GREECE: SALONIKA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OPENS WITH THE AIM OF INTRODUCING GREEK AUDIENCES TO EMERGING FILM MAKERS

Record ID: 387333

  • Title: GREECE: SALONIKA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OPENS WITH THE AIM OF INTRODUCING GREEK AUDIENCES TO EMERGING FILM MAKERS
  • Date: 21st November 1997
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE FRENCH) FESTIVAL DIRECTOR MICHEL DIMOPOULOS SAYING, "THIS IS A UNIQUE COMPETITION IN ITS THIRTY-EIGHTH YEAR WITH INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION. IT IS MADE UP OF SEVERAL COMPETITIONS. FOR EXAMPLE FOR YOUNG FILM MAKERS ON THEIR FIRST OR SECOND FILM. THERE IS ALSO A COMPETITION FOR GREEK PRODUCTIONS. AND ALSO NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDEPENDENT CINEMA OF THE WORLD."
  • Embargoed: 6th December 1997 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SALONIKA, GREECE
  • Country: Greece
  • Reuters ID: LVAB2ZUOHXT77A2N4RY7VK528SC7
  • Story Text: - Salonika's 38th International Film Festival opened on Thursday (November 21) with the aim of introducing Greek audiences to emerging film makers.

    Over the course of the festival, movie-goers in Greece's second largest city will be treated to a choice from 200 films - the event will also pay tribute to some of the great directors of international film.

    During the event, the films of 13 emerging directors compete for the international prize and 13 Greek films for the national competition. Contestants vie for the 50,000 U.S. dollar Golden Alexander prize and the 30,000 U.S. dollar Silver Alexander.

    The festival opened with a showing of British filmaker Peter Cattaneo's comedy "The Full Monty".

    The festival hosts a myriad of new film-makers from all around the globe including Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and Korea.

    One entry in the international competition is a film by Finland's Auli Mantila - "The Collector". The movie is her first full length feature.

    The reclusive Mantila, who brought her six-month old daughter Ruunt to the festival, is unused to being in the spotlight and kept her head bowed while answering reporters questions.

    Mantila said her film would add a boost to the struggling Finnish film industry if it won.

    The Festival also includes retrospectives of famous film-makers such as Arturo Ripstein, Manoel De Oliveira and a special tribute to French cinema master Claude Chabrol, aged 67, who in 1997 completed his 50th film.

    Twenty-five of Chabrol's films will be screened.

    Chabrol, who appeared at the festival for the showing of his latest film "Rien Ne Va Plus" announced the making of his 51st film next year called "Le Couleur des Mensonges" about a painter caught in a web of lies.

    In a news conference, Chabrol answered questions about his extensive career and the making of his 50 films over the span of forty years.

    "They should beat me," said Chabrol, "But great ancestors like Mozart..they kept on. I have every intention to continue." Another highlight of the festival is the "Times of Turmoil" section, a part of a wider Balkan section which presents films on the conflict in the Former Yugoslavia.

    Bosnian film director Ademir Kenovic's film "The Perfect Circle", a passionate story based in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, was well received by the festival audience.

    The film attempts to capture the reality of what it is like to live as an ordinary citizen amidst a war.

    Filmed in the most devastated neighbourhoods of Sarajevo with intricate scenes of the destruction of homes, the fear of residents running from sniper fire and trying to find water, it illustrates the story of a man separated from his wife and child who takes in two orphaned boys.

    The three, although not related, form a bond in troubled times as they try to survive.

    French photographer Paul Grivas, who documented the making of the film, talked about the difficulties while shooting in December 1995 at the end of the war.

    Filming took 12 weeks instead of the original four because the crew had to move in small, unobtrusive groups in order to avoid sniper fire, and a special team was brought in to search for land mines wherever the crew filmed.

    Grivas said the film crew were euphoric over being given the chance to work again in their homeland, and they attracted local Sarajevans who felt that a film crew in the city made things seem more normal.

    "To see that a film was being made, a fiction film, was like a symbol of the return to normal life," said Grivas.

    "The Perfect Circle", a Bosnian-French production, is Sarajevan born director Ademir Kenovic's fourth film. Grivas said Kenovic did not allow emotions to get in the way of filming, but concentrated on accurately depicting the war.

    Other films in the section included "The Death of Yugoslavia" from British Director Paul Mitchell and "The Year After Dayton" by Austrian Nikolaus Geyrhalter.

    The Salonika film festival runs until November 30th.
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