19th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
3-12 March 2017
JUST TALKING
Tuesday 7/3
3-12 March 2017
JUST TALKING
Tuesday 7/3
The “Just Talking” section of the 19th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival continued on Tuesday, March 7th 2017, at the “Room with a view” Cafe of the Olympion Complex. The discussion, moderated by TIFF’s Head of Programming Yorgos Krassakopoulos, was attended by directors Stella Nikoletta Drossa (Wie Bojen im Meer), Moriya Ben Avot (Foreign Local), Cecilia Bozza Wolf (Vergot), Nada Mezni Hafaiedh (Upon the Shadow), Nikos Dourlios (Olympus - Four Paths to Reach the Gods) and Loukas Agelastos & Spyridoula Gkouskou (My Human Self).
The panel discussion began with a short presentation of the directors’ films and how long the shootings lasted.
Stella Nikoletta Drossa, following the lives of five young women during the Greek economic crisis in Wie Bojen im Meer, filmed her documentary for seven years. For his part, Nikos Dourlios focuses on the national park of the breath-taking Mount Olympus in Olympus - Four Paths to Reach the Gods. He said he took photos of the mountain from 1993 and in 2010 he decided to make a film about it.
In My Human Self, Loukas Agelastos and Spyridoula Gkouskou follow the story of the man behind the ‘social kitchen’ “My Human Self”, a 47-year-old person who struggles with unemployment. According to Mr Agelastos, the film has two layers: it refers to how we can achieve everything out of nothing, while at the same time it develops the protagonist’s character. It took three years of research and one of shooting to make the documentary Vergot according to its director Cecilia Bozza Wolf, who filmed a family of farmers in a valley of the Alps; the youngest son realises that he is gay, but the people around him, especially his father, cannot accept the fact.
As for Nada Mezni Hafaiedh, it took her one year to complete her film Upon the Shadow, which records the everyday life of former Femen member Amina Sbui and her friends from the LGBT community, who live at her house, having been rejected from society and their own families. For her part, in her film Foreign Local, Moriya Ben Avot brings to life three personal stories about the feeling of being a foreign and a local at the same time, through stop-motion animation, since, as she noted, she wanted to express herself in a different way beyond words.
How easy was it for them to approach the person they wanted to film?
In Nikos Dourlios’ film, 82-year-old Kostas Zolotas brings the other twelve characters together, as he has been living on the mountain for fifty years. Initially, the director was afraid to approach him but, as he said, he proved to be a man who was energetic like a little child and who really wanted to participate in the documentary. For Stella Nikoletta Drossa, her heroines were people she knew – her sister and her friends – and therefore it was easy for her to approach them. But as time went by, they didn’t want to talk to her because their lives were getting worse due to the crisis and the director had a really difficult time, since she didn’t know how to treat them. For Loukas Agelastos and Spyridoula Gkouskou, approaching their hero was easy because he had already been in the media spotlight. That wasn’t the case for Cecilia Bozza Wolf though, whose main character was shy and she had to make a big effort in order to make him open his heart to her. The same happened to Nada Mezni Hafaiedh, who had a difficult time convincing her activist heroine to talk on camera, since, initially, she didn’t even want to show her face; however, she trusted the director later on. Moriya Ben Avot was inspired by her neighbour, who didn’t want to share his experiences with her, and it was after many discussions that she managed to approach her characters.
When did they make the decision to complete the filming of their documentaries?
“We were sitting under the sun in the summer and decided that the filming had to end. The TDF was our final deadline”, noted Loukas Agelastos. For Stella Nikoletta Drossa the filming was completed when her heroines overcame their difficulties, adding that the referendum of July 2015 brought an end to the film’s story. Nikos Dourlios made it to the summit of Mount. Olympus and ultimately had to complete the filming, since he was out of money and his wife would divorce him, as he pointed out with humour. Cecilia Bozza Wolf’s documentary is her Thesis, for which she had a fixed deadline, and that was the case for Moriya Ben Avot too, who commented that animation must always be on a schedule. For Nada Mezni Hafaiedh the end of the filming came abruptly and urgently, since one of her characters attempted suicide.
How did they organise the editing of their films?
Stella Nikoletta Drossa and her team initially noted down the best moments of their material, afterwards wrote down the script and created a time-line of their protagonists’ lives. Nikos Dourlios had endless material that had to be organised, so everything that needed to be cut was done so with the help of a film editor, and then the story began to make some sense. Spyridoula Gkouskou talked about the great help she received from their film editor, pointing out that “we could make many films using the material we had. After the editing, it was like a new film was created”. Likewise, Cecilia Bozza Wolf noted that she didn’t actually want to cut anything, highlighting that a director who is not emotionally connected to the available material finds it less difficult to cut whatever is not necessary. Nada Mezni Hafaiedh had the consent of her protagonists about what would eventually be included in the film, while Moriya Ben Avot, even though she did the editing herself, noted that “to trust someone else gives you balance and a different perspective”.
How easy is the process of distributing their films?
For most directors this was their first film so, as they pointed out, it was an unprecedented experience. Stella Nikoletta Drossa said that she was told her film had to become shorter in order to have a chance of being distributed or broadcasted on TV. Nikos Dourlios highlighted the importance of film festivals for the promotion of his film, noting that “now, my documentary is a child that has love and protection. When it grows up, it will be out in the market and when it gets old it will become a DVD”. A film is dead, he said, when you can find it on the Internet. Moriya Ben Avot didn’t share this point of view, since she considers the Internet to be an important medium for her film to get on touch with a wider audience. As she commented “no one can teach you how to sell your film”, adding that in Israel, where she comes from, funding is scarce. For his part, Loukas Agelastos pointed out the great importance of film festivals for the promotion of documentaries in general.
