With a series of initiative and actions, Thessaloniki International Film Festival is honoring the memory of Michel Dimopoulos, who served as the Festival’s Director from 1991 to 2005, breathed new life into the institution and expanded its horizons, turning the vision of its internationalization into reality.
Honorary renaming of the Meet the Neighbors+ Golden Alexander
The Festival, paying tribute to Michel Dimopoulos’ enthusiasm for discovering new and upcoming filmmakers, is renaming the Golden Alexander bestowed at the upgraded Meet the Neighbors+ competition section into “Golden Alexander – Michel Dimopoulos”.
The enhanced Meet the Neighbors+ competition section showcases debut or sophomore films from the 36 countries of Southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East where the actions of Agora, the Festival’s developmental branch, are addressed.
The Golden Alexander – Michel Dimopoulos is accompanied by a 10,000-euro cash prize (following in the footsteps of the Golden Alexander – Theo Angelopoulos awarded at the International Competition section).
Special screening
As part of a special event in honor of Michel Dimopoulos, the Festival will host a screening dedicated to his memory. The film The Spirit of the Beehive by Victor Erice, one of Michel Dimopoulos’ most beloved filmmakers, will be screened on Saturday November 4th, at 6pm, in Pavlos Zannas theater. Acclaimed journalists Vena Georgakopoulou and Maria Katsounaki, alongside renowned film critic Christos Mitsis, will join the Festival’s team and speak of Michel’s legacy in Greek cinema. The event will also be attended by Michel Dimopoulos’ family.
The Spirit of the Beehive is screened within the framework of the large-scale tribute to ghosts, hosted by the Festival. Quoting the words of Michel in the Festival’s special edition on the Spanish auteur: “Victor Erice, this cinema perfectionist who has seldom graced us with his work, is rare filmmaker, whose universality, as well as the unique and the heartrending character of his films, always attract attention, admiration and delight”.
Spain, 1940; shortly after the end of the civil war. A traveling cinema projects Frankenstein in a small village lost in the Castilian plateau. Children are fascinated by the monster and, among them, little Ana, 8 years old, poses a thousand and one questions about this terrifying character. Her big sister, Isabel, may explain to her that it is not that a "trick" of cinema, she nevertheless claims to have encountered the spirit of Frankenstein lurking not far from the village. The girls share their loneliness in a big dark house. Their parents are rarely present, each caught up in incomprehensible adult rituals: the father, an insomniac, spends his days studying bees, arranging the family home as if it were a beehive; the mother, meanwhile, took refuge in a sterile nostalgia, writing letters to a supposed lover who remains invisible and silent. To escape this dead world, Ana and Isabel invent a parallel universe...
First Shot magazine dedicated to Michel Dimopoulos
The issue No 312 of the Festival’s magazine First Shot will be entirely dedicated to Michel Dimopoulos, featuring some of the most outstanding articles he wrote on his most cherished films and directors, which engage in “discourse” with the 64th Thessaloniki International Film Festival’s programme. During his stint in the Festival, Michel curated a series of retrospectives and tributes and edited thirty books and monographs on Greek and international filmmakers published by the Festival, leaving an invaluable legacy, which reflects not only his profound love for cinema, but also his versatile take on cinema.
