Images of the 21stCentury
March 14-23, 2014
JUST TALKING 21/3
The “Just Talking” sessions of the 16th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival continued Friday, March 21, 2014. Participating were directors Yaron Shani (Life Sentences), Anna Brass (Leaving Greece), Agatha Darlasi (Life In The Borderlands), Elisa Amoruso (Off Road), Michael Obert (Song From The Forest), Charlie Petersmann (Cantos), Samantha Grant Wiesler (A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, And Jayson Blair At The New York Times) and Avra Georgiou (Dollars For A Saint ). The discussion was moderated by Toby Lee, a professor of cinema studies at Columbia University.
In the film Leaving Greece Anna Brass keeps track of three immigrants from Afghanistan who are trying to leave Greece for the European North, the documentary Cantos is a portrait of four people trying to survive in the countryside of Cuba and The Song From The Forest by Michael Obert observes Louis who left New York to stay with the Bayaka pygmy tribe in the jungle of central Africa. Life Sentences followed the children of a Jewish woman and an Arab man who is imprisoned for fourteen years for terrorist acts, while Off Road presents the love story of a woman and a transgender man in Italy. Patmos and its people star in the documentary Life in the Borderlands (co-directed by Babis Tsoutsas, Eleni Lambropoulou, Yannis Nikolaou and Mihail Arman Pogosian), while Messolonghi and the feast of St. Symios dominate the film Dollars for a Saint.
The first common thread that connects many of the films was the subject of travel, either out of necessity, as internal journey, or as escape. The directors discussed their personal journey through the creation of their films. Anna Brass talked about her experience: "You find the heroes, you start running or keeping pace with them and suddenly something happens to you yourself. Each film is a journey and after that you're not the same person. In this case, a new world opened before me; two new cultures. I started with some questions and after the completion of the film ended up with more. I started thinking more broadly". The director mentioned the ethical issues she faced filming a journey that usually remains invisible: "I ??often wonder where I should place limits and if I put my characters’ life at additional risk. Eventually it is them who set the limit. When, for example they were giving money to smugglers, I could not film them. I gave them the cameras and if they had the time and the courage they used them. Then they were arrested and imprisoned because they themselves were thought to the smugglers because of the cameras. Of course then you have to deal with the problem, because you put them in this position. "
Michael Obert talked about the journey of the hero of his film: "Louis started as a rebellious kid from western New York who hung out with the Ramones and Jim Jarmusch. One day he heard a song on the radio that fascinated him, he went to the place where it had been created in the jungles of central Africa and never came back. Now he is traveling with his 13 year old son coming back to town. I think traveling is a kind of initiation. So it was in the case of father and son, Samedi, who leaves as a boy and returned a man." Yaron Shani said: "My own hero has many names, one Jewish, one Arab, one Canadian and comes from a family of different nationalities and identities. However he did not want to adopt any identity. The journey of his life is to be found in many places but does not belong anywhere. Everyone in his life wanted him to be something, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, but he could not do it. He refused to follow false systems and brainwashing." Referring to how much the film affected him, the director commented: "I changed a lot, and I hope that viewers will also change very much after this film, because change is the first step against oppression.”
Samantha Grant Wiesler talked about the person who was at the center of the scandal she investigated: “Jayson Blair is a very complicated man. I felt many things about him during filming. From the journalistic point of view I felt anger that he had done what he had done, but I wanted to stay objective. I was interested in what motivates people to make wrong decisions. In the case of Jayson Blair I could not understand his motivation. He had it all. He was twenty three years old and worked for the New York Times, had money, wrote on international issues, won prizes. But he destroyed it all. Some said that when he realized that he could not become famous through the newspaper he decided to become famous for the wrong reasons". Elisa Amoruso spoke of how she met the main character of the film: "We met randomly. A friend suggested I meet a mechanic, being sure that I would want to make a film about him. This is a car mechanic and rally driver, Pino, who at the age of forty decides to become a woman, Beatrice. In his small office I saw the walls on one side covered with awards and photos from rallies and the other with photos of Marilyn Monroe. His dual identity was there from the first time I met him. After his sex change, he fell in love with a woman who came from a small Romanian village and didn’t know what a transsexual was. However, in the person of Beatrice she found love".
Charlie Petersmann talked about his stay in Cuba: "I had not been there before. I wanted to create a portrait of the everyday life of these four people in Cuba. I joined them in a system very different from mine. On a personal level I was interested in more marginalized people who opened up and spoke to me. I think when people spend time in Cuba or in other countries where there is no freedom of speech, they want to talk to you. If you pay attention to people they open their door to you and they have so much to say."
Agatha Darlasi talked about a different place, Patmos, which is the star of the documentary Life in the Borderland: "The film began as a workshop during the Festival of Patmos that was held on the island last July. The subject was portraits of people on the island. We wanted the characters to fall into three different categories, because the idyllic island of Patmos hosts a peculiar population. On the one hand there are many tourists from abroad and wealthy tourists who have bought homes and spend the summer there, then there are these monks in the monastery and of course the locals." About her personal experience, the director said: "For me it became clear after the film that wherever place you go your demons will follow you."
Finally Avra Georgiou spoke about her film, which takes place in Messolonghi: "I was always interested in Dionysian events and rituals. When I was informed about the festival at Messolonghi and went there in 2002 I was impressed. The celebration begins on Saturday evening and ends on Wednesday morning without a break. Sounds of music everywhere, there are fifteen Roma groups playing, each with its own mood and style. It is something very different from city life and it is addictive. When you are there you go by yourself, forget your life and your troubles, and fall into a trance. But beyond the sanctity there and the funny elements, as for example when people throw dollars in the air, everyone has their own style." The director spoke about the process of completing her film: "The film was completed after ten years. I did not realize how difficult it would be to create a coherent narrative and as the date of the annual celebration is changed each time the dates were unpredictable. The creation of the film was a personal journey filled with knowledge".
