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21st THESSALONIKI DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL [1-10/3/2019]

 

Agora Doc Market Awards

The Agora Doc Market of the 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival bestowed its awards for the Agora Docs in Progress Section, on Wednesday March 6th 2019, at Warehouse C, in a friendly and relaxed ambiance.

This year’s Docs in Progress Jury was comprised of Rada Sesic - Sarajevo Film Festival, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Elisabeth Hagstedt - Histoire TV, France and Menios Karayiannis - Director, Greece.

The event was preceded by the TFF General Director Elise Jalladeau, who cordially thanked all filmmakers for the projects submitted, for their ideas, talks, concerns, recommendations and remarks. “To us, you are all winners. We expect all of you next year, as well, with your films completed”, stated Mrs Jalladeau. The TFF Artistic Director Orestis Andreadakis also attended the event.

The first award, offered by Two Thirty Five (2|35) post-production company, for post-production services was given to the film Four Seasons by Katerina Patroni – Greece (Production: Eleni Chandrinou, Maria Kontogianni, Steficon). The project is also granted free accreditation and accommodation in this year’s edition of Visions du Réel festival, based in Switzerland. 

The second award, offered by MuSou music company, for music and sound services, was bestowed to the film Our Choices by Salah al Ashkar – Syria, France (Production: Etienne de Ricaud, Caractѐres Productions & Ariel Cypel, L’atelier des artistes en exil).

The Greek Film Centre, in support of the 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and the Agora Doc Market, offered this year an award of 3,000 euro in cash to the film School 54 by Dimitra Kouzi – Greece (Kouzi Productions).

 

EDN Docs in Thessaloniki 2019 Awards

In a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, the EDN Docs in Thessaloniki 2019, organized by the European Documentary Network (EDN) in collaboration with the 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and supported by the EU program Creative Europe ΜEDIA, concluded with the award ceremony that took place on Tuesday March 5th 2019 at Olympion theaters Room With A View.

At his opening speech, EDN Film Consultant & Web Editor Ove Rishøj Jensen once again declared enthusiasm for the creative ideas of the 20 projects presented this year and noted that, if he could, he would give not two, but 20 awards. Since this cannot be done, two projects were finally selected for the following awards:

Doc on Air award went to the project Intimate Outsiders, directed by Roser Corella (production: Roser Corella, Ana Catalá, Moving Mountains Films, Germany). The award is accompanied by a €2,000 cash prize sponsored by ERT as part of the effort to boost documentary production.

The new MIK Doc Lab award by Mediterranean Film Institute (ΜΙΚ) went to the project Phoenix, directed and produced by Daire Collins (Ireland, United Kingdom, Romania, Spain, Germany). The particular award is the fruit of a new partnership between TDF and MIK, in the context of which the winner is awarded a stipend of 1,200 euros and a stay at Nisyros and Rhodes islands, where MIK work is taking place, for 2019.

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21st THESSALONIKI DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL [1-10/3/2019]

 

Docs in Progress of the Agora Doc Market

The projects of the Agora Doc Market Docs in Progress section of the 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival were presented on Wednesday March 6th at Pavlos Zannas theater. The Docs in Progress session takes place for the eighth consecutive year in the Agora Doc Market. In this year’s edition 10 projects from South-eastern Europe and the Mediterranean region participate in closed sessions exclusively for TDF’s invited industry professionals, sales agents, distributors, producers and festival programmers.

The event was opened by the head of Agora Yianna Sarri, who addressed a warm welcome to all participants.

The Two Thirty-five (2|35) Inc post-production company offers for the fifth year in a row an award in post-production services. In addition, the MuSou award for music and sound services, amounting up to 3,500 euro, will be presented for the third time and the Greek Film Centre offers an award of 3,000 euro in cash for the second time. Furthermore, through the new collaboration between TDF and the Swiss festival Visions du Réel, the winner of the Agora DiP prize will also secure accreditation and accommodation for the Festival held in Switzerland, in April.

 

The international Agora Docs in Progress jury consists of:

Rada Sesic, Sarajevo Film Festival, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Elisabeth Hagstedt, Histoire TV, France

Menios Karayiannis, film director, Greece

 

The projects that participate in the Docs in Progress section are the following:

 

  1. Four Seasons by Katerina Patroni. Production: Eleni Chandrinou, Maria Kontogianni, Steficon, Greece
  2. Libres! by Arno Bitschy. Production: Clara Vuillermoz, Les films du Balibari, Co-producer: Liisa Karpo, Marianne Makëla, Napa Films, France, Finland
  3. Never Whistle Alone by Marco Ferrari. Production: Patricia Robledo, Candy Glass, Co-producer: Francesco Crespi, Basement, Italy
  4. Our Choices by Salah Al Ashkar. Production: Etienne de Ricaud, Caractères Productions, Ariel Cypel, L'atelier des artistes en exil, Syria, France
  5. Overtures by Louis Henderson. Production: Olivier Marboeuf, Spectre Productions, France
  6. Queen of the Deuce by Valerie Kontakos. Production: Despina Pavlaki, Valerie Kontakos, Exile Films, Greece
  7. A Rifle and a Bag by Cristina Hanes & Arya Rothe. Production: Isabella Rinaldi, NoCut Film Collective, Co-producer: Andra Popescu, Conset Films, India, Romania
  8. School 54 (working title) by Dimitra Kouzi. Production: Dimitra Kouzi, Kouzi Productions, Greece
  9. Tobias by Alexa Bakony. Production: Gábor Osváth & Ildikó Szűcs, Filmfabriq, Hungary
  10. Y1 Silence of the Deep by Philippos Vardakas. Production: Stelios Efstathopoulos, Team Faos TV Productions, Co-producer: Faos TV Productions GmbH, Greece, Germany

 

It should be noted that the 21st TDF Agora Doc Market is held on a daily basis until March 9th, from 10am to 8pm, at Warehouse C (Port of Thessaloniki).

Agora, an integral and valuable part of the Festival, with the support of the European program Creative Europe MEDIA, has been established as a meeting point where filmmakers from all over the world come in contact with TV broadcasters’ representatives (mainly from Europe), aiming to promote and sell their movies. The turnout is constantly on the rise, proving that Thessaloniki has consolidated its stature as a crossroad of worldwide cultural and commercial exchange.

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How much and in what ways does man differ from animals? What are the moral boundaries in experimenting with animals? How fragile is our relationship with them? How does art and philosophy converse with the animals? What does our stance towards animal kingdom reveal for our species? These are some of the questions raised in the open discussion “Why Look at Animals?” held on Tuesday 5 March at Warehouse C, as part of the 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.

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An exciting and outside-the-box project was presented, for the first time, in the 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, on Tuesday, March 5th, at Warehouse C, within the framework of the Market Talks event held by the Festival’s Agora Doc Market. Greek filmmaker-scriptwriter Syllas Tzoumerkas (A BlastThe Miracle of the Sargasso Sea) and Greek actor-director Christos Passalis (Dogtoothblitz theatre group) presented the project titled “City and the City, commissioned by the Thessaloniki Film Festival and the Metropolitan Organization of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMus).

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Austrian film director Gustav Deutsch introduced the audience to the secrets of his sui generis cinema in an open discussion which took place on Monday, March 4th 2019 at the MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, as part of the 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, and in the presence of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival Artistic Director, Mr Orestis Andreadakis. This year’s TDF edition pays tribute to Gustav Deutsch’s work by screening seven of his signature films.

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The 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, in an emotionally charged ambiance, honored the memory of the recently deceased Greek filmmaker Giorgos Karipidis (1946-2019) with a special screening of his rare short film The Painter Theofilos, held on Monday March 4th, at Pavlos Zannas theater. The film had been bestowed with the first prize, as well as the critics’ award, in the 1979 Thessaloniki Film Festival. The widow of the deceased Rania Mprilaki-Karypidi also attended the event.

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The perplexing structures of bureaucracy do not differ much from one place to another around the world: long queues, longer delays, a lot of wasted time and uncertainty are some of its most common manifestations. The 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival sheds light to the global phenomenon of bureaucracy through a free-admission tribute titled “The Paper Chase” with 5 feature documentaries of recent production that will have their Greek premiere in Thessaloniki.

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21st THESSALONIKI DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL [1-10/3/2019]

 

Passages: a participatory workshop about refugees

 

A novel participatory workshop entitled “Passages” took place on Sunday, March 3rd 2019 at the Center for Lifelong Learning of the Municipality of Thessaloniki, as part of the 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.

The project is organized by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in collaboration with the Hellenic Theatre/Drama & Education Network (TENet-Gr) with the support of Thessaloniki Municipality and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. “Passages”, the first part of the project “It could be me - It could be you” is an awareness-raising project about human rights and refugees which, coupled with this year’s documentaries on refugees at the TDF, aims at giving the audience a better chance to understand the issue.

“Passages” is a simulation game which allows participants to experience the extremely harsh conditions that refugees face in their effort to find shelter in another country. The theatrical methods used in this workshop engage participants physically, emotionally and mentally in the representation of refugee transition from their everyday lives to the hardship of war and social-political persecutions, their journey from home to a new environment which is rarely friendly, the challenges of bureaucracy and all possible dangers they may face.

In particular, during the workshop, with Ioanna Mitsika, a member of the Hellenic Theatre/Drama & Education Network, in the role of trainer, the participants split into teams in order to form the refugee “families” that would take part in the game and get acquainted with their roles. Blindfolded and separated from their “families”, the players dispersed in the room of action, defining their relationships and their everyday lives at home. This process was violently interrupted by a bomb attack or a social-political persecution, etc. Now they had to find their lost “family” members and reunite. Then the families-teams had to deal with the hardships that refugees face: they had to find shelter to protect themselves from the hostile place they had got to, while on the next stage they fled to another country to seek asylum. Their adjustment to the new conditions was not in any way smooth. They had to deal with the long asylum process in the host countries, their contact with the locals, as well as the solutions they are forced to find in order to survive.

The participants realized the causes and consequences of uprooting, as well as the chain of events that lead refugees to other countries. At the same time, they embraced an attitude of acceptance towards refugees and were asked to think of possible solutions to their problems, particularly their integration into the host country. And finally they took solidarity action in order to raise awareness on their social circle -friends, family, local community- in favor of refugees.

“It could be me - It could be you” is an awareness-raising project about refugees and human rights using theatre and drama. It started in 2015 by UNHCR and the Hellenic Theatre/Drama & Education Network and it is accredited by the Greek Ministry of Education and the International Drama/Theatre & Education Association.

 

Every two seconds, one person is forcibly displaced as a result of conflict or persecution and human rights violations. A post-World War II high of 68.5 million people around the world was forced from their homes as of the beginning of this year.

 

The second part of the project entitled “The Multicolored Immigration of the Butterfly” will take place on Wednesday March 6th 2019 (18:00) at the café I Prigipos” (22, Apostolou Pavlou Str), again as part of the 21th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. It is an interactive forum theatre performance on issues of solidarity, acceptance of others and combating xenophobia, putting the participants before personal and social stances, ideals, desires and responsibilities.