Thessaloniki Film Festival Journal

Days and nights are full of cinema at Greece's biggest film event running until November 25

Day 1

WHILE the weather played games (sunny, then pouring), the festival started taking shape. Couches were transported, lines formed at the card lines and the computers lit up - with journalists already parked in front of them.

It really sank in that the festival had finally arrived when I spotted - in the Public Relations office - honoured director John Sayles and actor David Strathairn (star of Goodnight and Good Luck) in transit. A little alone in the crowd, both shared a serious-yet-approachable, greying elegance.

Four big, white balloons hung from the ceiling of the Olympion for the festival's opening ceremony. I wondered if they would hatch dancers or acrobats. Instead, the orbs were used as screens with black and white psychedelic images projected onto them. Sitting a row back from director Fatih Akin (the Turkish-German maker of Head On and a return guest), I worried - due to the long quotes by Ingmar Bergman in the ceremony - that our international guests might find us Greeks pretentious.

Well, maybe not more so than Hong Kong's Wong Kar Wai, whose first English-language film My Blueberry Nights was as stiff as I'd been warned. I loved it anyway. It was as much of an indulgence as the melting blueberry pie a la mode it was named after. Strathairn, who appears in the film as a tragic cop, introduced the work, explaining that with it Kar Wai proved "film crosses all borders". He called the film starring Norah Jones, Jude Law and Natalie Portman "a passionate pursuit - after love, I think".

Day 2

Did you know that a young, amateur filmmaker from Patra has made the first Greek fantasy film? Yagos Raftopoulos' rough and zealous Yagonan: The Dark Days of Doom is part of the festival's DigitalWave section. The low-budget film's maker says his "Hollywood-like" film was shot in seven countries.

France-based Greek director Costa-Gavras introduced Eden is West, a film set to go into production in March. The project will be a road movie from Greece to Paris, though the director didn't reveal its migrant hero Elias' origin. "Things are worse for immigrants today," said Gavras. It's the first film he'll shoot in Greece. Z was shot elsewhere, he told the press.

I had to sit on the floor for the next two screenings as they were packed. Mexican film Blue Eyelids is a bleak romance about a woman who wins a vacation for two. She ends up having an awkward romance with a man she invites along. The duo's mundane existence clashes with their glamorous daydreams. Then there was AFR, a mockumentary about the deaths of a rightwing prime minister and an anarchist. With its abundant use of doctored news footage and comments on global poverty and homophobia, I was fooled for the first five minutes into thinking the film was real.

Later, the entire festival tried to squeeze into director Akin's DJ set at a club. Ethnic hits, Madonna and the Dead Kennedys were on his play list.

Day 3

Crete-based painter/animator Angelos Spartalis returns to the festival's DigitalWave section with 'An Apple in Your Head'

Festival time is different from regular time. There is a mad rush every day to see as much as possible until you reach your viewing limit.

The first film I saw today was Foster Child - a moving film by young Filipino director Brillante Mendoza set in Manila. The camera keeps an objective, documentary-like "distance" (no closeups) as it trails a woman living in one of the shanty houses who cares for a two- to three-year-old boy. It seems the film is just about the daily struggles of these poor folk until it gradually emerges that the child is to be handed over to foreign parents for adoption.

From Turkey, Handake Ipekci's film Hidden Faces is about honour killings. A man living in Germany finds his long-lost niece - and rekindles the family initiative to try to kill her for giving birth to a child out of wedlock. Though supported by the festival's own 2005 Balkan Fund Workshop, at times it felt a little one-dimensional and it was hard to empathise with the characters.

Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) offered the big masterclass of the day. Meanwhile, on my panel, another Mexican creator, screenwriter Carlos Contreras, talked about writing the screenplay of Blue Eyelids, a romance about a woman who wins a dream vacation. He writes for his brother Ernesto's projects, noting, "I never work in pictures, but in emotions."

If Greek productions are lean this year, DigitalWave has some life. Crete-based painter/animator Angelos Spartalis returned wwith male/female dialogue An Apple in Your Head on DVD. In an evening DigitalWave screening, a full house laughed along with the high-school anxieties and triumphs in idealistic Zoe's Attitude.

Day 5

Films I saw today:

The Influence - a Spanish competition film by Pedro Aguilera about a woman (a mother of two) dying. She doesn't seem to care about anything but cutting out beautiful images from magazines. It's intentionally static and bleak.

Lola - Another slow-placed but slightly uplifting story about a man obsessed with his neighbour (wonderful Lola Fuentes). Star Michael Abiteboul doesn't talk for the film's first 70 minutes.

Finally, I laughed - a lot - with Continental, A Film without Guns by Quebec director Stephane Lafleur. This multi-character Canadian film was also about loneliness but was extremely quirky and surreal. It focuses on characters ranging from a man trying to raise money for dental work to a young woman who leaves messages on her own answering machine.

The highlight of the day by far was attending actors David Strathairn and Chris Cooper's masterclass in the morning. Good Night and Good Luck Oscar-winner Strathairn spoke of films as dreams that actors must bring to life. He also noted that sometimes, to stay in the mood, he doesn't drop accents when he's off the set. Both lauded special festival guest actor/director John Sayles and talked about the problem of typecasting - and taking on films for the money sometimes. Strathairn said winning the Oscar sent his life on a "bizarre, Fellini-esque dance for a moment". Seabiscuit star Cooper noted that being away from family during shoots was the toughest part of the job.

Being a festival, it's cool to grab a bite with a Bulgarian director here and have a beer with a Canadian director there. It's only midpoint, but we are all in festival oblivion.

Day 6

I only endured the first half of the late-night screening of The Blank Generation, a musical documentary made up of the New York scene at Greenwich club CBGBs. It may be an archival treasure, with images of the Talking Heads and Blondie when they were starting out, but I couldn't handle the out-of-synch, out-of-tune audio quality.

Earlier, at the Pier's cinema museum, I took in an exhibit of honoured director Nikos Nikolaides' last book Mia Stekia Sto Mati Tou Montezouma. Skimpy lingerie, S&M gear and quotes from his films urging the audience to revolt lined the walls. Actor Christos Valavanides, who appeared in several of Nikolaides' films, was among those who read from the book which is about sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, anti-authority.

Earlier still, I watched slow-paced, fly-on-the-wall Malaysian love story Love Conquers All, a love story set primarily in a cheap outdoors market. Poised director Tan Chui Mui, who makes her films with friends in a collective, bemoaned the fact that no matter what film she makes, it's labelled a "woman's film".

In the morning I saw funny Argentine documentary Stars, about a man who turns his slum neighbourhood into a business - providing actors, locations and technical savvy. On the Greek side of things, I saw films about 60-something men having major crises by both Vasilis Vafeas (Women's Conspiracies) and Vasilis Doublis (The Homecoming). Meanwhile, interestingly, directors who met in last year's Greek DigitalWave programme, returned with joint project You Hurt My Heart.

ATHENS NEWS , 23/11/2007, page: A33
Article code: C13262A331