10th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival –
Images of the 21st Century
March 7-16, 2008
PRESS RELEASE
ERT PRESS CONFERENCE
On Friday, March 14, Mr. Christos Pangopoulos, President of the Board of Directors and Managing Director of ERT, gave a press conference in the context of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival - Images of the 21st Century. Participating in the press conference were the General Manager of ERT, Mr. Dimitris Gondikas, the President of the Board of Directors of ERT3 Mr. Anastasios Spiliotopoulos, the General Director of ERT3 Ms Thalia Ioannidou-Karathanasi, the Advisor to the President of ERT on matters of cinema policy Mr. Manos Zaharias, and the Artistic Director of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Mr. Dimitri Eipides. Mr. Eipides thanked ERT for its continued help and support.
The President of ERT analyzed ERT’s policy on documentaries, a policy which – as he said – has already born fruit. He referred to the most important distinctions that documentaries co-produced by ERT have won. The most important of these, Towards the dark side of democracy, by Alex Gimbney, an ERT/EBU co-productions, won the Best Documentary Oscar given by the American Film Academy. He then noted that this success wasn’t accidental, but the product of the systematic effort being made the last few years to not only increase the number of documentary productions, but also their quality, by providing the best possible production conditions, so that the result can communicate with a wider audience, not only in Greece, but also internationally. Mr. Panagopoulos referred to the continuing distinctions won by Yiorgos Avgeropoulos’ EXANDAS series, and the History Doc program, prepared and realized by ERT in collaboration with the Parliament Channel and foreign television organizations ( BBC, ΖDF , ARTE, etc). The President of ERT said that this program has been judged successful, because of the result, and so will be continued. He praised the contribution of the former television General Director Mr. Costa Spyropoulo to this new policy of ERT regarding documentaries. This policy continues under the present General Director Mr. Gondika, he noted. In closing, Mr. Panagopoulos said that in order for ERT to achieve these results, it constantly participates in international pitching for a, such as those in Leipzig, Amsterdam, La Rochelle (the largest pitching forum of the EBU), Lucerne and Barcelona.
Mr. Dimitris Gondikas, General Director of Television, spoke of another ERT co-production, Giovani Donfranseco’s Mussolini’s Dirty War, which he said, began with History Doc and has already been very well received in the Italian market, and will soon be broadcast in Greece. Speaking about next season’s programming, Mr. Gondikas said that a new slot is being created mainly for ERT1, for the broadcast of co-produced documentaries, while he particularly praised the collaboration with the Greek Film Festival in Los Angeles, whose organizers have already chosen two ERT co-productions for screening.
Mr. Manos Zaharias, ERT Advisor on matters of film policy, referred to
Tekmirio (Evidence), a financing program done together with the Greek Film Center, through which five short and two feature length creative documentaries are produced every year.
For his part, the the President of the Board of Directors of ERT3 Mr. Anastasios Spiliotopoulos said that ERT3. He also said that ERT3 has a mandate to generously support culture, as a state radio and television and strongly supports the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival because it has its head office in Thessaloniki. “According to recent research, ERT comes in second among all the television channels broadcasting in Greece, in the cultural slots, with ET1 being the champion”, Mr. Spiliopoulos said.
Finally, Thalia Ioannidou-Karathanasi, General Director of ERT3 referred to two documentaries with which the third channel of Greek State Television is participating in the 10th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. The ET3 productions are: “Troubled Years” and “The Guards of the Holy Sepulture”, documentaries that were welcomed with a great deal of warmth and emotion by the audience. “The fact that the creations of the people of ERT3 touched the hearts of the audience is our reward”, he stressed.
