Independent filmmakers’ success and recognition at major international film festivals across the globe is creating a ‘new wave’ in Greek cinema. Stephanie Bailey finds out what makes contemporary Greek films tick through conversations with Athina Rachel Tsangari, Syllas Tzoumerkas, and Argyris Papadimitropoulos.

The year 2011 has already proved fertile for Greece’s independent filmmakers. Hot on the heels of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth (2009) Academy Award recognition, Greek films have enjoyed a noticeable presence at international film festivals, from Argyris Papadimitropoulos and Jan Vogel’s Wasted Youth (2010), which opened the 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam, to the Venice Film Festival’s quadruple punch comprising Athina Rachel Tsangari’s second feature Attenberg (2010) (also the first Greek film to ever screen at the Sundance Film Festival this year), Syllas Tzoumerkas’s debut feature Homeland, George Zois’s short film Casus Belli (2010), as well as Filipos Tsitsos’s 2009 Locarno award winner Plato’s Academy. Meanwhile, Kostantinos Giannaris’s Man at Sea (2010) and Bujar Alimani’s Amnesty (2010) both premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival.
What does this say about Greek cinema today? Speaking with Tsangari, co-producer of Dogtooth and writer and director of Attenberg, at the offices of Haos Film, a production company she started with Matt Johnson, she tells me that “it makes sense that in the same year of huge successes by Greek film, the Minister of Culture decided to finally pass the law” supporting the domestic film industry on a number of key issues. This includes bolstering of a 1988 law requiring sharing of theatrical box office revenues among producers, movie-theater owners, distributors and the Greek Film Centre, as well as for terrestrial and cable television channels and mobile phone operators to invest 1.5 per cent of their gross income into film production.
Tsangari attributes the law’s passage to the efforts of Filmmakers in the Mist, a coalition of filmmakers who adopted such actions as boycotting the State Cinema Awards and the 50th Thessaloniki International Film Festival last year in support of their demands. “This was important in terms of a movement. It was the first time Greek filmmakers actually created a community and there was this sense of camaraderie instead of conflict and competition,” Tsangari says. And collaboration is key for Tsangari; something she picked up as a student of Performance Studies at New York University as well as Film Production at the University of Texas–where she co-founded volunteer-run film festival Cinematexas–and as a member of Dimitris Papaioannou’s creative team for the 2004 Olympic Games.
“In the ‘States I learned this collaborative way of working and considered filmmaking not just as making my own films but helping others to make films, learning all aspects of the process, rather than this egocentric idea of being an auteur,” she says. “It’s always a part-life, part-cinema project.”
This resonates with Greek independent film, where collaborative effort is a driving force. In conversation, Syllas Tzoumerkas, actor, writer, director, and musician with a background in documentary television, notes that “what we have in common is that we want to change the way films are produced, financed, and processed. It’s difficult, but there is a lot of passion, and we help each other.” As such there has been an exciting cross-fertilization of directors, producers, actors, musicians, and others who have been assisting each other in a number of different roles and making things happen. As an example, the co-writer of Homeland, Youla Boudali, also stars in the film.
But when talking about a ‘new wave’, Tsangari is not convinced. “You can’t really talk about new cinema with movies like Oi Apenantoi (1981) by Giorgos Panousopoulos in the 1980s. Back then, people made commercials and used that money to make films together.” The contemporary generation simply carry on this tradition. Tsangari continues: “I would say the first film that brought something new to Greek cinema was From the Edge of the City (1998) by Kostantinos Giannaris. He left for England very young, came back in the late 1990s when Athens was becoming multicultural, saw what was going on and made a film; after that were the films of Yiannis Economides [director of the seminal Spirtokouto (2002) who makes a cameo in Wasted Youth]. So I disagree when we talk about new cinema starting in 2008 or whenever. There were films before that already waking up to a new Greece.”
But when it comes to outlooks shaped by local and international influences evolved to adapt to a twenty-first century world, there is a clear connection among the films produced in the last few years. Argyris Papadimitropoulos (also associate producer of Homeland) touches on this as we discuss the echo-boomer generations that witnessed the passing of the analogue age towards a digitally-connected era that nurtures popular subcultures in a more global, de-centralized manner. “We belong to a generation that questions all the time because we’ve had to deal with the entire past and future,” Papadimitropoulos says. Tzoumerkas elaborates: “I think Greece faces specific challenges, from the monetary system, capitalism, this converged world where communication has totally changed us, and how things move in a very fast and uncontrollable way. When you combine this with poverty, and fear of poverty, things can get explosive. Greece is between worlds.”
This leaves a generation continuing to grapple with Greece’s many unresolved identities. “You can’t really get an idea of a clear Greek identity these days. Twenty years ago you could describe a Greek as Greek and really define it. But now nobody really feels Greek; we don’t know what this whole pride of being Greek really means,” says Papadimitropoulos.
Are Greece’s issues–from politics to migration–really isolated?
“I think it’s a delusion to think what is happening in Greece is isolated,” maintains Tzoumerkas. “Of course there are things that are isolated, like how this evolved and was expressed, and reasons for it. But on the other hand, what is going on is part of something bigger. I think that’s why Greece is big internationally as a theme. It speaks about a way of living economically and socially that reaches a dead-end. This is frightening for the whole world. Greece could be a parable for many things.”
The universality exists for Tsangari “in terms of the collapse of political parties and ideology. Organized parties have been extremely important in the political, ideological and family life of Greece in the twentieth century–you were identified by your party. But now you have organized economy and parties don’t really mean much anymore, so there is this sense of loss.” On the flipside, this is where individual actions come in. “There is this developing micro-politics,” Tsangari says. “This hands-on relationship with your everyday life is an action that is really practical. The improvement of one thing can have a ripple effect.” Like the politics of everyday life? “Exactly,” she replies. “Finding these new models is what Greek cinema also suggests. I think it’s a combination of a zeitgeist, curiosity, and rage; there is a new kind of desire for the world around us.”
By encouraging new readings of the world around them, Greece’s cinematic nu-wave is just getting started. “There is a huge social necessity to look inside exactly what is going on today and everyone puts their experience into that, with different focuses,” says Tzoumerkas. This burning sense of purpose runs across the board. As Tsangari observes “for a country with such a long history, we keep talking about cultural and historical memory but we are amnesiacs. It’s like we drug ourselves to forget or we remember the wrong things or have nationalistic pride over things that existed 2,000 years ago. We don’t know how to admire or respect what Greece could be right now.” Holding up a mirror to a troubling, collective present is clearly a necessity; change is also possible in the hands of many.
But the work isn’t over; momentum must be maintained. “I don’t want this to be another Greek firework,” Tsangari insists. “I feel like it is partly my responsibility to maintain this community.” And the battle doesn’t stop there. Tsangari thinks it’s time Greece has a film school because “it’s about being a little bit more civilized. We are very good at cultivating conflict and arguing for our rights; that’s why we are good at protesting, but we are not good at building, especially something that lasts; this is something that has to be taught.” Film aside, building things that last–from ideas to families to political systems–is something that’s relevant to everyone, everywhere. Wake up world, Greece is calling. But this time it’s not using Molotov cocktails and tear gas.

Athina Rachel Tsangari on Attenberg

Attenberg
Written and directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari. Featuring Arlane Labed, Yorgos Lanthimos, Vangelis Mourikis.
Marina is a twenty-three-year-old woman coming to terms with love, sex, and death through relationships with her best friend, a mechanic from out of town, and a dying father against the backdrop of a post-industrial town and the animal documentaries of Sir David Attenborough.

How did the idea for Attenberg begin?
After the Olympics and producing Kinetta (2005), I started working on a series of political documentaries in different war zones, and pushed aside the idea–maybe I wasn’t ready. I really wanted to feel what Greece was and what I had to say about it. When I sat down to write, this question popped into my head: do you imagine me naked? And I was like ‘who is asking who this question’ and ‘why’? I don’t really set out to make a film about a specific subject, it just comes out. I guess it’s an accumulation of experience, things I’m interested in, and how I try to express my place in the world; like timid steps you make in order to understand your environment. I don’t know if Attenberg says a lot about Greece, but it’s my Greece.

You filmed Attenberg in Aspra Spitia, a settlement created in 1960 for the workers of a French-owned aluminum factory. Why?
My dad’s first job was in Aspra Spitia and I lived there until I was six years old. I guess it made a really huge impression on me. When I wrote the script I didn’t know where it was going to take place but I didn’t want it to be in Athens, or in a typical provincial place in Greece. Then talking with my sister I thought, of course; I wrote this script for that place.

There is a scene where Spyros and his daughter Marina are sitting on the balcony and looking over Aspra Spitia. Spyros talks about how people in Greece went from keeping goats to bulldozers and skipped the industrial revolution. Can you explain this scene?
This is basically a brief history of what happened in Greece in the twentieth century. When researching Aspra Spitia, I saw pictures before it was built. This photograph made a huge impression on me. In the foreground were a group of shepherds on the mountain looking down at the construction of this new world that was soon going to take over theirs. Slowly, they all became workers in the aluminum factory that was built, operated and owned by the French up until the beginning of the twenty-first century before changing to Greek hands. Now with automation, there are fewer workers, so Aspra Spitia depicts a town slowly going into decline without really transforming into anything else.

You get the feeling that the town doesn’t know how to transform into anything else because it’s very development into a ‘modern’ town was completely fabricated.
Exactly. It happened so suddenly, so I think that what we are experiencing right now in Greece–which I guess is what Spyros and Marina are experiencing–is this aftershock. In fifty years we went from a ‘third-world country’ to a supposedly ‘first-world country’, but it happened so fast, so clumsily, and without any sense of natural progress.

Spyros then talks about this a bit closer to his death…
I didn’t want to make a huge statement; it’s a confession that Spyros makes in a few minutes. When he says that he is glad to be leaving the twentieth century because it’s so over-rated and he doesn’t feel like he has taught Marina anything or doesn’t have a true legacy, I feel this kind of bitterness in this generation of the 1960s and 1970s who really wanted to create a new Greece. Now my generation and the generations after me are living in the middle of ruins. It’s like what Spyros says: they were designing ruins right from the beginning, with micro-precision.

It’s a good metaphor for Greece.
Yes, and it developed in a very organic way. This was something that was not really in the first life of the script, but as I researched Aspra Spitia and as we slowly moved towards the [economic] crisis–announced right as we were shooting–it ended up being part of it. I mean, Aspra Spitia is a company town, which is very rare not just in Greece but in Europe. It doesn’t really belong in Greece; it belongs to a company.

So how Marina and her father watch wildlife documentaries and imitate animal movements, are they expressing instinctive animal reactions of being exposed to, or trapped by, an artificial reality?
I think so. There must be a reason why it came out instinctively, though I am the last person who can really explain why all these things came. I mean, why did David Attenborough come into the script?! To me it’s very normal that they communicate through animal movements. It demonstrates the love between them the same way we express ourselves as kids; we play games, we scream, we yell; we have this kind of innocence. We lose this sense of liberty when we grow up.

Syllas Tzoumerkas on Homeland

Homeland
Directed by Syllas Tzoumerkas; written by Youla Boudali and Syllas Tzoumerkas. Featuring Amalia Moutoussi, Thanos Samaras, Ioannia Tsirigoudi.
A crushing tale of family and politics set against three generations of one family, Homeland is a story of conflict and control in an ailing society masterfully set against Dionysios Solomos’s Hymn to Freedom, which forms Greece’s national anthem.

What influenced Homeland?
I have many influences but for Homeland I can give a specific reference; a Dutch film from the Seventies called Turkish Delight (1973). It’s Paul Verhoeven’s first film. Through a love story he deconstructs Dutch society. It influenced me a lot and there is a very specific film reference inside Homeland. Verhoeven made a scene where a couple kiss in front of the queen, the girl is standing naked and everyone shouts to cover her up. In Homeland, we filmed a scene at the real litany for Saint Dimitris in Thessaloniki where we had a couple kissing inside the religious crowd, shot like a documentary. This was really challenging for the crew, for the actors, and for the people in the litany. People started pushing them.

Your first short film, Devouring Eyes, premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 1999. Why did it take you so long to produce your first feature film?
Sometimes there is a time for feature films. You have to mature as an artist and filmmaker, to study more and work more to master your art. I had the idea in my mind for four or five years and worked a lot with the script because it’s a very complex story. A family saga with three generations of one family; there is the grandfather who is from the Fifties’ generation, the generation now in power–let’s call them the junta generation–and the younger generation, my generation. It’s a movie about how these generations live together and fight all the time, but we also wanted to shed some light on the political situation as well. It’s a sort of parable. One of the main things in Homeland is that the values of the politics are the values of the family, and it’s really bitter to see it, the violence, and the principles that this family has passed from generation to generation. This reflects the political situation in Greece.

Is this why you reference protests?
In the film you see footage taken from protests from the 1970s to today. You see people running, screaming, fighting, or even applauding political leaders like crazy. But these people have families, have children, are voters, and we are trying to see who they really are. The first shots of today’s demonstrations were filmed in 2007. But in 2008, while we were editing, we had to alter the script and use the December 2008 events in a bigger way. It was really interesting because Homeland was edited and shot during the events, and you can see that in the film; it’s a mixture of archive footage and footage we shot, sometimes with actors inside the demonstrations. The fact that we were making the film at that period gave us an instrument to understand what was going on. It also gave us momentum.

There is a real exploration into the relationships between the family members, but we actually learn very little about them. Why?
It is a control thing and also a village mentality to not exactly say the truth, not say exactly what you mean, and to keep family secrets secret. You will see that a lot in the movie; you never learn the truth until the end and never actually penetrate what exactly happened to this family because it’s played from the point of view of the younger generation. For example, we know little about the 1950s generation except that they were violent to their children but gave us a lot of love. We don’t really know what these people did because there is this secret mentality going and it’s interesting because it’s breaking down now. Also, every character in our film thinks that they know the right thing. This is the tragedy because no one is really malevolent in the way that he or she justifies himself but everyone is so self-righteous about knowing what is right.

How does this relate to Greece today?
There is a phrase by Doris Lessing from the Golden Notebook: “As far as I can see everything is cracking up.” You can see those cracks now and people are freaking out. I think culturally you cannot talk about Greece if you don’t speak about family and politics. This is common ground for many different films from Dogtooth to Wasted Youth to Strella (2009).