REALITY AND FICTION IN THE FILMS OF FOUR GREEK DIRECTORS
Four Greek directors were on the panel of the press conference held on Thursday, March 6th at the Olympion Renault theatre in the framework of the 5th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival - Images of the 21st Century. All attending the press conference were delighted by the sounds of an accordion that was playing outside the building.
Director Nikos Alevras was rather cheerful but complained about the small number of journalists from Athens attending the press conferences. The director praised the Director of the Documentary Festival, Dimitri Eipides for his important contribution but stressed that everyone must put in a helping hand to support documentaries and stop impairing them. As far as his film Performance is concerned, Alevras said: “The film was made spontaneously, completely impromptu and almost poetically. The part of the film that made the most lasting impression on me was the fact that the 35-year-old father of the boy with the leading role was able to learn things about his child through the film”.
Alexandros Papailiou, the director of Et in Arcadia Ego, which is part of the official program but out of competition, spoke about his film: “The film is a trip to my homeland, Arcadia. I learned a great number of things while filming it. It was a game of shifting from reality to fiction. “Another focal point in the film is time because it contains both older and new journeys. I was captivated by the easiness of shifting from one plane to another, from reality to fiction. I believe that when going on a journey we keep only those things that make an emotional impact on us and connect to our psyche…”
Panos Karkanevatos spoke about his film, Breath of the Earth, which is also part of the official program but out of competition: “I decided to make a film about the world of popular customs and rituals”. The director described a time when he had attempted to film an Anastenaria ritual (Anastenaria: a Greek local custom where a group of people walk on burning coal with their bare feet in the name of a saint) only to stop shooting after a while because what was happening “voided” him. “I felt that what I was witnessing was above me”, he said.
Finally, Aggelos Kovotsos, whose film My own Mytiilene is part of the Greek Panorama section said about his film, “My film is based on 39 short films shot by entrepreneur Mitsa Kourtzis from 1925 to 1927. Kourtzis lived in Mitilini and was an amateur filmmaker. The films were restored in Paris and provided the basis for my film. In my opinion, Kourtzis was a genius, a Mediterranean cosmopolitan with a vision”. “I would also like to thank the historians that worked with me for their invaluable assistance. Personally, the fact that my father is from Mitilini made this endeavor of mine a return to a land of fairytales”.
At the end of the press conference all four directors were asked to comment on the relationship between reality and fiction in a documentary. N. Alevras said that, “it’s an important notion and art is our effort to surpass reality and reach for the dream”. Α. Papailiou stated that “the seduction is in the ease of shifting from reality to fiction; the easier they intermingle in the narration, the more persuasive the result is”. P. Karkanevatos explained that, “reality and fiction coexist without clear distinctions between them”. Α. Kovotsos noted that, “most people believe that documentaries exist to depict reality, when, in truth, they just represent what the director experienced from a particular reality”.
