As part of the 17th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, the directors Stelios Kouloglou (Escape from Amorgos), Yannis Kolozis (Un Condor), Stamatis Tsarouchas (Kostis Palamas – The Supreme Flower in Greek Literature) and Panagiotis Evangelidis (Pure Life) attended a press conference on Friday March 20, 2015.
Yannis Kolozis was the first to discuss his film. He talked about its hero Sergio Contreras, who left Chile as a self-exile in 1973, after Pinochet’s coup d'etat, to return to the country 38 years later. The director explained: “He left because of Pinochet, when he was 17 years old. Sergio was political from a young age. When the coup d'etat took place, he had to enlist and join the army. Witnessing what was going on in Chile, he decided to leave. As a conscientious objector, he faced imprisonment or exile. He always wanted to leave, for political reasons but also because he wanted to travel. He could have returned earlier, but he takes his time. He eventually managed to return after 38 years. Things weren't easy. He didn't have people that he could communicate with in Chile and he had issues with his family. He decided to return after thinking about it for a long time, and he returned long after the dictatorship had fallen”. Answering the question of what the idea of a homeland meant to his hero, the director said: ”I think that we agree on this subject. For Sergio, home is where he finds people that he can exist with. He came here because he could live here comfortably. He doesn’t think too much about ethnicity. Home is where he feels that he has a reason to exist”. Kolozis travelled to areas in South America that are unknown to most of us. Sergio's parents live close to the edge of the world and other members of his family live up north. Chile is a long strip of land that stretches thousands of kilometers, from north to south. We started from Punta Arenas and reached the Andes”. Even to his main character, a lot of these places were new. “My main goal was for the film to have the element of travel, like a road documentary”, the director noted.
In his film Escape from Amorgos, Stelios Kouloglou deals with the subject of exile in a different way. The hero of his documentary is the ex government minister Georgios Mylonas. Mylonas was exiled to the island of Amorgos during the dictatorship of 1967-74, as were thousands of other opponents of the regime. In 1969 a group of people conspired to help him escape. Talking about his film’s protagonist, Mr. Kouloglou said: “He was a very special figure of the political world, he wasn’t your usual politician. He had a sense of humor, he was honest and he was different. That’s why he didn’t make his way up through the ranks, even though he was Georgios Papandreou’s right-hand man during the 60’s. I met him once. That’s when he gave me a book that he published in English and that’s when I came to know his story. His story isn’t the kind of subject I usually deal with, but because people would tell me that they left my films feeling like they’d been punched in the stomach, I wanted to make something that had a happy ending”. The director also explained that he was trying to communicate a political message: “During the dictatorship there were many financial scandals, barbarism and riduculousness. I wanted to remind Greeks of this”. Commenting on the fact that watching the documentary, one may feel like he’s watching a fictional account, he said: “Because the story has many obstacles, psychological shifts and political intrigue, I decided not to use some of the materials I had at my disposal, for reasons of cinematic economy. The film would become extremely cinematic, if I had added these fictional elements. Mylonas had humor and morals. He remained true to Georgios Papandreou, even though he didn't nominate him for the position of Prime Minister. There’s also a scene in the film that shows an argument with his wife, who tried to intervene during the dictatorship, so he could get a leave, but he didn’t accept it”. Answering the question of how he funded his documentary, he said: “I would say that I am a productive director, but a bankrupt producer, because – for better or for worse - I don’t consider financial matters as much as I should. I don’t enter partnerships or strike agreements with foreign collaborators to co-fund my films. I hoped my earlier films would be purchased by foreign media, that had expressed an interest, but also because they were politically scathing, but this wasn’t the case”.
Stamatis Tsarouchas also looks at the past in a political way in his film Kostis Palamas – The Supreme Flower in Greek Literature. The film looks at the life and work of the poet Kostis Palamas, bringing to light known and unknown aspects of his life and focusing on his political stance towards the Greek historical and national issues from 1865-1943. Explaining the reasons why he decided to make the film, Tsarouchas said: ”A great man of the last century said “I stood on the shoulders of my ancestors to look to the future”. With this phrase in mind, I started to read up on history and to consider subjects from Greek history. Palamas had a multifaceted personality. He was known for his poetic work, but he got my attention because of his stance towards difficult events of his time, especially after the unfortunate war of 1897, the Revolt in Goudi and the Asia Minor Catastrophe, a time when he played an important part in raising the spirit of the Greek nation. Something many people aren’t aware of is that he also satirized cronyism and dishonesty, and in this way, he’s still very contemporary”. Speaking about the difficulties he came up against in order to present Palamas’ personality on film, he said: “I tried to get over the difficulties by incorporating fictional elements into my film. I used actor Renos Haralambidis to reconstruct an interview with Palamas at the beginning of the film. The last question the interviewer asks him is whether or not he is a nationalist, to which Palamas replies: “No sir, I’m not a nationalist. I’m patriotic”. His patriotism impressed me, especially in relation to the need we feel today to re-read our history. By reading our history we can get over today’s difficulties”.
In a completely different mood, Panagiotis Evangelidis travelled to Barcelona to document the life of his main character, a 25-year-old porn star, in Pure Life. The director explained the filming process: “I didn't approach my hero, he approached me. I met him at a festival. He had seen my previous film and told me he liked the way I portrayed nudity on screen. While talking to him I realized that what interested me when making a portrait of somebody is how we are all categorized, in terms of stereotypes. Even though a porn star, he was a home-body, he rarely had sex, he was spending time with his family and living in his own world. Initially, he asked me to make a porn film. I suggested that we make a documentary. He was reluctant at first, but he eventually agreed. In the film, I follow him in the course of a day in his life, from the morning when he wakes up, until late at night, when he meets up with his friends. He’s basically a guy next-door: a modern young man, full of tattoos, that takes his dog for a walk, goes shopping and does whatever we all do. What is revealed in this film is that we are all guys next-door and also that there’s no such thing as a guy next-door. What my hero wants more than anything is to fall in love. He wonders if he’ll die before he gets a chance to do so. He’s yet another portrait, in the portrait gallery, that as a documentary film maker, I’ve realised I’m building”.
