Thasos

Θάσος

“In making this short film about Thasos, we were not seeking to depict the island. We were trying to capture something of its magic and its soul.” Staying true to the ethnographic approach he had just introduced with Macedonian Wedding, Takis Kanellopoulos would, with his second short film, continue to chart that unknown Macedonian region where folkloric kitschness co- exists with its critique, nativeness with its negation, and myths with their mode of narration. In Thasos, by the humble means of a limpid and poetic observational gaze, slivers of an island life routine are made into a proposal countering the picture-postcard image of an entire country, at precisely the time when Greece was experiencing its first explosive wave of tourism back in the 1960s. Rhythmic, at times frenzied and bordering on paganistic, structured around traditional folk songs of the Greek islands, with an emphasis on seeking out a sense of familiarity with the “feel” of the island, and with humankind and the natural world set at its heart, Thasos did not screen at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. It did, however, receive a special mention at the Moscow International Film Festival, and was presented in anthology form at special screenings in Thessaloniki and commercial screenings in Athens, in time earning itself a prominent place within Kanellopoulos’ efforts towards a modernist approach that were renegotiating – at high risk, and with unprecedented decisiveness – the notion of patridognosía [locally-rooted knowledge of one’s homeland].
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Takis Kanellopoulos
Script: Takis Kanellopoulos
Cinematography: Gery Kalogeratos
Editing: Gery Kalogeratos
Producers: Vasilia Drakaki
Format: DCP
Color: B/W
Production Country: Greece
Production Year: 1961
Duration: 18'
Contact: Papandreou S.A. (Dimitris Merziotis, dmerziotis@pap.gr)

Takis Kanellopoulos

Takis Kanellopoulos was born in Thessaloniki in 1933 and died in 1990 of a heart attack. He was one of the first Greek directors to make films in Thessaloniki. He was honoured at the 7th Thessaloniki Film Festival in 1966, on the occasion of his film Excursion, for his contribution to raising the quality standards of the Festival. At the 1968 Thessaloniki Festival, Interlude won the Greek Film Critics Association Award for Best Director, while the same film was awarded Best Art Film of the Year, jointly with Vassilis Georgiadis’s Girls in the Sun. Kanellopoulos’s filmography consists of three shorts and seven feature films.

Filmography

1960 Macedonian Wedding (short doc)
1961 Thassos (short doc)
1962 Glory Sky
1966 Excursion
1968 Interlude
1969 Kastoria (short doc)
1972 The Last Spring
1975 Memories of a Sunday
1978 Romantic Note
1980 Sonia