Film Club 3000: A Journal on The History of Film - Issue 003

About Film Club 3000

Letter From the Editor

Kemari Bryant

The Facets of Loneliness in Tsangari’s 2010 Film Attenberg

Jude Michalik

The Greek Queer Wave: On Strella & The Weird Wave as a Queer Movement

Robert Karmi

Unpeeling Apples: How Frail Our Souls Can Be

Garrett Bradshaw

Context-Dependent Love: Love in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos

William Reynolds

Chevalier

Sisyphus Plays Trivial Pursuit

Tanner Benson

History Repeats

An Examination of the Greek Realist film

The Ogre of Athens

Robert Karmi

The Emergence of the Greek Weird Wave Within the Film Festival Circuit

Theodoti Sivridi

UPS

Interrogating Biopolitical Realism: An Interview with Author Dimitris Papanikolaou Kemari Bryant

A Conversation with Argyris Papadimitropoulos: A Leading Voice in Greek Cinema Kemari Bryant

A Close-Up on Yorgos Sakarellos

Harissa Bakllava

Mixology by Cameron Cameron Linly Robinson

Strange Melody: A Lanthimos Tribute

Maddie Conti

Watchlist 3000

Issue 003 | Jan/Feb 2024

ABOUT FILM CLUB 3000

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

KEMARI BRYANT

MANAGING EDITOR

CAMERON LINLY ROBINSON

CONTRIBUTORS

JUDE MICHALIK

ROBERT KARMI

GARRETT BRADSHAW

WILLIAM REYNOLDS

HARISSA BAKLLAVA

TANNER BENSON

THEODOTI SIVRIDI

MADDIE CONTI

COVER ART

WILLIAM HARVEY

ILLUSTRATORS

HARRIS SINGER

ALL VIEWS AND OPINIONS ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECCESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS HELD BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF.

WEBSITE

FILMCLUB3000.COM

INSTAGRAM

@FILMCLUB3000

CONTACT

FILMCLUB3000@GMAIL.COM

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Dear Readers,

It is my great joy that we are finally able to bring you issue 003 of Film Club 3000. This has been a very difficult one to bring together, but has driven home my belief in why we do what we do.

It is impossible to have a true love for film without also recognizing and respecting the essentialness of world cinema, and I am so lucky that we are able to fully delve into the glory of Greek cinema in this issue. I was introduced to Greek cinema through the great director Yorgos Lanthimos, along with a majority of America filmgoers I can only assume. Lanthimos’ films led me to the Greek Weird Wave whose title did the job and left me endlessly interested in how I could find out more about these “werid” films. I curiously discovered that these films are so much more than “weird”, as critics decided to title them, they are bold expressions from ingenious filmmakers who had something to say during rather tumultuous times.

The work on this issue has really led me to think about accesibility. There are so many Greek films that are impossible to find, or take a good amount of work to unearth from the bowels of the internet. One of the most underappreciated aspects of filmmaking is that of the audience... and I don’t just mean when the film is released, but what about 10 or 15 years later? The audience is what keeps a films legacy alive. My one wish is that you read this issue and find one or two new Greek films that you will go and watch. Tell your friend to watch it, and maybe they’ll tell their friend, and so on. We must demand these stories so they stay, and so that more will come.

And there are so many stories.

Enjoy, to 3000 and beyond,

Kemari Bryant | Editor-in-Chief

Interrogating Biopolitical Realism:

An Interview with Author Dimitris Papanikolaou

BY KEMARI BRYANT

What is biopolitical realism? It is a term created by author Dimitris Papanikolaou to describe the wave of Greek cinema released in the late aughts, perhaps a more thought through term than the “Greek Weird Wave” which was quickly coined by nonGreek journalists and stuck as the official name to describe this influential movement in world cinema. Steve Rose of London’s The Guardian can be recognized as popularizing the phrase, and The New York Times’ John Anderson went further with pushing it forward as the term-to-goby in his 2013 article highlighting Greek cinema. However, it could be argued that out of all, Dimtris Papanikolaou would know best. Papanikolaou’s book “Greek Weird Wave: A Cinema of Biopolitics’’ is one of only two books available on this period of Greek film, and his decision to look at cinema from a biopolitical perspective allows access to a whole new world of understanding these films.

I sat down with Papanikolaou on a video call, where he talked with me from Paris about this term, “I jumped on a chance to encounter this obnoxious term ‘weird wave’.” He noted how colonial the very idea of the term was – Greek filmmakers attempting to share their art, to allow others a look at their realities and they were met with having their work called weird. Papanikolaou didn’t find that this was such a huge problem, though. “I thought, okay we’ll play with that. I’ve wanted a term to showcase what I believe was a biopolitical reality, and the very strange biopolitical realism that all of these films were managing.”

A CINEMA OF BIOPOLITICS

Everything started with a book on the Greek family.

Papanikolaou had decided to venture out and create a book based around the representation of the Greek family in cinema. During his research he realized that the more recent films were not about the supportive network of kinship that is normally perceived to be the Greek family, but explored families that were violent, abusive, and oppressive to the point of explosion. Slowly all of the content that surrounded him – smaller films, theatre, performance art – they all returned to this idea of an explosive Greek family. Then the Crisis hit.

“My generation lived through what was called the Greek Crisis. Around 2008-2009 it seemed that everything in Greece broke loose. First with social strife: in 2008, following the killing of teenager Grigoropoulos by a policeman, you had huge mass demonstrations all over the country. They seemed to be about a malfunctioning society, and not only about police brutality. And then, very shortly [as a result of the global financial crisis] you have every single side of the economy falling apart. So, very early on, we were aware that something huge was happening, something historical was happening in our country.” The Greek Crisis, referred to henceforth as simply the Crisis, began to bring international attention to the country, but not necessarily positive attention. However, at the same time, Greek’s cinema also began to be noticed. “It was at that time that some films with families in tatters started becoming more and more acknowledged both nationally and internationally. It’s the Dogtooth moment.”

The Dogtooth moment Dogtooth, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, is the brutal display of a husband and wife couple who keep their children ignorant to the world outside of their home even as adults. “I remember seeing it in the Winter of 2009 and I remember thinking this is a very awkward film. And then it grew on us that it was something more than that.” It grew indeed, going on to win the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival in 2009, an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and love from critics interna-

tionally. Did it take a financial crisis to turn international audiences toward the cinema of Greece? Still, at the core of it all was family. “So the family started it all, and suddenly the films came. It was as if I had made the frame in my mind and every single film I was watching was actually adding to it.”

Papanikolaou had been thinking about these sub-themes in Greek cinema: violence, intergenerational gaps, family (as) archive, (queer) kinship, oppression. Just as he was forming thoughts on these themes it was as if the Greek Weird Wave was being formed in real time. The book is a product of long gestation of many years of work, including his own work as a social activist – in particular, queer activism. As he was putting together the book and crystalizing his ideas around biopolitics, in September 2018, a trans-queer activist and acquaintance, Zak Kostopoulos/ Zackie Oh, was killed in broad daylight in Athens – an act of everyday violence and of police brutality captured on camera by passersby. Papanikolaou found himself mobilized, along with many other Greek citizens, to underline the deeper social issues that once again this brutal killing was foregrounding. Indeed, the last chapter of “A Cinema of Biopolitics”, is dedicated to the killing of Zak Kostopoulos.

The 2011 film Wasted Youth (directed by Argyris Papadimitropoulos and Jan Vogel) mirrors the real life murder of 15-year old Greek student Alexander Grigoropoulos, an event that spurred another moment of social unrest in the form of riots that took place for a month, and were described in the newspaper “Kathimerini” as “the worst Greek has seen since the restoration of democracy in 1974.” So Greece was in the midst of terrible financial straits and crippling social conflict, but the films that began to gain traction were in the end the ones that took a more allegorical integration of political issues.

Papanikolaou describes a fission in Greek film: there were the films that were in direct response to specific events or the general social issues like Wasted Youth, or The Boy Eating the Bird’s Food, which follows a young man who is struggling and must steal bird food to survive,

or even Yorgos Zois’ Casus Belli, which also explores food insecurity in Greece. “The films that became much more successful abroad, [however], were films that were working at a much more allegorical level.” These were the films of Lanthimos, like Dogtooth and Alps, or Athina Rachel Tsangari, who directed Attenberg. Papanikolaou wanted to discover how he could push these more allegorical films to see how they also related to reality.

There was a challenge in putting together such different films as the extreme violence in Alexandros Avranas’ Miss Violence, the allegorical films of Lanthimos, films that fell in the middle from Syllas Tzoumerkas, the eloquent film study of Tsangari, and the social realism of Papadimitropoulos – a much more diverse collection of films than the simple phrase “weird” could seemingly contain. “Lets play with the term weird, and start foregrounding its obvious limitations — [because, you see], you want “The Top 20 Greek Weird Wave films” to be available on [an international] platform, in order to be able to [persuade producers to fund] your next film about a racist killing in Central Athens.”

This is where the term “biopolitical realism” comes from. “I wanted to create [a term] that would at the same time include the allegorical films of Lanthimos and of his close colleague Tsangari, and, say, the queer films of Panos H. Koutras, who works with issues of queer identity, migration, citizenship and racism, and I wanted to bring them together.” In the midst of all of this uncertainty and conflict, the cinema of Greece somehow managed to craft a cultural exploration larger than it all. Inside of all of its multiplicity there was a core similarity – not “weirdness”, which today seems like a gross oversimplification, but a biopolitical reality and the efforts to make a noise within it. Biopolitical realism as the link between all these films gives autonomy to these filmmakers as artists who were allowed to create art within their situation, but not be defined by it.

A CINEMA OF DISLOCATION

While the beginning of the Weird Wave can often be attributed to both Tsangari and Lanthimos’ international success, Papanikolaou posits that the Weird Wave had been bubbling up in the background for years. “This is a generation that, before the Crisis, was working on a number of projects — including the 2004 Olympics — as well as other very commercial projects. Lanthimos was doing advertising and comedies. At the same time a larger group of people had started preparing what you saw as the Weird Wave, preparing the moment of explosion.” Angeliki Papoulia is an actress and longtime collaborator of Lanthimos, playing Older Daughter in his film Dogtooth. “[Papoulia] has become the darling of European cinema at the moment. There are film festivals in Europe that do a Papoulia special,” Papanikolaou told me. “Before that, though, she was in a the-

TOP: MARY TSONI AND ANGELIKI PAPOULIA IN DOGTOOTH. COURTESY OF SHOTDECK.

BOTTOM: WASTED YOUTH STARRING HARIS MARKOU. COURTESY OF MUBI.

atre group with [her co-protagonist in Dogtooth] Christos Passalis called blitz, a theatre group that actually specialized in talking about identity, dislocation, the feeling of not belonging, of being marginalized, on various levels including gender and national identity, the fear of fascism rising, the fear of the fortress Europe.”

The blitz theatre group was founded in 2004, and Papoulia acted, co-directed, and co-wrote all of the group’s performances in Greece and across Europe. The group’s website states “...everything is under doubt, there is nothing to be taken for granted, neither in theatre nor in life.”

Ariane Labed, the star of Attenberg and who would later marry Lanthimos, is another good example. She was born to French parents and came to Greece at a young age. In college she met Greek director Argyro Chioti and, in 2005, together they co-founded the theatre group VASISTAS – a physical theatre all about dislocation. A big part of Labed’s work around dislocation was her heavy-accented Greek. Fast forward to 2010’s Attenberg, with Labed at its center and in a film, arguably, completely being about dislocation and one’s inability to connect with others. Then there is Michelle Valley, the Mother in Dogtooth. “ [Valley] is a Swiss actress who came to Greece in the 80s and started playing in Greek art cinema without knowing the language.” He goes on to explain that she always had this dislocation, and in, say, films like Morning Patrol (1987) and Singapore Sling (1990), a deadpan delivery that may remind one of what actors later do in many a Lanthimos film.

I decided to bring up a recurring theme that I often found in Greek Weird Wave films: loneliness. He was quick to challenge this, “I think the dominant theme is dislocation rather than loneliness”. Dislocation, a term I had never really thought about but that made so much sense when looking back at this collection of films. He would go on to explain, “In South Europe, we realize more and more how much a part of the Global South we are. South Europe has a longstanding reason why we feel dislocated. In Greece you’re supposed to be thinking of yourself as European, but you’re not enough. You’re in the East, but are supposed to be thinking of yourself as belonging to the West. You’re supposed to be working with new Neo-liberal models of production and social control, but then again you don’t have the economy for that.

We tend to be highly educated because we have free education, but then again we’re being told not to believe in that education because it’s not as good as it is elsewhere. “

Dislocation rather than loneliness, it made so much sense. Such a thin line between the two words but a world of meaning that exists between them both. Dislocation speaks to more of a disturbance or a change, and is, even if ever so slightly, different than what loneliness is. He went on to joke, “I wouldn’t say that I see more lonely people in Greece than elsewhere. In a Greek restaurant everyone talks to you — they will not let you be alone. That’s perhaps the most unrealistic thing you see in recent Greek films: that you see people eating alone.” This idea of dislocation is something you can see very clearly in Attenberg, in Papadimitropoulos’ Suntan, and in Lanthimos’ Alps, among many other Greek films historically.

“Loneliness is just the tip of the iceberg”, he says. It is just the tip, indeed, but he doesn’t completely downplay Greek cinema’s connection to the feeling. “Rather than loneliness, I would say that what characterizes recent Greek cinema is emptiness. Greek cinema is a cinema of empty spaces – to extreme degrees.” Suntan begins with a Doctor arriving on the Greek island of Antiparos in its off season, certainly lonely but more attention is drawn to his being thrown into a new and empty place – a summer-paradise island during a time when no one occupies it. “It’s not about them being lonely, it’s about the street being empty.” He goes on to bring up The Truman Show, the 1998 film about a young man who has to live in a TV studio 24/7, thinking that this is the only possible world. “Was [this film] about loneliness or dislocation? That kind of constructed emptiness – fullness and emptiness.”

A CINEMA OF HISTORY

In 2021, in the midst of the pandemic and lockdowns, Greece celebrated its 200th year of independence. Suddenly, there was an international move to examine the country’s political and social history. Along with this, came the need to review Greek cinematic history; Papanikolaou became part of a team that curated a special festival, and published a book, “Motherland, I See You: The Twentieth Century of Greek Cinema”. It was an effort to showcase the fact that Greek filmmakers had been making a point to look back at Greek film history for quite a while. While the Weird Wave was finding its footing, the Greek film industry was simultaneously being shaped by a film movement called FOG – a double entendre meaning Filmmakers of Greece and also representative of the filmmakers themselves trying to find their way through their current fog. FOG would

put together screenings and after-screening parties inspired by films that had been forgotten to time, an effort to actively reshape their own understanding of their national cinema. Suddenly, a cinema tradition that had been forgotten was being revitalized.

“Film canons are the international canons. It’s difficult to have a national canon thriving and if there exists one, it is often a popular cinema tradition [...] Avant-garde film, arthouse film does not a very strong national canon make.” He points out some filmmakers that had been successfully added to the international canon, like Theo Angelopoulos whose film Eternity and a Day won the Palme D’or at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, or classic realist films like Nikos Koundouros’ The Ogre of Athens. What began to emerge around 2010 however, was an interest in curating Greek film history as a contemporary platform of inspiration and expression. Often many actors known for starring in Weird Wave films would be presenting films from the past. Papanikolaou recalls a time where Angeliki Pa-

poulia spoke beautifully at a screening of the 1956 film A Girl in Black, by another realist Michael Cacoyannis. In this moment of historical film appreciation the other shoe dropped when filmmakers began to realize that they couldn’t find some of these films. Some went from door to door, actively searching for historic Greek films that had been lost or damaged. He describes the work they were doing as a sort of “genealogical exercise”.

Papanikolaou explains that during this period a filmmaker, Niko Papatakis, began to be re-discovered. “He did a film just before the great dictatorship of ‘67 called Shepherds of Disorder, which I remember watching for the first time again in the 10s in a screening. I remember thinking, ‘Lanthimos is there already [in 67]’.” He goes on to describe Papatakis’ film, how it includes characters speaking in stilted or monotone dialogue, how violence is a leading factor, and how it pushes against the Greek family. “It shows that the Greek family is a center of exploitation or abuse within the system.”

This line of thought led into our next point of conversation: accessibility, especially as it pertains internationally. “Accessibility is the issue,” he declares. So many great films that are impossible to access outside of Greece, or that are similarly lost to international audiences. He goes on, “We subtitle Greek films, we digitize Greek films all the time even to send as screeners to festivals, and then we forget about this and there’s no way to watch.” There is initial access but oftentimes, as time goes on, films become only accessible to those rare film viewers who are willing to go out and search endlessly for them. This is where the importance in archiving world cinema comes in. “We forget [how difficult it is] to find our own cinema traditions, and it has to be curating. It has to be getting together with people. It has to be fighting. It has to be creating interesting communities.” All types of communities – communities of watching, communities of cin-archiving, communities who demand their audiovisual history and are ready to fight for it, as Papanikolaou puts it.

“Sometimes in film studies we forget that history, writing, film criticism, film viewing, and film archiving are all [existing] together.”

“We forget [how difficult it is] to find our own cinema traditions, and it has to be curating. It has to be getting together with people. It has to be fighting. It has to be creating interesting communities.”

A STILL FROM THE SHEPHERDS OF DISORDER (1967) DIRECTED BY NIKO PAPATAKIS. FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER, 2018.

A CINEMA OF THE FUTURE

What happens in the wake of a monumental national film movement in a small country like Greece? Of course more films were created. Yorgos Lanthimos is now Greece’s most known filmmaker, an internationally received auteur who weaves through different genres and continuously pushes his skill as a filmmaker. Athina Rachel Tsangari continues to work internationally as a director and producer, in both film and television, and even produced Richard Linklater’s 2013 film Before Sunrise which shot in Greece. She has a new film that will be released in 2024. Christos Nikou, who Papanikolaou describes as a “disciple to Lanthimos”, has gained international attention as a director of Apple TV+’s Fingernails Inside, another 2023 film starring Willem Dafoe, is directed by Vasilis Katsoupis, a filmmaker who he points out is from the same generation that the Weird Wave stemmed from.

For better or worse, international attention has been captured due to the title “Greek Weird Wave”. However, Papanikolaou looks towards the future.

He says he notices a new development in cinema coming from Greek filmmakers, films that build upon the practice of “weird” but tackle social issues that are realistic in a very classic way. These films all attack specific issues to do with work, education, exploitation, racism, and gender violence in ways that do not let the form become documentary. “In order to do biopolitical realism, as Truman in The Truman Show knew very well, you have to be both documentarist and awkward. To somehow dislocate that camera that follows you around in the film, that biopolitical ordering that has you,” he explains. The aspects that make these latter films feel like a documentary are there co-existing with the weird. “I see all sorts of interesting things happening there about the body, about showing Neo-liberal politics. But at the same time, with all the formalist

background that they have with the weird wave, getting the viewer in to feel pain. To feel dislocation. In a couple of recent Greek films I was even surprised to see the extent to which they even employed a certain type of magical realism — without losing their documentality.”

He references a Greek-American, Araceli Lemos’ film Holy Emy (2021), which blends mysticism with the very raw reality that exploited migrants have to face in Greece. Something similar is what Evangelia Kranioti does in her medium-length Obscuro Barroco (2018). In fact, every filmmaker Papanikolaou poses as being at the forefront of this new look into Greek filmmaking is a woman, which is of note as Tsangari is really one of the very few leading female figures in the Greek Weird Wave. He highlights Konstantina Kotzamani, who directs a 2019 film Electric Swan, and a film by Sofia Exarchou in 2023, Animal – which he describes as a feminist answer to Suntan. Exarchou has roots in the Weird Wave, having served as 1st AD on Wasted Youth and Koutras’ Strella: A Woman’s Way. “[These directors] have a tendency to do more and more social realism with the weird [in a way that] actually takes my vote.”

Perhaps we are moving into a new era of Greek cinema, only time will tell. What is clear, more than anything, is that this movement in cinema is one that will remain firmly stamped in the annals of film history. Dimitris Papanikolaou’s book exists forever as a great record, and his knowledge is treasured as a historian and expert on Greek cinema. As we neared the end of our time he left me with something, as earnest as possible, that encapsulates the Weird Wave and mirrors my hopes for the future of the Greek film industry, “It’s very nice that Lanthimos has happened, that he exists. He is just the tip of an iceberg, though.” Papanikolaou hopes that people will keep taking a dive. •

STILLS FROM ANIMAL DIRECTED BY SOFIA EXARCHOU, HOLY EMY DIRECTED BY ARACELI LEMOS, AND ELECTRIC SWAN DIRECTED BY KONSTANTINA KOTZAMANI.

BY JUDE MICHALIK

In the land of industrial landscapes layered atop almost mythically imposing nature, a web of peculiar relationships entangles the protagonist of Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg. Marina (Ariane Labed) embodies a spine-reaching feeling of inadequacy, possible only through the fever dream absurd of her demeanour. Love, intimacy, and friendship all taste of the unshakeable feeling of alienation explored throughout the film, enveloped by language and tapping into the uncomplex ways of animals.

The first image welcoming our eyes is a prolonged shot of a deteriorating white wall. The viewer’s sight is left to wander, free to notice various cracks revealing slightly off-white cement, a gentle reminder of the passage of time. Through this raw nakedness of exposed flaws, even though inanimate and cold, the wall begins to resemble something intimate.

In such a way, the themes of Attenberg begin to blossom, soon to reveal a rich range of reflections upon the wrestling of alienation with attempts at intimacy, the desire to return to primal ways of being, and the heartbreaking conclusion that we can no longer do so.

The core thread of the story, and perhaps its most interesting component, is a child-like friendship between Marina and Bella (Evangelia Randou), two women in their twenties.

An uncannily girlish lesson on kissing marks our introduction to these two; with determined faces the women clash their mouths awkwardly together, moving in a way stripped of any

semblance of intimacy or eroticism. As their tongues wrestle in the air, we begin squirming in our seats with the discomfort of witnessing an erotic gesture deconstructed, performed as if Bella had read about it on paper the way thirteen year old girls do. Cold absurdity quickly washes over the scene, as the ritualistic fight of dry tongues transforms into a fight between cats: Marina and Bella get down to the ground and hiss at each other.

We watch, fascinated, as the women go from a deconstructed imitation of an intimate gesture, devoid of any feelings it usually signifies, to the raw physicality of expression the animal existence offers. These tides of interactions, scaffoldings of societal rituals evolving into freeing, boundaryless celebrations of the primal, are present throughout the entire film; often the two friends will completely shatter the course of a conversation, not even slightly altering its tone - as an example serves one conversation in a diner:

“How’s Spyros?”

“You mean Mister Spyros. It annoys me when you become so familiar.” Pause. “Bella, you little slut.”

“Do you want more bread?”

The discussion around societal norms and propriety of relations is abruptly followed by the simplest question of all, “Do you want more bread?”

We begin to notice that Marina and Bella behave the way children do, half-entangled in societal constructs, and half-wild, unadapted,

uninitiated. They play the guitar to each other and spit out of windows, embodying half-remembered friendships of our past.

In this peculiar space of being they’re tied to each other, quietly acknowledging their own isolation, holding hands and looking at others with curious disregard. They inhabit frames swallowed by empty spaces and cold colour palettes, or stand visually separated from crowds. A scene highlighting this state of being beautifully is an evening tennis match between Marina and Bella. They play, enlightened by the tennis court, while in the foreground, in the shadows, sit grouped people their age. “Tous les garçons et les filles” softly envelopes our ears, reflecting in French on the melancholy sadness of being excluded from love. The foreignness of French in the Greek setting adds to the feeling of inadequacy, as if putting focus on the alienating nature of language. The way Marina and Bella speak is not insignificant either, throughout their conversations words are experimented with and stretched, repeated and swallowed.

The graceful title Attenberg is itself a mispronunciation of the foreign to the characters surname Attenborough. Misplaced in Bella’s mouth, the word becomes something in-between, in between Greek and English. Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries seem a passion of Marina’s, she watches as Attenborough gazes into the eyes of gorillas, transfixed by their quiet understanding. Something poetic lurks in this fascination with animals, a primal longing for a different existence, perhaps, more communal, more seamlessly carnal. In a beautiful scene, Marina and her father, Spyros, sit on bed and play what seems to be a word game. Rhyming words spill out of their mouths with no regard for the meaning, making us detached from the language itself and focused on the connection shared in the idle moment. Soon their words, spat out chaotically and hastily, transform into sounds of animals, and we watch on as Marina and Spyros begin a wild dance of various species, jumping and hurling around the bed giving into the most primal of movements. The hypnotic dance seems to express more than their words ever could, rejecting the stifling constructs passed onto them by language, giving them a chance to dream about a simpler life for a blissful moment. Loneli-

...throughout their conversations words are experimented with and stretched, repeated and swallowed.

ness seems to awaken deep-rooted longings in Marina and those she interacts with, and while their animalistic antics seem absurd to the viewer at first, in the universe of these characters they serve a deep purpose - they constitute a radical response to the overpowering ambience of heart rate monitors, empty streets, and modern ruins.

Animals and words can be found linked together in her affair with an out-of-town engineer played by Yorgos Lanthimos, a prominent Greek director. Their intimate encounters are led by Marina’s misled expectations as to what constitutes sex. Early on in the film we learn of her repulsion towards it, as opposed to Bella she doesn’t seek it out, even though she does display a certain curiosity towards sexuality. Repulsion towards sex in this context seems particularly significant if we consider the erotic one of the most primal impulses in man – the purely instinctive dance of flesh fueled by the heat of the moment, where the intellectual doesn’t dare to interfere.

When something sparks between Marina and the engineer she drives around town for work, we see her curiosity spike. Their first kiss naturally carries traces of Bella’s teachings on making out, which the engineer gently corrects. Their interactions seem to lead to something sincere, perhaps something that will break Marina out of her inadequate and lost state. However, their sex doesn’t come easily. Her body awkwardly confronted with the idea of spontaneous physicality seems to stagger. She’s struggling to cease talking, leaving no space for the heat of what’s indescribable and rendering their sex the exact opposite of

animalistic. Instead of bodies linked by the heat of an ancient calling, Marina and the engineer lay motionless, entangled in language. In a way, their time together echoes a scene taking place in a swimming pool’s changing room – Marina, sitting on a bench surrounded by a sea of women, seems curiously disconnected from the surrounding her physicality. Even though her body is the same as theirs, she doesn’t seem to be able to live through it the same way. However, with time their encounters take on a different shape, and, as viewers, we see Marina evolve (or, equivalently, grow up.)

The echoes of alienated girlhood and a quietly inadequate life can be heard in the aesthetic of the film as well. The lives of the characters unwrap amidst sharp lights of hospital waiting rooms, changing rooms, parking lots, diners, and LED-lit bedrooms, paired with the sea, and the hauntingly peaceful belts of mountains tingling the sky. We follow Marina in cars and on scooters, travelling along unfinished roads and white buildings.

The landscape exudes a quiet melancholy, and the architecture of this town finds its voice through Marina’s father. Spyros, close to death, and eventually gone, seems to possess the deepest understanding of the landscape of loneliness. A retired architect and widower here and there provides us with monologues about modern Greek society, and we’re never entirely sure whether his daughter understands them the same way.

“We built an industrial colony on top of sheep pens, and thought we were making a revolution” he says, gazing towards the tangle of buildings, ruins, scaffoldings and trees.

His voice is tinted by resignation with a cheerful note, and though he can’t accept the modern fate of Greece, he can’t go back to the raw force of nature, either: in one of their final conversations, he confesses to Marina that his wish to be cremated after death stems from the fear of being devoured by worms – the ultimate return to Earth he seems unable to embark on. Separated from his culture, heartbroken, and without connections to people his age, (he tells his daughter, “Sometimes I forget you’re not my buddy” in his endearingly sarcastic-yet-truthful way) he “denounces the

20th century.”

In the darkness of the hospital room Marina shares her final goodbye dance to Spyros’s favourite song “Be Bop Kid,” another foreign song delightfully detached from their life, almost as if from another planet.

“Are you ready to be an astronaut?” Asks Spyros,

“Yes.” Answers Marina.

The planet of grief, known to all animals. Spyros urges his daughter to cremate him and scatter his ashes around the sea, a way for him to return to nature on his own terms.

The sincerely heartbreaking scene of Marina scattering her father’s ashes into the sea ties the film’s ponderings tightly. With Bella by her side, she bravely sails to fulfil her father’s last wish. However bizarre and isolated their relationship is, at the end of the day they find support in each other. Every tennis game needs two players, after all. Marina holds out the urn, and the deep blue hue of the water swallows her father’s remains.

Funerals are a ritual unabandoned by highly developed societies. Something we have in common with wild animals, one of the souvenirs of ancient times we will carry around for eternity. Everyone knows death - the ultimate loneliness.

The women are wearing yellow rain jackets, standing out from the cool tones of the sky merging with the sea. The cold wind messes with their hair, and there’s something transcendental about this view. A daughter’s parting with her father, a friend by her side, the forces of nature shaking their boat and making the scene feel particularly physical. The finality of death strikes us unexpectedly, it ties knots in our stomachs.

Back on land, they walk through heaps of clay and trucks, their yellow jackets standing out from the red just as they did against the blue – their place is not in nature, nor in the industrial society. We’re left wondering; has the journey of grief and erotic explorations helped Marina develop a better understanding of herself? Can she build intimacy according to her own needs, in this unravelling new century? The two friends leave our sight, and the only answers we can get from the last moments are trucks driving around the construction site.

•

The Greek Queer Wave:

On Strella & The Weird Wave as a Queer Movement

BY ROBERT KARMI

Greek Weird Wave as a loosely connected movement remains defined in part by the sensibilities of Yorgos Lanthimos and his most frequent collaborators, as evidenced by the flag ship titles of the movement are Dogtooth (2009) and Attenberg (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2010). However, scholars including Dimitris Papanikolaou argue the movement is far less cohesive in terms of formal style than what is commonly believed. Considering how often formalist analysis of cinema, especially marginalized cinema, abstains from generalized statements to avoid oversimplifying these films or, worse still, stereotyping them via a haphazardly loose connection. They argue the commonalities most prevalent in a connected cinema are more often thematic and ideological content rather than formalism. As such, one element which has consistently been noted about Greek Weird Wave is its classification as a “queer” movement, both classically and contemporarily.

As argued by Marios Psaras, the Greek Weird Wave frequently deconstructs, or “queers,” representations of narrative elements within Greek life and beyond, playing them up in such a way one could consider as something like dry camp.

Consider how often the movement demonstrates an interest in deconstructing familial relations through the lens of authoritarianism and surrealism, arguably the motifs which best exemplified initial interest in the movement. Further, there is also queerness in the subject matter, with non-heterosexual identities manifesting throughout these films, which further others them from similar international cinematic movements.

From these contexts, and the extended history of the movement wherein many pioneering figures of the movement started as early as in the nineties, we must consider the work of Panos H. Koutras. With his 1999 debut, The Attack of the Giant Moussaka, Koutras displayed a post-modernism in his work which would make him a central figure within the Greek Weird Wave. A gay director who would also double as an activist, Koutras is likewise described as a Greek Pedro Almodóvar, a campy cineaste with a deeply self-reflexive voice. His film made a decade later, playing in theaters at the same time as Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, Strella, further cements his legacy as one of Greek cinema’s prominent queer satirists.

Strella is a dense film to engage with, espe-

cially its myriad narrative and themes. The film is partly a social-realist drama about a man, Yorgos (Yannis Kokiasmenos), fresh out of prison from a multi-decade stay and looking for his son in post-economic collapse Greece. He stays in a hotel where he meets the titular Strella (Mina Orfanu), a trans sex worker with a budding sexual and romantic relationship occurring between the two as he searches for his son, even returning to his old village in search of closure and answers. It is also an empathetic portrayal of queer Greek life which has created a community and found family amongst themselves. Most notoriously, Strella is primarily seen as work wherein Yorgos discovers Strella is his missing child and the ramifications therein. Said twist reshapes the film radically, further investigating the patriarch as the central figure in Greek society, as well as overtly drawing comparisons to national mythology.

As an aesthetic object, the film utilizes handheld camera 16 mm cinematography reminiscent of cinema verité instead of the deliberately composed and uncanny cinematography which Lanthimos and his collaborators are most famous for. Whereas those works intend their worlds to feel alien and unfamiliar, Strella provides a grounded world based on the material reality of Greece, then further constructs a microcosmos to explore, namely the queer scene in Athens. To said end, there is an

Strella provides a grounded world based on the material reality of Greece, then further constructs a microcosmos to explore, namely the queer scene in Athens.

interesting color contrast between Athens and the village where Yorgos and Strella spent their past lives, the village is detailed in naturalistic cool whereas Athens is brightly warm, even occasionally technicolor in certain segments. Of note is the diegetic use of rainbow lanterns Yorgos and Strella fix together in an incredibly tender and romantic moment, their naked bodies embracing as the colors transform their space into something otherworldly. Further, a grounded aesthetic helps make the melodrama seem more convincing than it otherwise might be.

The central performances from Kokiasmenos and Orfanou are incredible in a film filled with strong performances, bringing well-observed pathos and humanity to their performances they are asked to go to some intense places, especially as their dynamic continually shifts throughout the film. Both are phenomenal, but Orfanou is spellbinding as the titular character, carrying herself the best she can with her various traumas and desire for love with dignity and grace. She, and presumably many other performers of the movie, are trans performers playing trans characters, which adds an important layer of self-representation to the film, especially since Koutras, further solidifies his reputation as a Greek Almodóvar, frequently depicts transness in his work.

Strella, and the near totality of Koutras’ work, exists within the larger context of queerness in Greek cinema, frequently in an oppositional capacity. Before the emergence of contemporary queer Greek cinema, there was a period of intense cinematic homophobia wherein queer characters were largely demonized and made to suffer to legitimize a heteronormative status quo. Even progressive directors fell into the trap of representing their queer subjects as inhuman. That was the norm for a while until the breakout film incepting the contemporary queer Greek cinema Angelos (George Katakouzinos, 1982) was released.

Angelos displayed queer individuals as human beings like any other, yet also treated the central character’s crossdressing body at times like an object, both of desire and repulsion. The film is attempting to be sympathetic, yet because it exists within a paradoxical state of humanization and fetishizition, it cannot help but reinforce homophobic attitudes towards

the larger culture. The film continues to have a contentious legacy, with some wanting to praise it as a progressive object and counter-narrative for its era, others more concerned with how it reinforces those same attitudes it attempts to deconstruct. A similar discourse befell Strella, thus ensuring the more things change the more they stay the same.

Strella likewise depicts the life of a trans sex worker, from an empathic and humanistic place, frequently emphasizing their humanity and subjectivity as much as possible. It is, like other Greek Weird Wave films, a confrontation with the patriarch as an allegory for national identity and body politic, here represented by Yorgos, a man who was so absent a father Strella doesn’t consider their carnal relations incest (they also make the argument they have changed so much incrementally, Ship of Theseus style, furthering their point). The film challenges patriarchy further by creating trans matriarchs for Strella to seek guidance from, disrupting and challenging national values even more.

However, Strella likewise seeks out fatherly men as lovers due to her attraction to the patriarchal archetype, which further puts her in the line of fire with her father. The reunification of them in the film’s conclusion, in part a found family of other queer/ formerly incarcerated civilians, has been read as a return of the patriarch as a leader figure, thus reaffirming their importance and reaffirming national identity. However, as a story loosely adapting Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”, the film reaffirms its deconstructionist, anti-authoritarian identity. There is a moment in the film wherein one of Strella’s trans grand matriarchs mentions Sophocles’ name as one of the elder sisters who described the taboo of incest. Said moment of self-reflexivity acts as not only a lamp shading of the story being told but also explicitly makes us question how the film inverts and deconstructs the Oedipal myth.

Instead of a story of nobility, it is about the impoverished preyed upon by the wealthy. Instead of a man searching for a king’s killer, it is a man searching for his son. Instead of incest happening without either party knowing by accident, the incest is deliberate, and one party knows who the other is. The ending fails to conclude in tragedy with one dead and the

other divinely punished, but happy, reconciled, and allegedly together again. Here, Koutras creates a distinctly queer story, challenging our perceptions of familial bonds to their breaking point, ending on a note of human connection and forgiveness/reconciliation over tragedy, making for a thoroughly weird interpretation of a classic Greek play.

There is a utopian quality to the ending, wherein the harshness of the homo/transphobic world outside is kept at bay as a found family creates their own happiness. Here we see the final deconstruction play out, as Koutras makes a frequently harsh film end on such a tender note, wherein the cast has survived scathed but alive, transformed by the ordeal for the better. Too often stories about marginalization and queerness end in tragedy, with phobic violence winning out in the end, of life senselessly lost, and queer people made to feel expendable and destined for destruction. Here though, despite occasional emotional violence, we see a vision wherein the status quo challenged and changed for the better, where reconciliation and forgiveness are possible, and a created family emerges to represent a microcosm of a healthier, more inclusive society moving forward. It feels appropriate to point out Poor Things, Lanthimos’ latest English language work, concludes with a similar insight.

Strella is a singular work, strange even in the context of a national cinematic movement defined by peculiarity. It is a pivotal work in terms of representation of queerness and queering familiar spaces and ideologies and remains an incredibly progressive work fifteen years later. Further, it offers a vision of a world in which forgiveness and redemption are possible, wherein unconventional familial structures can emerge and thrive, and human connection is the great equalizer and radicalizer. Perhaps most importantly, it offers a much-needed other perspective in which to view contemporary Greek cinema. •

BY GARRETT BRADSHAW

One of my favorite scenes in Apples is our nameless protagonist struggling to open a door. This is a film that wastes no time, using quick establishing shots and cuts, short sentences of dialogue, and the like to masterful effect. And yet, this difficulty with the door lasts just over one minute, which, compared to the sparsity of time afforded to everything else, seems like an eternity. Nevertheless, I was transfixed, watching intently as he awkwardly tried again and again to fit his arm through the bars on the small window fixed into the door. He takes his arm out, adjusts his sleeve, goes back in. He changes position, the handheld camera following his expressionless, yet determined face. Finally, the bolt clicks open and he walks in, closing the door to his old apartment behind him. Now, I can guess what you’re thinking: why? Why in a movie that has such understated, yet very real beauty and ache, is an unsteady, even uncomfortable, minute of a man trying to break into his own apartment among the highlights? It’s what’s behind this door. It’s what the movie has been getting at for the entire runtime. Namely, our human urge to stray away from facing our past, highlighting the fragility of our souls and the lengths we go to protect them. And, then, what happens when that resolve is broken, how we can heal by letting ourselves feel everything. How is this culmination found in just opening a door? Well, let’s peel back Christos Nikou’s Apples, shall we?

If you’ve never seen it, I’ll bring you up to speed: We open in Athens, where a strange pandemic has caused the unfortunate people who contract it to lose their memory, from what they were just doing, down to their name and personalities. We are told in the opening lines that there is a new program for those who have been afflicted and not recovered by their families (either they have none or they, too, have forgotten) to start a new life called New Identity. They are given assignments everyday that are designed to help bring some memories back or, at the very least, help create a base for the new self that the patients are forming. The patients are required to record these using

Polaroid cameras and create a scrapbook to show evidence that they are doing the work. These tasks range from riding a bike (try doing a wheelie) to having a one night stand at a bar to crashing a car into a tree. Seems… strange, right? But we are lured in by this comforting weirdness, this quiet, awkward, protagonist (who we’ll call Aris from here on out, after the actor who portrays him), and, while our guard is down, Nikou slips past our defenses and cuts us deeply. His tools to do so are seemingly minimalist and non-threatening. His lighting and colors are gray, a little foggy, until they’re not. Aris is going through motions, trudging through the oddity of the tasks he’s given, until, all of a sudden, he isn’t. The cinematography is utilitarian, right up to the point where it surprises you. These are akin to those moments of bliss that we have when we finally remember that word on the tip of our tongue, or the name of that guy you definitely remember meeting at that party a few weeks back.

Seemingly, the most surface level of these tools the film uses are the purposely subdued camerawork, lighting, and script. The camera is often handheld, a commonly used trick to get an audience more in touch with the human elements of films, rather than a perfectly mounted, unobtrusive camera. Certainly the most arresting aspect of the camera is the aspect ratio: 4:3 portrait is used to conjure a resemblance to Polaroid cameras, which evokes nostalgia and callbacks to the less advanced technology of the Athens that Apples takes place in (the instructions for the New Identity program are given on cassette tapes that are dropped off at the patient’s apartment, all the cars are older models, that sort of thing). Additionally, Nikou believes “it’s perfect if you want to capture tender emotions and move the audience. It gave us the chance to concentrate more on human beings than on the environment.” In opposition to the warmth and focus that the aspect provides are the cuts. As mentioned, this is not a film to waste your time. It usually lingers for exactly the amount of time it deems absolutely necessary and then it cuts away, moving on to the next shot or scene. The script pairs with

this clipping pace, not languishing on any intricate, lengthy monologues or even the characters voicing their frustrations, doubts, fears, or anything of the sort about the, frankly, harrowing situation in which they find themselves. All of it feels so sparse, especially when painted with the muted color palette that Nikou uses. Here we sit, in this gray, unsentimental world. And then, Aris is being driven in the rain, listening to music and the focus blurs until the traffic lights blend into this kaleidoscope of color and holds there longer than we’ve ever been allowed. Or he stops on the street to watch a display of black and white TVs, obscured by a fence, of two lovers enjoying an afternoon together. The pastels of the television sets standing starkly in defiance of the colorless displays. Or the entirety of “The Twist” plays as we watch Aris dance, unburdened from embarrassment, as the soft lights glow and reflect off of the dancers, haloing them as they move. Or (this is the last one I’ll mention, I promise) we watch Aris sit down to a meal for himself at a bar, the windows framing him in a transfixing tableau. Reds flank him, accompanied with orange glows of lights bouncing off of the wooden walls. A chandelier sits in frame above him, bathing the sleek bar top. He sees a couple begin to dance in the restaurant and the camera focuses on him, it dolly zooms in (what appears to be the only camera movement in the entire film), and holds and holds as he looks on. He stares as he did with the TVs. Something is there… Something just out of reach. Smash cut to feverish stirring in a rusty pot, the thought shattering to pieces around us as the spoon scrapes the pot. Nearly all of these fleeting

moments of beauty are abruptly cut from, like fingers being snapped in front of our face after letting our mind wander. And then we’re back into the mundanity that Apples employs. These static shots, this lighting, these dull colors are no accident. These plain, simple obfuscations to these memories trying to make themselves known create a numbness in us as an audience, just as they do Aris. While breathtaking, these moments of dazzling lights or bittersweet joy are too bright. They make our hearts race. To Aris, they are unsafe. The cold embrace of forgetfulness is a balm against those memories which a part of him is glad he no longer has.

Before the first lines about the New Identity program, heard over a radio, we are greeted with a rhythmic drum thudding over the opening credits. Well, at least it sounds like a drum. Throughout the beat, we see a house in disrepair. Trash litters the floor and counters. The entire place is a mess, except for the bed. It is perfectly, neatly made. As we cut to our first shot of Aris, it’s revealed that the noise we’ve been hearing is him, hitting his head against a column in his home repeatedly. Then, we cut abruptly (these have yet to become commonplace, so this first one is jarring) to a shot of him gazing at the bed. Not wistfully, not longingly. Not… anything. He simply stares at it. When he hears the news over the radio from his makeshift bed on the couch, he gets up and leaves his apartment, greeting his neighbor and his dog. He stops to buy flowers and then, after falling asleep on the bus, he forgets where he was going, who he was, and what he was doing. He is checked into the hospital, the latest victim of the amnesia pandemic. Among his hospital cafeteria dinner is an apple, which he enjoys as he speaks to another patient. Aris asks if the man isn’t going to eat his apple, to which the man responds “I don’t remember if I like them.” A bowl on Aris’s table in his new apartment always has apples in it after he moves in. Little quirks like these, his love of apples (and no other fruit), his tidiness, his penchant for cooking, are fragments of things he remembers about himself.

As he goes through the mundanity of creating his new life and completing his photography assignments, I sometimes forgot about that opening, but would occasionally think back and say to myself, “I wonder what that was about.” I honestly wasn’t sure what this movie

“The memory of happiness is perhaps also happiness.”

was doing until the treatment began to work. As Aris is walking through a park, his old neighbor’s dog comes up to him and Aris calls it by name. He remembered the dog’s name. Realizing this, he quickly leaves before the dog’s owner can see him. Before this, he is shopping for apples and the store owner asks where he lives. Aris tells the clerk his old address, pauses, and corrects himself. Little moments of remembrance are sprinkled through the film, but they don’t make Aris feel better… They didn’t make me feel better either, and when he goes again to buy a bagful of apples and the clerk remarks that they are “good for memory,” Aris looks sullen, takes a moment to think, and then removes each and every apple from his bag. He only eats oranges from then on. I ask myself about the opening again, but I phrase it differently. “What is he glad that he forgot?”

It all comes unraveled when he gets what is to be his final assignment: to find a person who is dying in the hospital and spend a few days taking care of them and, when they die, stay with their family. We are treated to a scene where Aris assists in feeding an old man soup, engaging in probably his longest conversation in the film. The old man is craving something sweet, more specifically the fresh baked pastries that his wife used to make. Aris asks if she is alive, and the old man tells him that she is, but she’s forgotten. Aris remarks, “Maybe it’s better this way. It will be easier for her. She will not have to forget about you.” The man nods and asks Aris if he is married. A pause. Aris answers with, “I was. She passed away.” No more running. Aris confides in this dying man what he has been trying not to remember. Whether he remembers it only just then or denying it for some time, it is finally out. The reason for the thud, thud, thud at the beginning.

After Aris makes a homemade pastry for the man, he returns to his room to find that he has died in the night. We see the funeral, Aris standing far from the crowd, crying. At home, he listens to his newest assignment but it’s of no use anymore. Either he decides that he

is finally cured or that the jig is up and he can no longer convince himself that he hasn’t been remembering for some time now. He throws away the photo album he has been so diligent in filling out with his completed assignments. He visits his wife’s grave and replaces the dead chrysanthemums, his goal at the start of the film. We linger on him gazing at the headstone for a long time. The abrupt, sharp cuts are no longer needed: we don’t need to run anymore. We remember now.

And so, we return to one of my favorite scenes. We return to that door. Before he can get in, Aris sits in wait outside for a neighbor to come out of the lobby. We sit with him, his anxiety is palpable. Aris dreads what’s behind these barriers, these hurdles. But he can’t run anymore. He remembers now.

The struggle with his apartment door is logical in the movie sense: he doesn’t have keys to the building or to his own home anymore. We could just skip to him getting into his apartment though, like a lesser movie might have done. But no, we are forced to watch this awkward, gangly effort as Aris wrestles to open a door he’s been running away from for a long time now. Finally, through his will power, he is granted access and we follow him. Shots linger on his late wife’s accessories - her sunglasses, hair clips, her pocketbook and watch. Aris sits, absorbing it all. Remembering. Finally, he gets up and tidies the apartment, but not before changing into his old shirt and opening the blinds in his living room. He lets the light back in.

Agnes Varde said “the memory of happiness is perhaps also happiness.” As he finishes cleaning, he notices the fruit bowl. The fruit has mostly gone bad, on account of the length of time he’s been away, but he finds a mostly unblemished apple near the bottom. He sits and cuts away the rot, taking care to pay attention to the hurt, but not indulge in it as he did before. He eats the apple, no longer afraid to remember, relishing in the happiness of his memories of his wife. •

In all of my research around the Greek Weird Wave one name kept popping up over and over again: Argyris Papadimitropoulos. Papadimitropoulos’ contributions to Greek cinema run deep. His film Wasted Youth fictionalizes a dark side of Greece’s history, a harrowing and real reimaging of the real life murder of teenager Alexandros Grigoropolous at the hands of police officers in Central Athens. This film was made at the very beginnings of the Weird Wave and served as a way for international audiences to understand the political turmoil the country was going through. Years later he made an equally harrowing slow burn character study, Suntan. This film expertly dives into the inner machinations of a man turning mad, surrounded by the most beautiful surroundings on an idyllic Greek island during tourist season. His most recent film is one called Monday, his first foray into English-language filmmaking and one where he is able to explore sex, romance, and the inevitability of the end to a party.

Papadimitropoulos joined me for a call from Athens where, from the beginning, he brought an unmatched energy and level of interest that I was so grateful for. Following is a series of questions I was able to ask him about his roots, his work, and his future.

ARGYRIS PAPADIMITROPOULOS VIA ARGYRIS.FILM

A Conversation with Argyris Papadimitropoulos: A Leading Voice in Greek Cinema

BY KEMARI BRYANT

ON HIS BEGINNINGS

Papadimitropoulos, like many Greek filmmakers, got his start in commercials. “Many of us from this generation cut our teeth doing all kinds of commercials. In a country where filmmaking doesn’t give you the means to survive, you do commercials which is also a good school. Because you’re telling tiny different stories [where you get to] play with your instruments.” He explains that a creative boom actually preceded the Crisis, which may not be widely believed. There was a door opening for imaginative filmmaking pre-Crisis, right there in the early aughts. “I want to say after Matchbox by [Yannis Economides] we were like ‘this guy did this tiny film’, which is amazing and super inspiring, with a tiny budget and a bunch of friends. So we started forming small groups. This is how Wasted Youth was made, this was how Kinetta by Yorgos Lanthimos was made, this is how Boy Eating the Bird’s Food was made, which I produced and [Ektoras Lygizos] beautifully directed. So many tiny budget films. There was something happening.”

Filmmakers taking power into their own hands and creating against all odds – there was definitely something happening, and it was something big. These films were making strides internationally even before critics put a name to the movement – Kinetta played in The Forum at Berlin International Film Festival – but titling this group of films may have certainly kicked the door open. Wasted Youth went on to open Rotterdam Film Festival and played Toronto International Film Festival in 2011, Boy Eating the Bird’s Food played Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic in 2012. Before Wasted Youth Papadimitropoulos made a more commercial film, what he describes as a commission job –Bang Bang, a heist comedy. This was his first

film, one that brought him much commercial success and, perhaps, an open door to making more films. “When I was out in the market looking for this tiny little money for Wasted Youth, that cost $150,000, it was easy for me to find because I had a track record of a successful film before. That helped a lot.”

ON SUNTAN

One feature that stands out in each of Papadimitropoulos’ films is his reverence for his country. The cinematography of his films highlight the beauty of Greece – whether the grounded realism of the streets of Athens, or the illustrious island paradise of Suntan and Monday. The two latter films were shot on the island of Antiparos – an island he holds very near to his heart. “It’s where I got married, it’s where I party every year, it’s where my daughter loves to be every summer – it’s like my happy place, it’s the only way to describe it.” Suntan follows a middle-aged general practitioner (Makis Papadimitriou) who becomes obsessed with a young female patient. He describes how visits to the island sparked the idea for Suntan – he was thirty-eight at the time and he noticed that the holiday season, a time when the island was at its busiest due to out of town tourists, could be so frustrating for some people. “What if this guy, this one lonely doctor that we have on this island for all these crazy partygoers [...] what if this guy loses his shit because of all this.” He came up with the character of Kostis, a man who has missed out on a lot of life and who wants to “jump on the train while it’s far away from the station.”

He found Papadimitriou, who was known in Greece as a mostly comic actor, but jumped at the challenge of more dramatic material. Next he found Elli Tringou, who was at the time in her first year of acting school. Papadimitropoulos describes this discovery as “the greatest risk I’ve ever taken. I’m not happier for any-

thing else in my career.” Suntan is in many ways a “devolution of man” story, but it is also a story about loneliness. The beginning portrays the island of Antiparos in its off-season, and shows how crippling and isolating that time is for our protagonist. His actions only serve as self-protection from an inevitable loneliness – once he gets a taste of community, he refuses to let it go. I inquired with Papadimitropoulos about this theme of loneliness that comes popping up in so many Greek films, “People in Greece are mainly extroverts. It’s a country where social skills really count.” Within this social system, it is especially easy to feel lonely, he explains. “Film can be [therapeutic], not only for the actors but also for the director [...] dealing with demons, dealing with anxiety. Loneliness was a bigger fear than death for me. I can safely say that.” While in Northern countries loneliness can be considered a bit more of the norm, in Greece being lonely can make you an outcast.

ON FILMING PARTY SCENES

If you watch a Papadimitropoulos film you’re going to see a party scene – it’s his trademark.

“I love shooting parties and I love throwing parties. Every summer I throw a party and it’s a party everyone is waiting for the whole year. Although I’m growing older it doesn’t stop being something that I love doing.” From Wasted Youth to Suntan to Monday, Papadimitropoulos gets into the heart of a party and attacks the audience with multicolored lights, blaring music (usually an on point needledrop), and the emotional potential that a party can bring – the beginnings and endings of things, the emotional freedom, the jealousy, and so much more.

His annual party is oftentime the inspiration for his scripts, a prime example being Monday. In the film Mickey (Sebastian Stan) and Chloe (Denise Gough) meet at a party in Athens. The next morning they wake up on a beach after having sex, completely naked surrounded by families –and police, who promptly arrest them. This was based off of a story he heard that came out of his party. “I love the party itself, but I also love the following days where I’m calling my friends and everyone has a different crazy story to tell.” These crazy stories might even end up in a movie.

What I found even more interesting was the way in which Papadimitropoulos went about shooting these party scenes. As a partier himself,

he always goes for reality. “I’m trying to keep the parties in my film really authentic. What we’re doing is we’re throwing a party and we’re filming it.” Simple, right? He explains that he wants to capture the “planned but not planned”, inviting a bunch of friends and actually throwing a party complete with lights and music. He connects to a microphone and tells the crowd things to do as they party, and sets up two to three cameras to cover everything. After he gets all of the party shots he recreates moments of the parties with a smaller group of extras and no music to capture intimate moments and the actors’ dialogue. “The general idea is that we’re keeping the parties real.” When it comes to parties, it seems that on a Papadimitropoulos set there is a thin line between fiction and reality – on Monday they filmed a block party that had over 1200 dancing on a blocked off street. “It was almost impossible to stop this party.”

ON VISUAL STORYTELLING

One of Papadimitropoulos’ strengths lie in his visual storytelling – early scenes in Suntan portray Kostis alone during off-season on Antiparos: the island is dark and rainy, locals fill the bars, and Kostis is always isolated in the frame. However, when the tourist season comes Kostis’ world is filled with light – along with a group of tourists who he befriends. This trust in visual storytelling as opposed to endless dialogue is a recurring part of Papadimitropoulos’ filmography, and speaks to a trust between himself and long term filmmaking partner and DP, Christos Karamanis. “Christos is like a brother to me. We have amazing visual communication.” Christos is quiet, Argyris is loud. Argyris loves city life and partying, Christos loves nature and bike rides – but they complete each other. They’ve developed an almost telepathic communication – he gives the example that if the camera team asks what lens they want, they can simply shoot each other a smile and know what the other is thinking. A distinct visual style is a defining factor of Papadimitropoulos’ films – oftentimes using natural light and shooting the beauty of Greece with such care and clear appreciation, with an added freedom to switch visual style with each project. In Suntan a scene where

Kostis and Anna run off to a small beach to have sex is shot with the manipulation of natural light, the beauty of the landscape juxtaposed to the beauty of their bodies –which is also in harsh contrast with the reality of the situation. Then there is Wasted Youth, which oftentimes feels shot like a documentary. Beauty hides within reality, and a shot like three teen boys riding together on a motorbike can hold a world of emotion in its simplicity.

ON POLITICAL FILMMAKING

Wasted Youth is Papadimitropoulos’s example of filmmaking used as a political device. “Making films, even placing the camera, is a political action because it shows where you stand, which point you look at things from. Making films in a country where making films is not that easy is also a political action.” With the creation of Wasted Youth he didn’t want to overanalyze, he wanted to show a “quick reflection on a huge social change that was happening. It all started with the murder of an innocent boy in cold blood by a cop – the mark of a different time for Greece. It was the beginning of the economic crisis, and the end of a time of prosperity that had come before.”

“Although I didn’t know [what was] really happening and where this was going to take us I wanted to document, somehow, this era. Because I was feeling that something was about to change. I’m not a documentarian, I’m a fictional filmmaker, so getting inspired from this tragic event I tried to make a portrait of a city being boiling hot, being boiling hot because all these crazy things are happening at the same time.”

A city being boiling hot on the brink of an explosion – I made a comparison to Do The Right Thing, which he agreed with, “What can go wrong on this beautiful day? Fuck.” He also drew a comparison to Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, a fictional retelling of a school shooting loosely based around the 1999 Columbine high school massacre. “You get inspired by an event but you’re not recreating the event itself. Let’s see a version of what happened there but a totally fictional one. It’s not the story of Alexandros [the teen who was murdered], it’s the story of Haris.”

Haris, as played by Haris Markou, the

protagonist of this important film who was just a teen skateboarding in the street before Papadimitropoulos and his team spotted him. They approached him about being in the film and his questions were simple: does it involve skateboarding? Is it easy? Do I get paid? He was in. Papadimitropoulos began following Haris and his friends to see how they lived their daily life, and asked them to begin improvising. The narrative arrived by having his “eyes and ears totally open”. They only knew the ending of the film, which was a mirror of the true tragic story, and they had 20 scheduled days and seven crew members to find the story that came before it.

He believes that the story is still fresh, but it served its purpose. His curiosity lies in seeing how the film lands in twenty or thirty years, with an audience who wasn’t born looking back at a film from a completely different time. I commended the film’s importance in film history, a snapshot of time rife with change – completely informative to an American audience attempting to learn more about this period in Greek history. “For me it was an experiment. I got a bunch of friends and seven pages of a script. I mean, we didn’t have a script, we had some notes.”

ON WHAT’S COMING NEXT

Papadimitropoulos remained tight-lipped, but he did give a preview of what is to come: it’s going to be English language and it’s going to be a comedy. “I really need to make a comedy.” he drove the point home, a project that would be his first tapping into this genre since his debut Bang Bang – though his love for comedy certainly shines through in his other projects. He misses doing projects where people laugh when he says cut.

ON WHAT HAS INSPIRED HIM RECENTLY

Finally, I asked Papadimitropoulos if he had watched anything recently that inspired him. He had watched Poor Things the day before.

“I [knew] Yorgos before he started even making films, and I know how talented he is, but this time I was like ‘what the fuck?’ – and it was so funny, too.”

Context-Dependent Love:

Love in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos

BY WILLIAM REYNOLDS

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. But is it really? Our unwavering belief that love is pure, able to thrive no matter the circumstances and conquer all obstacles is a heartwarming sentiment. However the focus on the supposed innate beauty of love has enshrouded it as a mythical untouched emotion. Contrary to this thought love is far more grounded than we believe and, impacted by the conventions of the world we live in. As an auteur willing to delve into our societal conventions, Lanthimos’ films captivate audiences. Conventions which we subconsciously know exist but don’t dare to prod and poke in the fear we will uncover some heinous truth, that will shatter the delicately constructed illusions we sell ourselves. We repeat to ourselves that there are things that exist outside the vacuum of the capitalist machine, emotions that pierce the societal veil. However, Lanthimos holds the mirror up directly to us and not only invites us to reflect upon these conventions but guides us through his hyper-real and uncanny worlds in order to critically deconstruct concepts we accept as unadulterated truths.

Cinema has always been in dialogue, either explicitly or implicitly, with the world we live in. Lanthimos epitomises this philosophy with what appears to be fantastical films but are actually rich in current subtext. He is always reflecting and splicing open our own world by isolating and picking apart aspects of the status quo. Lanthimos is no stranger to crises. Greece was one of the countries that felt the worst effects of the worldwide economic recession in 2009. The country was plunged into historical levels of debt which was evidenced by historically high levels of unemployment, inequality and homelessness. One mechanism the government utilised in order to ameliorate the debt problem was increasing taxes. However, in a country where people were poorly supported by

a lack of welfare infrastructure this only resulted in antagonism. This hostile atmosphere between government and people, alongside the poor quality of life resulted in societal issues from increases in tax evasion to fraud to hate crimes against refugees. Lanthimos was a firsthand witness to this collapse in social conventions which no doubt informs his filmmaking process and his uncanny ability to deftly weave and dismantle preconceived notions we have. Ultimately, it is when our environment is in flux that the illusions and societal rules we create begin to crack and reveal themselves. The interactions between different principles laid bare. Lanthimos challenges a variety of societal conventions but it is particularly when he dares to confront our most accepted truths that he brings into question our lived realities. His desire to disassemble the complexities of love is fascinating; it forces us to question the ubiquitous notion of its being pure. This has in turn produced some of his best and most beloved work.

All of Lanthimos’ films play with the idea of love but there’s none more synonymous with the idea of love being twisted and bent into an unrecognisable shape than The Favourite (2018). The Favourite is a sumptuous tale of the struggle for power between three women, Queen Anne (Olivia Coleman), Abigail (Emma Stone) and Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz). Abigail, Sarah’s impoverished cousin, arrives at the beginning of the story and begins to rival Sarah for the affections of the Queen. The Queen who is largely disinterested in the political affairs she must contend with is inclined to just follow the guidance of her lover Sarah. It’s a constant question whether the Queen and Sarah are in love or whether their romance is a symptom of Sarah manipulating the Queen for power. Whilst the latter appears to be the initial reading of their romance it becomes more and more apparent that the Queen is aware of

her concessions of power. This is discernible with not just Sarah, but also Abigail. Power is ubiquitous with being able to govern and there are moments where the Queen grapples with conceding some of her power to either Abigail or Sarah, as an act of vulnerability to build romantic connection. She will allow gravely consequential decisions such as doubling taxes to fund a war in France, to be used as a pawn in vying for her affection. What must be understood is that Queen Anne was born into power and her whole perception of the world is built around her ability to wield it; from the servants that bend to her will, to the noblemen that beg for her approval, to those that seek a slice of power in order to further their own agendas. Her disinterest in governance is a manifestation of the privilege and wealth she has experienced her whole life. Whilst witnessing the duel for power between Abigail and Sarah unfold is enthralling, the beating melancholic heart of The Favourite is the doomed romance between Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill. Sarah’s final scene where she stands wistfully gazing out her manor window to the image of the Queen’s soldiers arriving to exile her is saturated with pain and poignancy. Sarah arrives to the all too late realisation that power has both preoccupied her, and overshadowed her love for the Queen. The Queen on the other hand comes to the same cruel conclusion that her power and pride has rendered her unable to ever be sincere with her one true love, Sarah. Nonetheless her blinding pride still results in Sarah’s exile.

The final picture Lanthimos leaves us with in The Favourite is of the ailing Queen barking orders at Abigail to massage her leg. This is Abigail’s punishment for abusing the Queen’s prized rabbits. There never was any real sentiment of love with Abigail but the entanglement of power and romance has resulted in devastating consequences that can’t be undone. In the end, Lanthimos leaves us with a sobering reminder of the effects of power and pride to obfuscate our ability to love. Lanthimos’ implores us to reflect on our own circumstances and highlights how often experiences and realisations come too late and the extent of damage too great. We must attempt to disentangle the societal burdens which we have, in order to properly engage in loving each other. If we take the movie in dialogue with the Greek economic crisis it’s an indictment of those in power failing to recognise how

power shapes their decision making. Their stubbornness to engage with their own biases results in decisions which may have had unintended but ultimately dire consequences for their civilians, namely the rippling effect of taxation policies.

Aside from romantic love, Lanthimos has reckoned with conventions attached to love in the familial context. In the film that rocketed him to cult arthouse fame Dogtooth (2009), Lanthimos manufactures a claustrophobic family unit. Again he succeeds in the concoction of hyper-real framing. It is not beyond the realm of possibility to imagine a mother (Michele Valley) and father (Christos Stergioglou) trapping their son (Christos Passilos) and two daughters (Angeliki Papoulia and Mary Tsoni, older and younger daughter respectively) at home which has resulted in the tightly controlled construction of the family’s reality. This has suspended their adult children in a frozen state of being which is entirely predicated on the information trickled to them from their parents. Further still, they condition their children by rewarding good behaviour with stickers and inflicting violence as punishment for poor behaviour. There’s an atmosphere of coldness and detachment from within the four walls of the compound. If what you have witnessed growing up were expressions of control from your parents unbeknownst to you, how do you navigate expressing your own emotions? Here control has supplanted love. Lanthimos brings a spotlight to how incompatible the two emotions are. Ultimately if you wish to love and for others to reciprocate that love you can’t restrict them– suppressing their identity from forming. What will result is expressions of emotion so foreign to love that it requires a level of delusion to convince oneself that is true love. For instance the children know the importance of showing love to their parents via appreciation, but their monotone delivery is an indication of a sense of custom more so than any real emotion.

Where inherited ideals of love, along with sex and the impact of external environmental influences are most apparent is the introduction of Christina. The parents wish to begin introducing their adult children to sex as they have reached an age of sexual maturity. Their method is a financial incentive for Christina

to have sex with their son. Sex and love are often synonymous but here Lanthimos’ portrayal of sex further drives the question, how could the adult children ever imagine love when their view of sex is so misconstrued? In exchange for an item the eldest daughter engages in oral sex with Christina. This leads her into viewing sex as a tool for bartering due to a lack of understanding of its significance. Christina is subsequently discovered to be providing the eldest daughter with items and is banned from the house. It should be noted that the first instance of oral sex between Christina and the eldest daughter occurred as a result of the son’s refusal to perform it on Christina. This is highly indicative of the patriarchal system within the household where their father acts of his own volition. The dismal portrayal of sex and household patriarchy is further compounded when the brother is asked to choose one of his sisters to have sex with as a replacement for Christina. The family compound is a loveless habitat devoid of any real human emotion, the children are constrained by the callous nature of the parents. Dogtooth is arguably Lanthimos’ most challenging film but is a testament to the ability of cinema to question the status quo. It is a film which magnifies the idea that love, and many of our emotions, are shaped by our environment. In Dogtooth it can seem almost impossible for the adult siblings to question their status quo. However there are moments which show cracks in the dehumanising system which their parents have enforced, including but not limited to witnessing a Hollywood movie to seeing a stray cat to the arrival of Christina. Lanthimos implores us to scrutinise these cracks in order to critically engage with our environment or else we are doomed like the siblings to simply express ideas of love that have been shaped externally.

Whilst most of Lanthimos’ films reckon with societal conventions which exert influence on the ideas and expression of love, none of them tackle it with the nuance and depth of The Lobster (2015). The film’s fundamental focus is built on analysing and re-imagining romantic connection and love. In a dystopian-esque society, David (Colin Farrell) arrives at a hotel after his wife leaves him for another man. The hotel’s ethos is built on the rule that in this society you must find a partner within forty five days or be

turned into an animal of your choosing. This concept is a clever allegory for Western monogamous society and the underlying pressures of finding a partner or lover to settle down with. In the world of The Lobster, searching for love is regulated and while not as apparent in our own world we have our own conventions that shape and regulate our journeys in finding love. There’s a sharp-witted remark following David’s request for a bisexual option at the hotel, “this option was removed last summer for operational reasons”. Whilst humorous it’s a sobering reminder of our capitalist societies need to neatly categorise sexuality and squash more complex forms of identity regarding sexual fluidity. Staying at the hotel features a host of bizarre rituals that add further layers to the regulation of forming love and relationships, and act as reflections of our own society. Residents of the hotel regularly hunt and kill “Loners” in order to extend their stay at the hotel to find a partner. The “Loners” are a group which exist in revolt against society’s requirement to enter into romantic partnerships. Their primary identifying feature is that they are all single. This runs parallel to society’s demonisation of those who wish to stay single or end up never settling down with a partner.

As regards to finding a relationship at the hotel, this is largely predicated on searching for superficial commonalities. This is due to societal regulations including the short time-scale to find a partner. David’s friend, a man with a limp (Ben Whishaw) repeatedly smashes his nose in secret, resulting in nosebleeds. This is in order to obtain a shared feature with the woman who suffers from them recurrently. It’s a damning indictment of today’s version of romantic relationships. With a world increasingly online, where so many people are at our fingertips, and concurrently the fast-moving nature of capitalistic societies, we don’t bother expending the energy to explore past superficial commonalities. We cast aside nurturing a love which requires time to reveal fundamental aspects of our being, from our values to emotional expression to inner identity. It’s a lot easier to simply spend the time making quick superficial changes to attract people and then hastily settle down.

David eventually escapes the hotel and joins the “Loners” in the forest. However past the

group being single they have created their own archaic rules which entail no romantic relationships or sexual contact between people. In the midst of this group David meets another woman who is short-sighted like him (Rachel Weisz) and a romance blossoms. This love is forbidden so they communicate via hand signals. Unfortunately their relationship is discovered and the leader blinds the woman. It’s a fascinating point that revolutionary groups need to create a complete re-imagining of society in order to create freedom. The simple solution to solve societal issues is not going to be the option in direct opposition. Whilst Lanthimos’ uses injections of comedy throughout the film, it’s in a manner to create audience vulnerability. This results in introspective reflections on the societal conventions which govern dating, creating relationships and finding love. The Lobster ends with David and the woman escaping. The ending is ambiguous whether he blinds himself in order to create a commonality with the woman he loves or leaves her alone in the diner. Regardless of his decision it is perhaps Lanthimos’ most devastating ending to a film, highlighting the difficulties in re-imagining ideas of love unburdened by society. If you wish to participate in society, how can you also unshackle love from the conventions that have formed the core of your identity?

Lanthimos’ portrayal of love has evolved through over a decade of filmmaking, there’s an evident shift from Dogtooth to The Lobster to The Favourite towards pointing the finger directly at wealth and power as the objects of being the root causes denigrating the essence

of love. His most recent release Poor Things furthers the thesis of The Favourite that wealth and power supplant ideals of love. In the film’s final act the wealthy Alfie Blessington’s (Christopher Abbot) expression of romance in his partnership with Victoria Blessington/Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is via exerting control through violent measures. He threatens Bella with a gun so she will drink a sedative, in order to perform genital mutilation. Alfie’s attachment to Victoria (whose body Bella now inhabits) was the cruelty which they both share, evidenced by the fearful manor staff. This echoes The Lobster– superficial commonalities forming the basis of relationships. Bella, trapped in the manor, begins to understand that the foundation of Alfie and Victoria’s relationship was not built on love. The likely patriarchal dominance of Alfie over Victoria resulted in feelings of misery and unhappiness festering within her. Subsequently she took her own life, no longer willing to bear her burden of sorrow. It’s a valuable insight into wealth and power twisting love into an unrecognisable shape and leading to tragedy.

Lanthimos doesn’t wish to destroy the notion that there is an innate component of love that is pure and transcendental. However, he wishes to shift our focus onto what we can change. In his eyes the more important subject is the external influence of society. We often fail to contend with this, but regardless, it will shape our ideas of love and ability to express it. He understands and is deeply empathetic to the difficulties in attempting to do so, having lived through such tumultuous times during the Greek economic crisis and witnessing the dismantling of societal rules. Ultimately, Lanthimos wishes for us to end up in a position where we can express love and experience the elation of it on our own terms. It is clear Lanthimos is vocal about the necessity of radical social change for the purpose of establishing a version of society that is more compatible with loving. However, it is unknown to him and us what this version of society will look like and whether it is even attainable. Nevertheless, even if it isn’t possible to completely detach the external societal factors, at least we can die with the thought that we tried to love in a manner that was as pure as possible. What’s more beautiful than that? •

A STILL FROM THE LOBSTER. COURTESY OF SHOTDECK.

A Close-Up on Yorgos Sakarellos

BY HARISSA BAKLLAVA

Filmmaking in Greece is not an easy task, for many reasons. But that hasn’t stopped the new wave of filmmakers, cinematographers, etc., to keep creating films and going above and beyond to succeed in their own way in an industry that struggles–but little by little progresses and evolves. And if you think that Greece is only a location for other countries to film, you would be wrong.

The last two years I have been in a great and lucky position to be a part of short films and music videos that were created by the newer generation of Greek filmmakers. This luck started in the summer of 2022 when I decided to be a part of the movie industry as a backstage photographer. I wanted to create a portfolio, and get that portfolio filled with experience in Greece, and the only solution was short films and music videos. The first short film opportunity came while I was scrolling on Facebook where I found a casting call for a short film called The Virtue of Slaves, so I sent a message to be a photographer, and I was accepted. On that set, I met the then Director of Photography, Yorgos Sakarellos. Since then I have also been a backstage photographer on his own upcoming short film. He is a brilliant professional that I could tell – as you may too – loves what he does.

But when I asked to interview him, he was shocked. I, on the other hand, wanted to know more about how he started. Hee created a short film back in 2020 called “ Press Pot” while he was still in University studying Engineering, and since then has taken different roles each time, so he can – like I did– fill his portfolio with experience.

So without further ado, let’s all learn a bit about him.

PHOTO BY HARISSA BAKLLAVA

What movie inspired you to pursue a career in filmmaking?

YS: I remember from an early age my parents exposed me to the arts, but more specifically to cinema. At home we had a large collection of various VHS tapes. The two movies that got my attention were Titanic by James Cameron and The Triplets of Belleville by Sylvain Chomet, movies that captured my interest specifically from a script and directing point of view. Also, Whiplash by Damien Chazelle made an impact on my interest in filmmaking.

For a long time I didn’t watch a lot of movies, since our school system does not expose students to all forms of art. But that didn’t stop me from pursuing my love for cinema. First, at 8 years old, I already had my first contact with filmmaking and editing, when I made my first video of my summer vacation. Then, I filmed my friends while we were mountain biking. After that as I studied in the UK, my roommate Philipos – who is a cinephile – introduced me to the world of cinema as an adult. Then I

started watching Antonioni, Cubrik, Bresson, Haneke etc.

Since you chose this career path what were the difficulties you’ve faced and what helped you to continue?

YS: I actually thought I would have more difficulties than I really had. But, I also think I would have difficulties, even if I had chosen a different path, because that is how life works. The reality is that, if you are not chasing your goals, you don’t evolve– like everything in life. You need patience, an open mind, hard work, and to answer the second scale of the question, my love for expression through the audiovisual medium.

Do you believe that the internet has made it easier to get opportunities as a filmmaker or the value of a filmmaker has decreased in the Greek marketplace?

YS: I believe that the internet spreads and democratizes the arts. Back in the day, creating a movie was a very expensive project, because the creator shouldered multiple costs, for example the film stock that he would choose and then develop. Now, everyone can create a movie with their phone, and yes, he can share it easily on the internet. Regarding the marketplace, and if the value of a filmmaker is increased or decreased, there is no clear answer. As there are capable people in this space, that cannot find opportunities and have to work in a different industry altogether. Because it is not only a matter of capability but, a matter of networking, consistency, and relationships you have with your colleagues.

Greece will always be a country that creates films out of love first.

Do you believe that the film industry as it exists in other countries, can exist in Greece?

YS: It depends, what countries? We cannot be compared with the US, but for example we are similar with Georgia - who is creating amazing films that are not heard often worldwide. I think that we are progressing and improving as a country, as unlikely as that sounds. The Hellenic Film Commission (GFC) now has a bigger budget for films as well as

more funding programs than before. Also, now there is the National Centre of Audiovisual Media and Communication (EKOME) and the opportunities for financing are increasing. Greece will always be a country that creates films out of love first. But there is so much more that we need to do as a country, to give the Greek film industry the love and the qualities it deserves, such as more serious treatment of payments and financing and sustainable plans for the distribution of films in cinemas.

What is a day like for a director from the beginning to end?

YS: It depends on the size of the production you are working on. In the event that the budget is limited, you need to deal with almost everything and chaos prevails: carrying equipment, scenography, production issues, and of course the directing task, i.e. the execution of the film that you have been preparing with the actors and directors for a long time. As the budget increases, so does the team and things are done more comfortably.

I know that you are in the process of making a film, tell me a little about this project.

YS: It’s about a film that constitutes my personal experimentation. It is a short film that aims to construct the story through the interaction of the viewer, while at the same time creating a feeling for how the characters experience things. I don’t want to talk about the premise of the film, as I believe it is better to watch films raw, without any prejudice and expectations. The directions it can take are many and we have a long way to go! Something that gave me joy in this project was the opportunity to work with very good colleagues. The actors, Ioanna Kallitsantsi and Yiannis Grigorakis, are people with great acting skills and perception, while all the people in the crew from the first to the last moment worked with great passion! I am especially grateful to them for honoring me with their contribution. I hope the film manages to be screened somewhere after its completion so that the hard work and talent of those who helped make it will be recognised.

One last question, maybe the most difficult out of all of the questions: what are your top three movies of all time?

YS: (laughing) Well although a difficult question, I have two out of three movies, right away. The first one is 2001 Space Odyssey directed by Stanley Kubrick, the second one is Persona directed by Ingmar Bergman and now, the third one is very difficult. Because it’s an Antonioni movie, no doubt about it. I love all of his movies, so it is a hard task to choose only one, but I’ll choose… Blow Up directed by Michaelangelo Antonioni .

I’ll have to admit that all three are quite legendary, in my humble opinion. Yorgos thank you so much for this interview.

YS: My pleasure!

I think we all learned more about Yorgos, but also we learned how things “roll” here in Greece. Although we have a lot of struggles and a lot of challenges to overcome, that doesn’t stop us from making our dreams real. •

BY TANNER BENSON

Chevalier, literally Chivalry, invokes the centuries of gentlemanly codes of behavior which have evolved to the current state of Western masculinity. The film delicately dissects the psychological torment of performative masculinity, satirizes the self-imposed nature of this pain, and provokes a sense of compassion for the men enacting 2,000 years worth of cultural expectation.

Chevalier lies at the periphery of what many consider to be the core of Greek Weird Wave. In part because it came out in 2015, the same year that Yorgos Lanthimos took his efforts to the English speaking world. It was a time of changes, both in market and in style; Lanthimos’s popularity abroad marks a change in market, whereas Chevalier and the later Suntan mark distinct, though subtle changes in style. Chevalier highlights important aspects of this shift by adhering to Weird stylistic tropes and breaking with others. It results in something near Weird, something beyond Weird. The film depicts a stronger sense of reality than other films within the core Weird canon. Unlike other Weird films, it also carries a deeper sense of compassion, less alienation from the characters. However, it blends character psychology and the acute sense of reality so thoroughly with allegory and social satire that it still gives audiences that unmistakable sense that “This is weird.”

The opening sequence of Chevalier sets the stage for tragedy on the scale of all Western civilization. Gigantic cliffs leading to rocky beaches, lapped by Aegean waves. A few small heads emerge from the tide, later revealed to be several men in scuba suits. The story begins with a symbolic ‘birth of man’ – the true origin of the conundrum at hand. Chevalier goes on to engage in biting critiques of Western masculinity throughout the entirety of its runtime with impressive consistency.

Chevalier is directed by the most prominent woman of the Greek Weird Wave, Attenberg auteur, Rachel Athena Tsangari, and

co-written by her and Efthimis Filippou, frequent Yorgos Lantimos collaborator. The film recounts the tale of several wealthy men at the end of Summer vacation aboard a yacht in the Aegean Sea. One evening, the men devise a game. Bored by their other activities, they agree to compete for a coveted, gold chevalier signet ring. In the ensuing days, they publicly critique one another in every aspect of their lives in an effort to crown the ‘best man’ among them. Areas of scrutiny include, but aren’t limited to: sleeping position, dental hygiene, quickness in responding to a distress call, penis size and potence, syntax, skipping rocks, and even one’s choice in ringtone. At one point, a man is forced to defend his childish ringtone by stating that his son changed it for him at some point, and that he’s kept it as a symbol of their relationship. The other men agree that such a ridiculous song diminishes the picture of manliness and argue that he ought to have changed it back sooner.

Even when the scorekeeping isn’t made explicit, marked by literal tallies or discussion, judgment is implied with an ever-increasing paranoia. And the arbitrariness of the scores becomes more and more evident. The men on board, including the serving staff who aren’t included in the game, drive one another mad with judgements, snide comments, sneering gazes, and superiority complexes. What begins as a devilish comedy, soon becomes a tragedy of pathetic egoism.

What we detect as weird when we watch these films arises in part through the alienated characters and awkward dialogue. But there is a more essential aspect of weirdness that pulsates through these films. The quintessential un-reality comes from the juxtaposition of realism and allegory. Scholar Dimitris Papanikolaou defines the formal approach of the Weird Wave as biopolitical realism. These filmmakers adopt realist formal techniques to engage with allegory. Chevalier does this pristinely, leaning heavily on realism without sacrificing potent allegory.

Weird films provide a very physical, or

Tsangari seeks, not to ridicule them, but to highlight the painful and enduring psychological trauma that comes from performative masculinity.

biological reality. Mundane and quiet worlds marked by moments of explosive violence and sexuality. This biological reality is juxtaposed with the emergence of allegories aimed at critiquing political and socio-cultural structures. This uneasy juxtaposition, added to distant and dry characters, encapsulates weirdness.

Coined by Guardian writer Steve Rose in 2009, “Weird” feels so apt to describe that quality so inseparable from the films themselves. But it’s more than a sensation, it is also a set of formal storytelling devices.

Chevalier is indemnably weird in its allegorical realism, and it also carries the trademark absurdist comedy that the core Weird films do. The comedy arises from the absurdity of the film’s central competition; it intensifies according to the level to which the men willingly engage in such vicious self-subjugation. At every turn, their dedication to the game grows stronger. But with each step, our laughs turn more and more into compassionate sighs. Indeed, the turn from absurdist comedy into tragic allegory actually exposes where Chevalier branches off from the core weirdness, and accounts for its peripheral status within Weird Wave discourse.

Chevalier exemplifies weirdness in its allegorical critique of Western masculinity and absurdist character behavior. Unlike the core films, however, Chevalier evokes greater compassion in the plights of its characters. Our sympathy emerges as the allegorical and the absurd engage with our aesthetic conception of realism. In the allegorical, sympathy arises from a sense of cyclical tragedy. Although

self-inflicted, the harm imposed on these men extends beyond the will of the characters. Call it fate, destiny, or 2000 years of Western gender norms, we sense that these men are caught in a… dare I say, Greek tragedy.

In the absurd, our sympathy results from the Syssifusian struggle; the ordeal made all the more tragic by its absurdity. Absurd because, at any point, these rock-pushers could drop their load and live without the constraints and anguish caused by their futile pursuits. Without such a close relationship to realism, the film would be strictly comedic. However, in as much as these men are typical of real men, their vain attempts to prove manliness reveal a deeper psychological wound in all men. Tsangari seeks, not to ridicule them, but to highlight the painful and enduring psychological trauma that comes from performative masculinity. As the movie progresses, you get the sense that the men are not judged solely by each other, but by millennia’s worth of cultural expectations. A strong basis in the real-world empowers the film’s satirical blows, though it ultimately provokes compassion.

As mentioned at the top of this article, 2015 marked a split within the Greek Weird Wave. At the three poles lie Chevalier, The Lobster, and Suntan. Lanthimos’s film uses allegory to critique modern relationship culture and signals a growing market for Weirdness in the English-speaking world. Market demands entail their own set of changes, such as casting major international stars, story content related to English speaking countries (a la The Favorite), along with considerable increases to budget, profits, and award recognition. Lanthimos films retain an indelible weirdness, but compromise their Greek-ness.

Suntan represents another pole in the evolution of the Greek Weird Wave. This extremely distant film with an inscrutable and pathetic protagonist, exemplifies the awkwardness, and mundanity of earlier Weird films. However, it fails to engage in meaningful allegory or social critique. Culminating in an extremely graphic depiction of sexual violence, Suntan lacks compassion for any of its characters. In his climactic act, any possible sympathy for his situation disappears, as does any clear sense of meaningful allegory.

Chevalier maintains its allegorical status in nearly every moment. Each time the men critique one another, we are drawn to think of the chivalric codes that have governed male behavior for centuries. They dissect every minute detail of behavior, athletic ability, philosophies, treatment of others, and overall ‘greatness.’ The men must be perfect Athenians, Spartans, and Stoics all at once. The triviality of their pursuits is highlighted in a throw-away line that could have the audience in stitches were they aware of its sly wit. Just before the men agree to play the “Chevalier” game, Dimitris (played by the recurring Weirdo, Makis Papadimitriou) suggests they try ‘Trivial Pursuit’.

Added to a growing canon of women-led critiques of masculinity, Chevalier leaves the viewer wiser, sadder, and possibly more angry than before. Anger derives from the recognition that men alone hold the key to changing – and sadness at the fact that they are too dumb to realize this themselves. Performative masculinity, like a snake eating its tail, will endure. Without broad cultural shifts, it will continue to harm anyone in proximity, most of all, the men who participate. •

STILLS FROM CHEVALIER (2015)

History Repeats

An Examination of the Greek Realist film The Ogre of Athens

BY ROBERT KARMI

Greek cinema is in a precarious situation, popularly understood as a small national cinema whose most famous films loosely form a contemporary, ongoing movement paradoxically known for its deviation from classical Greek cinema. As such, discussions of the history of Greek cinema tend to veer rarely from those parameters– which is a shame considering the unique intermingling of mythology, culture, and history Greek artists frequently pull from to create their modern art. During its early cinematic golden age, after WWII and Greece’s second Civil War, when works like Stella (Michael Cacoyannis, 1955) were becoming internationally recognized, a film premiered acting as a forbearer towards the latter formally audacious, thematically subversive films of the Greek “Weird Wave”. The sophomore effort written and directed by Nikos Koundouros, The Ogre of Athens, remains as vital, strange, and intriguing an object today as when it was new.

We follow a pedestrian bank clerk Thomas (Dinos Iliopoulos) after his shift ends, when he encounters the public who mistake him for a notorious criminal, “The Dragon,” based on a similar likeness printed in a newspaper. Initially horrified, especially as police harassment follows him wherever he goes, he hides away in a seedy cabaret where, to his surprise, he has respect due to his mistaken identity. There he encounters several vagrants from polite society, from the dancers Carmen (Maria Lekaki) and Roula (Margarita Papageorgiou), and Hondros (Giannis Argyris), the cabaret’s owner, who wants his help in stealing a pillar from the Temple of Olympian Zeus for would-be American buyers. Thomas and Roula begin a flirtatious relationship, each one disconnected from their surroundings and lonely, even when Hondros expresses jealous possession over her. Thomas soon discerns the facade has become untenable, realizing the importance his role is to the downtrodden of the Athenian underworld coupled with the paranoia wrought by

the continued police harassment is driving him mad. With all these elements at play, told with dry macabre humor throughout a sleepless night and a ritualistic dance at dawn, Thomas eventually confesses to the underworld he is not who he has claimed to be, and is killed by them for his several transgressions.

The Ogre of Athens is an odd film by design, parodying Hitchcockian Wrong Man thrillers and film noir through surreal neo-realism. It is deeply entrenched in classical Greek tragic narrative structure, evoking the secret cults of Dionysus in the conclusion, yet deeply subversive to the status quo. Vrasidas Karalis considers it the most politically and aesthetically subversive work of classic Greek Cinema, sharing the latter national cinema’s “Weird Wave’s” blend of formal and stylistic peculiarities matched with its inquiry into the validity of the dominant ideologies of Greek society. Thus, the film exhibits the biopolitical realism defined by Dimitris Papanikolaou as one “engaged with allegory, its negotiation and sometimes its playful unraveling,” wherein the strangeness of the film is meant to make us consider it overtly as an allegorical object, in a Brechtian way.

Koundouros creates some interesting stylistic flourishes throughout the film, from blurring diegetic and nondiegetic music so one cannot tell which is which, when coupled with the high contrast black and white cinematography with off-kilter angles, creates a disorienting feeling which creates tension and anxiety throughout the film, even at its most jovial and welcoming. Those same elements likewise create a dreamlike quality to the work, furthered in part by the surreal intermingling of musical and ritualistic dance numbers in a nightclub, the ebb and flowing presence of law enforcement at random intervals, and the nighttime setting when most of the narrative takes place.

Along said line, we must also encounter the film as a work of post-war cinema, of Greece in rubble and impoverished by a concluded civil war itself preceded by WWII, the traumas of the

ORIGINAL POSTER DESIGN FOR THE OGRE OF ATHENS BY NIKOS KOUNDOUROS, 1956.

conflict still etched into the responses and mannerisms of its characters. Writer Iakovos Kabanellis details his world with intense poverty and cynicism, one wherein the distrust of authority manifests as an invisible-until-not police force, itself likely a black pill of nostalgia for a country occupied by fascists throughout WWII. Yet it might also be allegorical to the Civil War’s aftermath, considering the fall of the Greek communists to the remaining Kingdom of Greece. Koundouros was left-wing, and even imprisoned for his beliefs, and likely saw maintaining the monarchy/allyship with capitalists to be warning signs of fascism returning to Greece. He makes the case that the state of Greece has relinquished one police state for another.

Another pivotal aspect of the film being how the main criminal enterprise of the film is an attempt to sell a pillar from the temple of Zeus to an American to feed themselves with the payout from the heist. A highlighted theme emerges in other works similar about contemporary (at least to the perspective of the story) cultures with lengthy histories resorting to selling their cultural heritage, their monoliths to their antediluvian worlds, to keep themselves alive in the modern moment. Their cultures and histories become capital to those fascinated by those aspects of their heritages, yet outside of ethnic/national pride, do little for the suffering proletariat in the meanwhile, many of whom engage in criminality due to the scarcity of jobs. A cinematic parallel would be The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969), which also deals with ethical conjuries considering ancient cultural antiquity in the modern era. Thus, it is fitting that the central protagonist should also be a banker, a person who stores and taxes capital from others often to the suffering of the poor, who only gains love and respect from his community when he is mistaken for a criminal folk hero.

The film places said “folk hero” as a subversion of our notions of a classical Greek hero, less a cunning trickster or righteous hero and more a man grifting his way into importance and significance to alleviate his own milquetoast existence however briefly.

Iliopoulos does a wonderful job at capturing those sentiments in the character, while never allowing us to truly despise him, making him just pleasant enough so we want to see him have a less dull night than what he initially expected, sometimes with a charm best described as James Stewart adjacent. Yet these elements also compliment the subversion, as he is a law-abiding man who does nothing to aid his compatriots, a middle-class agent content with the status quo to tedium, and a public servant attacking the working class on behalf of the new rich.

His greatest crime might not only be his transgressions against his fellow proletariat, but also his invasion of a secret society which he then exploits. One can see the evocation of the cultural memory of Dionysian mystery cults of ancient Greece, downtrodden outsiders who found community amongst themselves, content in worshiping their ostracized deity, eventually assimilated into hegemonic culture while remaining downtrodden. What practices of theirs have survived include intoxication and dismemberment as symbolic interpretations of Dionysus’ origins. Said occurrences parallel the ending to The Ogre of Athens, in which the marginalized ritualistically drink and dance before engaging in attempted theft ends in the execution of Thomas, a manifestation of the contemporary state of Greece, perhaps with the hope his death will bring about change in the world somehow.

The Ogre of Athens is a novel film, one which can be informative to the legacy and subversions one can find in Greek Cinema, an utterly fascinating work of identity, national and personal, at a crossroads and the tragic consequences of choosing one or the other, even as one becomes increasingly bound to those choices. The paranoia towards the enforcers of law and order, the empathy it displays for its downtrodden, the dismissal of the importance of relics not benefiting anyone besides heritage, and the romanization/mythologization of a criminal into a folk hero who will save them like a messiah all create a work which embodies a counter-cultural work challenging the status quo of Greek culture to its Hellenistic core. If all you know of Greek cinema is Weird Wave, Koundouros’ film may be as grand a place as any to begin your journey into its history. •

ESSAY

The Emergence of the Greek Weird Wave Within the Film Festival Circuit

BY THEODOTI SIVRIDI

“A CUNT IS A LARGE LAMP”

Amidst the awards season Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things– adapted by screenwriter Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel– is a box office hit. It has become a sensation on Letterboxd, and, yes, it is also nominated for 11 Oscars, including Best Picture. A mix of science fiction, black comedy, and horror, the film is presented through a fisheye lens, featuring Victorian costumes with a retro-futuristic twist, artificial sceneries, mesmerizing performances, moments of horniness, and pastel de nata hype.

Returning to 2009, even 2005, when Lanthimos was still based in Greece, he was undoubtedly a prominent director in the Greek Weird Wave. From his debut feature, Kinetta (2005), to the international success of Dogtooth (2009), which was awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, the trajectory of his career is evident. Furthermore, the very inception of the Greek “Weird Wave” and its existence is closely tied to film festivals– where Lanthimos paved the path, and Greek filmmakers found a platform for their work.

My first encounter with Yorgos Lanthimos’ cinematic universe was in 2011. Before Dogtooth, I had watched Athina Rachel Tsagari’s Attenberg (2010) online with bad quality. Back then I was 12 years old and my favorite word was “indie,” which is how I stumbled upon independent Greek cinema. Watching Attenberg left me in awe, leading me to Google to find similar films. Within an hour I found myself at my local DVD store in my tiny little town, literally begging the DVD store people to rent it to me. They refused, and taking a wild guess, it was probably due to my age. But as a 12-yearold living in Greece amidst the economic and political crisis, the real-life bleakness and

images on the news were worse. I kept thinking: what could be more shocking than that? Well, I guess they were just doing their job. I went back home empty-handed, but luckily my mom, who was supportive and a film lover herself, came with me to the DVD rental store, so we rented it together (thanks, Mom). The next day at school I became a very pick-me, almost insufferable kid talking about the film. I must say, my teachers were impressed, and my schoolmates labeled me as a cinephile. Life was good.

Aside from me being in the spotlight for just one day at school and Greece being in the spotlight, because, well, we were doomed, Greek cinema managed to shine. It was quite evident during that era that something had changed in the Greek filmmaking scene: there was a shift. The country produced films that caught the attention of critics, and the international visibility gained from film festivals contributed to the rise in popularity of the films that constituted the “Weird Wave”.

THE BIRTH OF THE “WEIRD”

It is a well known fact that international critics play a significant role in shaping the perception of cinematic movements. In the case of the Greek “Weird Wave”, critics coined the movement with the label “weird,” a term that is debatable and even problematic. In 2011, critic Steve Rose was the first to use the term in his infamous article: “Attenberg, Dogtooth and the weird wave of Greek cinema” in The Guardian, asking whether the brilliantly strange films of Yorgos Lanthimos and Athina Rachel Tsangari are a product of Greece’s economic turmoil.

In all truth, baptizing cinematic waves and categorizing films, especially when the term “weird” is involved and also when there is no specific manifesto from the artists themselves, can be argumentative. However, Rose’s article sparked a rather interesting hypothesis in the early 2010s, with inquiries

regarding the significance and interpretations of the crisis, particularly concerning its social, cultural, and– to an extent– emotional manifestations. In “The Greek Weird Wave: A Cinema of Biopolitics”, Dimitris Papanikolaou also points out that there was no certain manifesto like Dogma did in Denmark back in 1995. This lack of a clear manifesto led to debates and discussions within the realm of the Greek “Weird Wave”. Papanikolaou also observes that the term not only named a local movement but also played a role in shaping it on an international scale. However, as the author highlights, the term Greek “Weird Wave” was initially coined to encompass various styles and political approaches in representing the Greek Crisis and that early adopters of the term saw the reality of the crisis as inherently cinematic, with its “weird” realism permeating everything from documentary footage to what I call “Lanthimian-like” allegories.

A COUNTRY IN CRISIS

To comprehend the emergence of the Greek Weird Wave, it is crucial to examine briefly the economic and political turmoil that describes Greece in the early 2010s. In the bleak landscape of 2009, marking the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Greece was in a profound financial and political crisis. The nation confronted a severe economic downturn, coupled with political instability, bringing it into the global spotlight. A pivotal event unfolded a year earlier with the murder of 15-year-old Greek teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a police officer on December 6, 2008. The incident sparked nationwide demonstrations and civil unrest throughout Greece bringing attention to broader issues like economic hardship and dissatisfaction with the government. The protests lasted for weeks, marking a significant chapter in Greek history, and images of destruction circulated worldwide, depicting the rather challenging socio-political landscape.

According to Lydia Papadimitriou in “Locating Contemporary Greek Film Cultures: Past, Present, Future and the Crisis” Greek people were frequently portrayed in the media as either victims of international neo-liberalism or culprits of financial mismanagement and corruption. Amongst this representation, a Greek film came to represent its country in a very different way. In 2009, Dogtooth gained significant festival attention. And well, festival recognition is important. It secured the “Un Certain Regard” award at Cannes, and prior to its Oscar nomination in Hollywood in 2010, the film had festival screenings in Dublin, Montpellier, Montreal, Sarajevo, Sitges, and Stockholm. It is true that Dogtooth received mixed and divided reviews from critics and the general audience at home, sparking feelings of astonishment, pride, but also anger. As Papadimitriou notes, the international success of Dogtooth declared that the nation appeared to be able to generate cinema deserving of attention despite — or perhaps even because of — the crisis, while also suggesting Greek culture’s

resilience in tough circumstances.

Needless to say, the financial crisis resulted in reduced or delayed funding for the arts, prompting filmmakers to adopt innovative and cost-effective approaches. In a recent interview in the Guardian, Lanthimos himself confirms that: “in Greece a decade or so ago, there wasn’t any film industry or tradition, there were two or three standalone filmmakers who were working. But you couldn’t get financing. But then at some point I said, ‘Why don’t we just go and make a film ourselves? We don’t need much. Let’s get a camera, we’ll pay for the film, the lab, pay for some actors, go someplace and just shoot something. What’s the big deal?’ I never imagined that people would watch this stuff!”

And thus, the wave was born.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GREEK WEIRD WAVE

“The animal that threatens us is a ‘cat’. The most dangerous animal there is. It eats meat, children’s flesh in particular. After lacerating its victim with its claws, it devours them with sharp teeth. The face and whole body of the victim.”

The defining features of the Greek “Weird Wave” set it apart from traditional Greek cinema. Films that constitute the wave exhibit characteristics like minimal funding, absurd narratives, and deadpan humor. These elements mark a clear departure from the conventions of mainstream cinema in Greece, reflecting a desire for innovation and a break from traditional narrative norms. The “littleto-no funding” reality forced filmmakers to rely on their creativity and resourcefulness.The non-traditional narratives and the absurdity of these films indeed challenged audiences. I feel like we, as audiences, were invited, almost forced to question the Greek filmic space as we knew it. I also think that the characteristics of the Greek “Weird Wave” not only serve as creative responses to external constraints, but at the very same time, they contribute to the movement’s identity and its ability to resonate with audiences globally.

A STILL FROM YORGOS LANTHIMOS’ KINETTA. FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER.

A STILL FROM YORGOS LANTHIMOS’ DOGTOOTH. SHOTDECK.

FILM FESTIVALS & CINEMATIC WAVES

Film festivals influence development, recognition, and global reception, by curating and presenting works. As we have seen throughout the history of festivals, they have the power to elevate specific films or film movements, shaping audience perception and influencing the trajectory of film movements. What is more, they give the film industry a platform to meet, network, and exhibit work, and from the 1980s onwards, they went through a major shift: from once being somehow passive platforms and tools for the film industry, to transforming to active players in the industry. The term “cinematic waves” refers to distinct trends in the industry and is characterized by shared themes and styles. In essence, festivals go beyond being showcases and they significantly shape the landscape of film movements.

To further comprehend this symbiotic relationship between film festivals and cinematic movements, I turn to Thomas Elsaesser’s framework. Elsaesser argues that the film festival circuit has become the primary force and power system in the film industry. Specifically, Elsaesser argues that international film festivals serve as a crucial avenue for European films to transcend national boundaries, reintroducing them as a second-order category and fostering a post-national iden-

tity. Furthermore, Elsaesser emphasizes the central role of the festival circuit in the European film industry, impacting various aspects such as authorship, production, exhibition, cultural prestige, and recognition functions. Applying Elsaesser’s perspective to the Greek “Weird Wave”, the recognition garnered by this movement at international film festivals has undoubtedly contributed to establishing it as a notable trend in the global film community. Film festivals have provided a platform for Greek “Weird Wave” films to transcend from their national attributes, reintroducing them as a post-national category. This not only allowed these films to reach a broader audience and gain recognition, but at the same time enabled them to escape the limitations of the national market, reaching international audiences and enhancing the recognition of Greek cinema. This recognition also mobilized filmmakers to catch up with the festival circuit. Once Greek filmmakers realized they can transcend the national origins of their films and that there are platforms that exceed national borders that will support and celebrate their vision, they went full time – eyes on the prize. Because if Dogtooth could make it- then why couldn’t more Greek films?

The way I see it, it’s more about the relationship between content and context, and vice

THE CAST OF DOGTOOTH AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2009 BY ANTOINE DOYEN.

versa – how each gives meaning to the other. It wasn’t just the Greek crisis context per se that became a sensation. It was the filmmakers’ visual commentary, their very unique utilization of allegorical narratives to depict reality on the movie screen –or even escape from it– and the dynamic interplay between these elements that made an impression to programmers. An impression, to the extent that the programmers included these films in their roster and provided them with a platform for exposure. And as mentioned above: yes, the movement was indeed labeled by critics, but its existence was very much constituted by the festival circuit. And that is the power of film festivals.

The films that constitute the Greek “Weird Wave” have been recognized and awarded at prestigious international film festivals. These selections have triggered an international attention to this movement and have led to a wider recognition of Greek cinema and its capabilities to produce progressive and thought-provoking films. The Greek “Weird Wave” has become a significant trend in international cinema and has helped to put Greece on the map in the international film industry for the first time since the Theo Angelopoulos era. The success of Dogtooth was a declaration that films that were exposed internationally in film festivals before premiering in Greece, gained more value by this exposure. Some notable examples that followed the “Lanthimian paradigm”: Panos Koutras’ Strella (2009, Berlin), Filippos Tsitos’s Akadimia Platonos (2009, Locarno) and Adikos Kosmos (2011, San Sebastian), Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg

(2010, Venice), Syllas Tzoumerkas’s Homeland (2010, Venice), Lanthimos’ Alps, (2011, Venice), Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ and Jan Vogel’s Wasted Youth (2011, Rotterdam), Babis Makridis’ L (2012, Sundance).

The exposure these films gained through international film festivals enhanced their value and visibility on the global stage, that is a fact. These works were celebrated for their artistic authenticity and thematic depth, and I would say they have risen above mere commercial appeal and showcased a dedication to artistic integrity. Contrary to concerns about “artistic compromise” within the festival world, these films have demonstrated innovation and cultural significance. They resonated with both festival programmers and audiences alike, and no, they did not just strive to replicate the success of Dogtooth. Instead, they were mobilized, went on, and articulated the concerns of a generation, while also offering fresh perspectives on the realities of their era. And that is precisely what made them so special, and consequently, part of a cinematic wave.

Tracing the journey of Greek “Weird Wave” films from their origins in a troubled Greece to international festival spotlights provides a perspective that describes the movement’s evolution. Before the success of Attenberg and Dogtooth’s Cannes award, the last Greek director to get recognised internationally was Theo Angelopoulos in 1998 for Eternity and a Day winning the Palm d’Or the same year. Now, I am not saying that Greece had no cinema going on, so don’t come at me, but certainly the country’s presence in an international film festival setting was lacking heavily for a decade. The global success of the “Weird Wave” impacted the perception of Greek cinema in a global context, reshaping preconceived notions and establishing a new identity for Greek filmmaking. This very discussion on the evolution of the Greek Weird Wave is the starting point to explore how the wave’s influence continues to resonate in contemporary Greek filmmaking.

And thus, I keep thinking: Are we in a post“Weird Wave” era for Greek productions? How are specific socio-political or cultural factors driving the evolution of Greek cinema post-Greek “Weird Wave”, and how are Greek filmmakers addressing the current contemporary Greek reality in their productions after a decade?

As for the sensation that Yorgos Lanthimos is, one thing is for sure: he is on another level right now. He is no longer constrained by past limitations, securing financing, top gear, and an A-list cast. Lanthimos is certainly in his post-2009 era right now, but since “post” and “meta” are two entirely different things, and since I always enjoy the content and context discussion, I also wonder: is this a meta-Lanthimos era for Lanthimos himself?

LANTHIMOS’ THREE POST-WEIRD WAVE FILMS: THE LOBSTER, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER, AND THE FAVOURITE.

MIXOLOGY BY CAMERON

With each series we cover on the Film Club 3000 podcast our Managing Editor Cameron Linly Robinson curates drinks to pair with each film. For this series Cameron has decided to create shots ... and decided to do double duty to match our discussion of the entire Lanthimos filmography along with other essential Weird Wave films. Join us on the Film Club 3000 Podcast to hear in-depth discussion on each of these films.

Here is a selection of Cameron’s crafted drinks:

“...”

kinetta

.5 oz Ouzo

.5 oz bourbon

.25 oz Demerara simple

3 dash orange bitters

Stir ingredients with ice. Strain into a glass. Garnish with an expressed orange peel.

Greek-inspired take on a classic. Disorienting, yet still pleasant to drink, like an old fashioned, but not! Just like Kinetta, this cocktail flips your taste buds on its head and makes you question what makes something “good” or “bad”. What do you think?

“Punchbowldisco”

strella

1 oz whiskey

.5 oz lemon juice

.5 ox simple syrup

top with soda

Shake and strain. Top with soda.

The way that Queer folk create found family and community is beautifully depicted throughout Strella. This inspired me to craft a social drink like this. Cheers!

“rocky’spunch”

dogtooth

1 oz Rum

.5 oz Pineapple Juice

.5 oz Cranberry Juice

Splash of luxardo cherry juice

Shake and Strain into a glass.

Based on the Prohibition age cocktail, Mary Pickford, named after the actress and co-founder of United Artists. This cocktail honors the creativity that was bred both during Prohibition, which brought us some delicious cocktails, and from United Artists, which–like the filmmakers we’ve covered in Greece– was one of the earliest independent film studios in the United States, made up of creatives supporting each other’s work!

“bloodyantonis”

the eternalreturnofantonisparaskevas

1 oz mezcal

.5 oz tomato water

.25 oz celery simple syrup

.25 oz lime juice

Mix with ice. Strain into a chilled glass.

My take on a classic Bloody Mary. Exactly what you need for a hangover… or, you know, decades of financial decline and crippling debt that leads one to fake their own kidnapping in order to make a headline.

“backfromthedead” alps

1 oz irish cream

1 oz espresso

Orange expression

Chocolate shaving

Combine irish cream and espresso in a shaker and shake with ice. Strain into a chilled glass. Express an orange peel over the beverage and shake some chocolate on top.

Here is a delicious espresso shot with an essence of tart and sweet Mediterranean orange to shock you awake… or bring you back from the dead.

“wasted

beer”

wastedyouth

1.25 oz Licor 43

Irish cream float

Chilled shot glass

Orange zest

Fill a chilled shot glass ¾ of the way with Licor 43. With a bar spoon, float some irish cream on top. Zest an orange on top.

To reminisce on the shitty beer we snuck in our youth, this is a sweet and complicated spiced shot full of rich flavor, disguised as a beer.

“shortsighted” the lobster

1 oz luxardo cherry juice

1 oz Irish Cream

1 oz Grand Marnier

Create each layer by slowly pouring each ingredient into a chilled shot glass with a bar spoon.

This layered shot is meant to represent the three different environments we experience in The Lobster. From the rich and intense hotel to the sweet and spicy love story in the woods to the clean and polish “real world”, these pieces all combine to create a delicious shot! Enjoy!

“pitytoddy”

pity

1 oz ouzo

Hot water

Honey

Dash of cinnamon

Combine ouzo into some hot water with honey and cinnamon. Garnish with a cinnamon stick.

My take on a Hot Toddy with Ouzo! This is the perfect cocktail for a cold, or a gloomy day, or if you’re down on your luck, or if your wife is in a coma, or if your dog got lost in the woods, or…

“smoked&bloody(venison)” thekillingofasacreddeer

1 oz mescal

.5 oz blood orange liqueur

.25 simple syrup

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled glass.

“This meat is delicious.” – Steven Murphy

This emulates the slow burn of this film, as well as a smoked venison marinated in blood orange juice. Drink at your own risk, as this deer may be sacred.

“oil&water”

missviolence

1.25 oz olive oil vodka

.5 oz dry vermouth

Olives

Combine into a shaker and shake. Double strain into a glass. Garnish with olives.

For the olive oil vodka, combine equal parts vodka and olive oil into a container. Allow to sit overnight, shaking every few hours. Double strain out the olive juice.

For Miss Violence, I’ve crafted a take on an olive oil martini. Like its inspiration, this beverage is not for everyone–the oil and vodka don’t quite mix and create a harsh and strong flavor for anyone willing to give it a shot.

“puckerup!”

poorthings

.75 oz Bourbon

.75 oz Apple Pucker

.75 oz Cranberry Juice

Shake and strain into a shot glass.

“I have adventured it and found nothing but sugar and violence.” – Bella Baxter

To match the bizarre and otherworldly aesthetic of Lanthimos’ film I’ve crafted this sweet and sour layered shot that’ll leave your lips puckering and your mind curious for more.

“beboplemonidrop”

attenberg

1 oz Ouzo

.5 oz lemon juice

.5 oz simple syrup

.5 orange liqueur

Salt to rim the glass

Rim your shot glass with salt. Shake and strain into the glass.

For such a slow paced and emotionally conflicting film I’ve crafted this anise flavored shot with the classic Greek liquor, Ouzo. Balanced nicely with some sour lemon juice, it’s a strange shot for sure, but matches the conflicting and utterly strange, yet universal, tones of the film.

WATCHLIST 3000

jAnuAry/februAry 2024

Every issue we leave you with a list of movies compiled from suggestions by our Contributors. These films are a combination of Greek voices and films that echo recurring themes in postmodern Greek cinema: dislocation, loneliness, systematic control. We challenge you to add this incredible collection of films to your watchlist.

VIDEODROME (1983) / DIR. DAVID CRONENBERG

BRAZIL (1985) / DIR. TERRY GILLIAM

SAFE (1995) / DIR. TODD HAYNES

EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) / DIR. STANLEY KUBRICK

SPIRTOKOUTO (MATCHBOX) (2003) / DIR. YANNIS ECONOMIDES

KINETTA (2005) / DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS

DOGTOOTH (2009) / DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS

STRELLA (2009) / DIR. PANOS H. KOUTRAS

ATTENBERG (2010) / DIR. ATHINA RACHEL TSANGARI

CASUS BELLI (2010) / DIR. YORGOS ZOIS

ALPS (2011) / DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS

WASTED YOUTH (2011) / DIR. ARGYRIS PAPADIMITROPOULOS, JAN VOGEL

MISS VIOLENCE (2012) / DIR. ALEXANDROS AVRANAS

HOLY MOTORS (2012) / DIR. LEOS CARAX

NECKTIE (2013) / DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS

THE ETERNAL RETURN OF ANTONIS PARASKEVAS (2013) / DIR. ELINA PSIKOU

INTERRUPTION (2015) / DIR. YORGOS ZOIS

THE LOBSTER (2015) / DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017) / DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS

SUNTAN (2017) / DIR. ARGYRIS PAPADIMITROPOULOS

THE FAVOURITE (2018) / DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS

OBSCURO BARRACO (2018) / DIR. EVANGELIA KRANIOTI

PITY (2018) / DIR. BABIS MAKRIDIS

THIRD KIND (2018) / DIR. YORGOS ZOIS

NIMIC (2019) / DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS

GREENER GRASS (2019) / DIR. JOCELYN DEBOER, DAWN LUEBBE

ELECTRIC SWAN (2019) / DIR. KONSTANTINA KOTZAMANI

APPLES (2020) / DIR. CHRISTOS NIKOU

BRUTALIA, DAYS OF LABOUR (2021) / DIR. MANOLIS MAVRIS

HOLY EMY (2021) / DIR. ARACELI LEMOS

POOR THINGS (2023) / DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS

ANIMAL (2023) / DIR. SOFIA EXARCHOU

ARTISTS

HARRIS SINGER @HARRIS.SINGER.ART

WILLIAM HARVEY @MADMANIS_SAD

CONTRIBUTORS

HARISSA BAKLLAVA is based in Athens, Greece. She is a creative and not something specific, because she cannot decide what she likes to do professionally. On one hand, she started with writing articles, but then she found out about photography and cinema at different times in her life, and every time her whole world changed. So she does it all, and is therefore very overwhelmed.

TANNER BENSON received his MA in Critical Film Studies from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

KEMARI BRYANT (he/him), Editor-in-Chief of Film Club 3000, went to the University of North Carolina Greensboro for Musical Theatre. He was recently seen touring North America in The Book of Mormon. Along with acting, Kemari is a writer, director, and filmmaker; and he is a true cinephile! Follow him on letterboxd @kemaritb.

GARRETT BRADSHAW is a graduate of UNC Greensboro with a BFA in Theater. His love for storytelling spans books, games, plays, television, and movies, all of which he loves writing about. He is a current resident of Atlanta, GA.

ROBERT KARMI graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s film program with bachelor’s and master’s degrees emphasizing critical studies. One professor opined Karmi was omnivorous in his study of cinema, leading to the title of his review blog Omnivorous Cinephilia. When not working on entering a doctorate program, Karmi writes about whatever film subject interests him through multidisciplinary theoretical lenses. He is also on Letterboxd.

JUDE MICHALIK is an aspiring filmmaker ever hungry for poetry in all forms. Living in between Milan and Paris, she’s looking to birth beautiful things, foster genuine connections, and contribute as much as she can to the world of art. If one would like to reach out, she can be found at @judesdelusions on Instagram.

WILLIAM REYNOLDS (he/they), is a final year student at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. When not studying medicine and advocating for inclusive healthcare William is either writing or in the cinema. His writing is largely influenced by his Irish-Vietnamese cultural identity. He adores indie dramas about modern living and has a particular soft spot for 2000’s coming-of-age films. Find him on Letterboxd @will90099 or Instagram @william_909.

CAMERON LINLY ROBINSON (she/her)

Managing Editor of Film Club 3000, she received a BFA in Acting from the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She is not only a film lover, but a writer, director, producer, and filmmaker. Cameron is excited to create this platform for longer essays of film discussions and critiques! Follow her on letterboxd @cam_jam.

THEODOTI SIVRIDI (she/her) is an assistant director and has graduated from University Groningen with an MA in Film & Contemporary Audiovisual Media and a BA in Art History from Athens School of Fine Arts. Her research interests revolve around geographies of cinema and the Greek road movie genre. When she is not writing about film or posting movie screens & film reviews at @theoathemovies on instagram, you can find her dancing salsa at her local bar.

“EVEN TODAY, I’M NOT SURE WHY I MAKE FILMS OR WHAT MAKES ME WANT FILMS. I THINK IT’S OTHER PEOPLE’S FILMS. WHENEVER I SEE A REALLY GREAT FILM, I THINK, ‘I WANT TO MAKE A FILM LIKE THAT.’ AND THEN I NEVER DO.”

– YORGOS LANTHIMOS