The anniversary book “1960-2009: Fifty Years of Thessaloniki Film Festival”, published by TIFF and Ianos publishing house, was presented on Saturday, November 21, at the Photography Museum of Thessaloniki.
“This volume presents the 49-year history of the Festival. We started working on the publication right after the 49th Festival was over”, said, opening the book presentation, TIFF’s chief editor Athena Kartalou. Ms Kartalou acknowledged the valuable contribution of Iphigenia Taxopoulou (publication editor), Thomas Linaras, Anna Milosi and Aggeliki Mylonaki (documentation of archive research and text writing) as well as Toby Lee and Eleni Androutsopoulou (archive research). Ms Kartalou also thanked the team working at TIFF’s publication branch and Michel Demopoulos who initiated the Festival’s publication activity after the internationalization of the Festival. She also thanked Despina Mouzaki, who opened up TIFF’s publications to the international audience, making them bilingual in 2005.
TIFF director Despina Mouzaki said that this book is a detailed guide that covers the most important moments in TIFF’s history. “The book gives an outline of the facts, but goes even further. It meets the scientific criteria and will become a reference source for historians. Besides being a very important archival resource, the book will also bring forth memories to readers and moviegoers. It allows us to relive the Festival in the present, to share feelings and personal memories with each other”.
Ianos’ Nikos Karatzas thanked the documentation team for their important work and noted: “Despite the fact that all five books published by the Festival so far have been financial disasters, we will not miss the sixth date. Some initiatives are worthy of publication, regardless of their commercial success or failure”.
Detailed reviews of the book were presented by Antonis Liakos, history professor at the University of Athens, film critic Giannis Bakogiannopoulos, composer Manos Zaharias and journalist Elias Kanelis.
Professor Liakos suggested that the next step should be the capturing of the Festival’s history in film form, the recording of the oral testimonies of filmmakers and the audience and the organizing of a convention on the Festival’s history in Greece. He said that the Festival took its first steps in the 1960s to become an unofficial schooling institution for a whole generation. “We were ‘self-educated’ through the cinema. Cinema clubs, magazines and above all the Festival itself, offered a form of unofficial education to teenagers and young people in the 1960s. Cinema was a place where we could meet each other and socialize, it shaped a whole generation and this is why it forms a major part of the history of Modern Greek society”, he said, adding that: “The Festival’s evolution follows the evolution of Greece, from the time of the political change-over to the era of globalization. In 1992 the Festival becomes International. Audiences are exposed to new experiences, which go beyond the official distribution channels, and are able to watch films that would otherwise be impossible to watch even at cinema clubs - films that were not part of the known cultural map of the time”.
Film critic Giannis Bakogiannopoulos noted that “it is our duty to record all the facts in the history of the cinema, which is a mirror of life. Internationally, this need was acknowledged only recently. In Greece there are just some lame attempts and some confused or outright wrong information that is being reproduced. The Festival had scattered material in its possession, which is now collected in a first class book, a treasure cove of information. The book reveals how the Festival and cinema itself have evolved in parallel. Besides the factual data, the book includes press comments of the time, which are valuable documentation sources and can serve for the kind of research established by the Anneles, in the recording of the so-called ‘small history’”. Mr. Bakogiannopoulos suggested that TIFF takes the next step and records oral testimonies, “before people and their memories are lost forever”.
Manos Zaharias referred to his own memories from the Festival since the 1980s as well as to the “filmmakers in the mist” movement. “I returned to Greece not in the glorious era of the 1960s and 1970s. The Festival was then in decay, it had degenerated into showcasing commercial films. In terms of the institutional framework, the only word that can express the situation back then is ‘hotchpotch’. Cinema was under the jurisdiction of the ministries of Commerce and Industry. The Ministry of Culture had almost no say at all. Filmmakers demanded a more rational management. In order to bring about the new legal framework, it took a lot of time and effort. The result of this effort was the establishment of the Greek Film Center and of the Thessaloniki Festival. It has been 30 years since then. The needs are different and changes are needed”. He went on to explain that “the new framework will shape the cinema landscape for the next 20-30 years. I believe that filmmakers’ rights should take priority”. “Today, a new movement has been formed that demands the protection of filmmakers’ rights. All the ensuing fighting is a sign of life and expresses a real need, but I believe it should avoid damaging two institutions that represent milestones for the Greek cinema, the Greek Film Center and the Thessaloniki Festival. So let us keep those institutions out of the fighting and let us have a calm debate on the future of the cinema”.
Elias Kanelis said that the historical research in the Festival’s anniversary edition is extremely important. He then mentioned some of the “spiciest comments on the events that took place parallel to the Festival”. Among these, he mentioned the first audience jeering in 1960 on the occasion of the projection of a short film by the Ministry of Agriculture called Forests burning. He also made reference to the first Antifestival movement in 1961, staged by filmmakers excluded from the Festival, who screened their work in private, and also to press items from 1962, where reporters grumbled about organizing issues and expressed their fear that the Festival would be taken away from Thessaloniki – “these issues are still discussed!” noted Mr. Kanelis.
Closing the event, TIFF president Georges Corraface expressed the hope that Greek filmmakers will continue to be close to the Festival in the next 50 years, while TIFF director Despina Mouzaki pledged she will implement professor Liakos’ proposals pertaining to the recording of the Festival’s oral history and holding a convention on the relationship between cinema and history.
