Film buffs eyes’ may be on the Thessaloniki Film Festival but independent filmmakers are transforming the industry from the inside. Elektra Venaki reports.
Funding and distribution have always held back independent filmmakers. Digital technologies have eased both somewhat, by making filming more affordable and providing alternative platforms for reaching audiences but the fact remains that you still need money to make a film and you need somewhere to show that film to make some of that money back. So some independent filmmakers have decided to go to their audience for financing.
Aris Hatzistefanou and Katerina Kitidi caused the Greek film industry to sit up and take note with their first documentary, Debtocracy. It wasn’t the subject matter–Greece’s economic crisis and alternative ways to dealing with Greece’s crippling debt than the IMF- and EU-backed bailout–but its “producers”, the Greek public. To make their documentary, Hatzistefanou and Kitidi relied on donations, both credited (at the end of the film) and anonymous. As a non-commercial venture produced under a Creative Commons license, the documentary is available for download on Youtube.com in several languages and may be copied and distributed with full credit. Their success with Debtocracy, which has had more than two million views globally and won several festival awards, prompted Hatzistefanou and Kitidi to seek more funding from potential views for their next project, Catastroika– a documentary about privatization. The “crowdfunded” documentary will look at transfers of public assets into private hands around the world, analyzing the data with an eye to the Greek privatization program agreed as part of its bailout deal.
Other filmmakers are also exploring alternate sources of financing. Thanos Kermitsis, director of the fantasy war drama Hitokiri II: Road to Destiny shot on mini DV, and former newspaper cartoonist and illustrator Yannis Roumboulias are using the indie-Gogo platform to find money for their project The Dragonphoenix Chronicles: Indomitable. A swordand-sorcery film, it’s based on Roumboulias’s awardwinning comic book series The Dragonphoenix Chronicles. Set in the world of Elebros, the plot revolves around the barbarian gladiator Dragar trying to return home to his wife after being captured and placed into service by the slave-trader Flavius.
It’s hard to predict whether either project–or both–will be successful in raising the required funds. But it’s clear that digital technologies haven’t just opened new paths for production of films but also for financing and producing films. Crowdfunding and web-based project clearinghouses like indieGogo are a significant departure from a Greek cinema that relied heavily on state support.
But what about distribution–and getting films into theaters. For some years, the state had operated a sort of bonus scheme for theater owners screening Greek films, albeit ones produced through the Greek Film Center. Indie directors are again showing their creativity: two for the price of one.
Independent film directors George Georgopoulos and Zaharias Mavroidis joined in a co-distribu-tion deal aimed at getting their films into theaters faster than waiting for a single distribution deal. Both films were do-it-yourself productions made virtually without a budget and recorded in DCP, or digital cinema package format–a new way for audiences to experience theater screenings. Both films are set in Athens, but the similarities end there. Georgopoulos’s Tungsten follows six characters, whose lives intersect, on a day in which a blackout leaves the city without electricity. Mavroidis’s O Xenagos (The Guide) is about a young man trying to balance the demands of his personal life with those of his clients as he guides them around the city’s architecture.
“Every director’s first feature film is a long journey, and when this journey begins as an indie production, the adventure is guaranteed,” said the directors in a joint statement. “Tungsten and O Xenagos are two films that were completed against all odds, without production company, without money–but thanks to the dedication and generosity of the creative people behind them.” Two cinemas have agreed to screen the films in double bill–two features for the price of one. They’re expected to hit theaters in late November and it’s a fair bet that many Greek filmmakers will be watching to see how the experiment fares.