature was A Touch of Spice, which he wrote, directed and co-produced. The film became the biggest hit ever in Greece with over 1,600,000 admissions and has been distributed in 45 countries all over the world. A Touch of Spice has been presented in several festivals around the world and has been awarded with 8 Awards of excellence in Greece. The film was Greece’s official entry in the Academy Awards of 2005. Mythopathy, his third feature, is a coming-of-age comedy set during the 1970s in Greece, while his latest work is 1968, a docufiction about the legendary basketball final that took place on April 4th 1968, the day Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, between AEK and Slavia Prague. He is a member of the European Film Academy and he is the first unanimously elected president of the Hellenic Film Academy. He has also worked as a visiting professor in Academic institutions all over the world, such as UCLA, San Francisco State University, Bilgi University in Istanbul, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Beirut University, Metropolitan College of Athens etc. He is currently a full time professor teaching Documentary Production at New York College in Athens, Greece.
The Journey of Music in a Film
Suzana Perić
Wednesday November 6th, Pavlos Zannas, 11:00-12:30
Admission free, on a first-come-first-served basis
From the original story idea to the final draft of a screenplay, to casting, cinematography, costumes and design… when does the thought of music enter into the equation? The answer is: there is no exact answer. There is no right or wrong path, there is no rule that guides the process. It’s always the film that leads. And the moment in that particular time with that particular cast of characters. However, how the music seizes that moment, how it becomes an integral part of that particular story, does have an answer. A music editor’s job is to search for that answer, a composer’s job is to find it.
Suzana Perić has been active as a music editor since 1986. Her work traverses an array of genres, for both studio and independent films — including Something Wild (1986), Casualties of War (1988), Naked Lunch (1991), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1993), Kundun (1997), The Lord of the Rings (2001), The Pianist (2002), Angels in America (2003), All Is Lost (2012), Lady Bird (2017), Little Women (2019), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2019), Barbie (2023). Suzana has collaborated frequently with such directors as JC Chandor, David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, Greta Gerwig, Peter Jackson, Mike Nichols, Roman Polanski and Martin Scorsese. Composer alliances include such luminaries as Alexandre Desplat, Ennio Morricone, Philip Glass, Rachel Portman, Howard Shore. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a regular juror for the Academy Student Film Oscar competition.
Agora Series
Agora Series, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival’s forum for TV series production in Greece and the broader Eastern Εuropean and Mediterranean region, that was launched in 2022, returns with a two-day program, taking place on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd of November 2024. Agora is carried out with the valuable support of the Creative Europe-MEDIA programme.
Agora Series 2024 is proudly announcing a new creative partnership with Oxbelly presenting a masterclass in showrunning by British-American writer, showrunner and executive producer Anna Winger in a discussion with Rachel Eggebeen (Chief Content Officer, Amplify Pictures). Running the Show is about the American title “Showrunner”, which is new in Europe, where most TV series are still made by non-writing producers. What is involved in showrunning a TV series? What does it mean for the screenwriter to sit in the driver's seat? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Berlin-based writer and producer Anna Winger walks the audience through her experiences showrunning the European Netflix series, Unorthodox and Transatlantic. Oxbelly holds the annual Oxbelly Retreat in Messinia for international storytellers in literary fiction, film and television.
New and well-established partnerships with prestigious programs and organizations specializing in series content development and co-production, such as MIDPOINT, Series Mania Institute, The Owl, War Room Content and Mediterranean Film Institute together with funding programs of the Hellenic Film and Audiovisual Center S.A.-Creative Greece (H.F.A.C.-Creative Greece) are present to the program sessions through the breakfast meetings addressed to the accredited creators.
What is more, for the first time this year in partnership with the Creative Media Desk office in Greece an Agora Series market accredited networking event will be organized aiming at bringing together local talents with stakeholders of the series production in Greece and abroad (producers, broadcasters, distributors).
Another first for this year’s series program is the introduction of a case study presentation. On the occasion of the new drama series Kabul, producers Fabienne Servan Schreiber (Cinétévé), Matthias Weber (24 25 Films) and executive producer Sandrine Paquot meet with Faye Tsitipi, Head of Strategic Analysis and Productions at COSMOTE TV, in a discussion about the challenges and opportunities of co-production financing, resources and expertise exchange, as well as the complexities of international collaborations. The upcoming series, which was filmed exclusively in Athens, is based on the true events of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 and will premiere in early 2025 on COSMOTE TV. The discussion is presented in partnership with the European Producers Club.
The long standing Agora collaboration with MIDPOINT is bringing together Émilie Blézat and Hyppe Salmi in a discussion on IP as a tool for fostering innovation & social change. The talk will focus on content creation with social impact, supporting young talents, and developing a youth audience in the series world. During the conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to learn about the groundbreaking program War Room Content, a think tank that serves as a meeting hub for screenwriters, journalists, experts, and other stakeholders for the creation of innovative European series. At the same time, the pioneering program Areena Stories will be presented, a mini-series on the Instagram platform produced by young creators, serving as a communication channel with the youth audience.
The talk sessions of the Agora Series will be moderated by Deadline journalist Zac Ntim.
The Agora Series program is wrapping up on Sunday November 3 with creative film and TV consultant Tatjana Samopjan presenting a masterclass, titled Real Imagination: Storytelling In the Age of AI. The masterclass is about the relationship between the lives we live and the stories we tell, exploring how the vibrancy of our experience and the quality of our perception influence the stories we create. Tatjana works as a creative consultant specializing in development of TV series, films and documentaries, and is the co-founder of Fractal Volcano creative retreats.
Finally, the official program of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival embraces the initiative of the Agora by including screenings of new series episodes in its daily schedule.
Agora Series creates the perfect networking environment and includes the above events to create a fertile ground for creative connectivity and new synergy opportunities between creators and executives in the local and regional series production world.
