The “Just Talking” sessions of the 16th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival continued on Wednesday, 19 March 2014, with directors Anneta Papathanasiou (Playing with fire), Menios Karayannis (ARIKA. A.), Stelios Kouloglou (The Godmother), Nuria Ibanez (The Naked Room), Santiago Esteinou (The Years of Fierro), Carlo Prevosti (Capulcu: Voices from Gezi) and Edgar Hagen (Journey to the Safest Place on Earth).
Carlo Prevosti, one of the five co-directors of Capulcu: Voices from Gezi, a film about the Gezi Park movement in Istanbul, said: “I am happy to present our film here, at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival; we made the film with a minimal budget in just five days.” The Italian director added: “We wanted to capture a critical moment of change in Istanbul. I agree with one viewer in Thessaloniki, who told me that the Istanbul of today is the Paris of 1968. I hope we have succeeded in making a documentary for the next generations.”
Menios Karayannis talked about his documentary ARIKA. A., which portrays a unique painter, 80-year-old Dimitris Andrianopoulos: “He is a special artist, who refuses to exhibit or sell his paintings, and signs his works with the name of his wife. His uniqueness inspired me to make the film.”
In his film Journey to the Safest Place on Earth, Swiss director Edgar Hagen investigates the controversial issue of nuclear waste disposal. “This issue does not concern only Switzerland, but many countries around the world that use nuclear power for electricity. The nuclear waste produced in the process remains active for hundreds of thousands of years. Making this documentary was a gigantic project that took me five years to complete.”
Nuria Ibanez’ documentary Naked Room deals with a very different issue. The Spanish-born director, who lives and works in Mexico, explained: “The film takes place in the room of a children’s psychiatric hospital in Mexico City, where the young patients are given counsel. But it was not the psychiatric aspect that interested me the most — what I wanted to do was capture the underlying social realities.”
The Years of Fierro is also a Mexican production, which tells the story of a Mexican immigrant on death row in Texas. Director Santiago Esteinou explained the unique circumstances of his protagonist. “Fierro, which means ‘iron’ in Spanish, has been in prison for 35 years, awaiting his execution and insisting on his innocence. He has not been executed yet, because his case is controversial.”
In Playing with Fire, Anneta Papathanasiou focuses on an all-female theater company in Afghanistan. “These women fight for their lives and their art. My film is a different take on human rights. The film initially shows the women on stage performing a play by Moliere, but they soon have to fight for their own lives, because theater is prohibited in Afghanistan and they are chastised as whores,” explained the director, who was inspired to make the film while teaching ancient Greek drama in Kabul.
German chancellor Angela Merkel is the main character in the film The Godmother by Stelios Kouloglou. The director said that his film is “an atypical biography of Merkel. I have tried to explain her policies in Europe, especially in South Europe, by investigating her early years in East Germany. When the Berlin Wall fell, Merkel was already 35 years old. I tried to ‘merge’ her life and, in my view, calamitous policies for Europe and her own nation.”
The participants then discussed about the opportunities, or lack thereof, to produce documentaries and reach a larger audience. Kouloglou said: “My film will now be screened in theaters in Athens. I worked for many years in television, before the shocking shutdown of ERT, so I had a different relationship with the TV audience. But there are additional differences between the documentaries made for TV and those made for the cinema. TV documentaries have to hold the attention of the audience and prevent viewers from changing channel; in a documentary meant for the cinema the filmmaker has more time to give fuller expression to his ideas.” Karayannis stressed how important it is for documentary producers and directors “to convince the audience that a documentary is not just about telling a story like a news report does — the documentary is cinema.” Ibanez agreed, and added that in Mexico there are certain initiatives aimed at improving the distribution of documentaries. Esteinou also commented on the situation in Mexico, saying: “people are gradually discovering that documentaries are not boring, as was the prevailing view in the past.” Commenting on the same issue, Papathanasiou made special reference to the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. “In some of the other, broader film festivals I have taken part in, I even asked organizers to remove the word ‘documentary’ from my films, because the audience would snub them. The audience needs to be educated and this is what festivals are for.” Prevosti noted: “In my country, people think documentaries are boring. TV stations usually run scientific documentaries. A device I like to use in my films to attract audience attention is to include funny parts that make people laugh.” Hagen explained that things are different in Switzerland: “Where I come from, most problems have to do with the linguistic diversity of the population. For example, it is not equally easy to promote a political documentary to the French- and German-speaking parts of the country. This is why filmmakers prefer to make films that are a reflection of society. I believe cinema is, above all, an effort to tell the audience a story, not simply lay the facts before them. That said, in Switzerland we do work a lot with schools, organizing school screenings followed by very interesting debates.” Kouloglou talked about his experience form a visit to Mexico, where he was invited by an important festival to present his previous film. “I was impressed with the audience. They were very keen to watch, very open to ideas, perhaps more so than the audience here in Europe”.
Securing funding is an important issue for all documentary makers, but its significance differs from one country to the next. Mr Hagen said that the film’s budget came from public funding, adding that he wouldn’t go to ask for money from private sources, because it is a matter of making films in an independent way. As Ibanez and Esteinou explained, in Mexico an effort is being made to increase funding by withholding tax on big companies; this policy is expected to dramatically change Mexican cinema. Prevosti said that in Italy cinema is considered just like any other industry. “You have to be a box office success to secure funding.” Papathanasiou talked about conditions in Greece. “There are no available financial sources after the shutdown of ERT and the inability of the Greek Film Center to provide funds. State funding is simply no longer available. We are an endangered species. Private companies are also reluctant to sponsor us because of the crisis. The only thing that keeps the documentary alive is the perseverance of filmmakers, but I am not sure for how long they can go on fighting alone.”
