Wednesday, December 14, 2011

O διαχειριστής - THE BUILDING MANAGER / 2009

A gently ironic portrait of a midlife crisis. Pavlos takes over the job of building manager just as a sewage pipe bursts. Will Pavlos succeed in fixing the broken sewage pipe before he can fix his own wrecked life? Director Hoursoglou succeeds in creating a faithful, entertaining, and even touching portrait of "ordinary" interpersonal relations. Written by Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Director: Periklis Hoursoglou

Writer: Periklis Hoursoglou

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1545696/

Friday, December 9, 2011

Μέγας Αλέξανδρος ο Μακεδών / Alexandre Le Grand, Macedonien / 2011

Alexandre le Grand a un statut tout à fait unique au regard de l’histoire.

Il est un héros, pour les Grecs et les Romains, un prophète pour les Arabes, un mythe pour les occidentaux. Il a, à lui seul, hellénisé le monde antique jusqu’aux confins de l’Inde en poursuivant sans relâche son ennemi juré Darius, le grand roi des Perses.

Mais derrière le fracas perdu de ses grandes batailles que reste-t-il d’Alexandre ?

Une multitude de représentations du héros, à travers les âges, les styles, les pays. Une figure légendaire inspirant tant et tant jusqu’aux artistes d’aujourd’hui.

Pourtant, du « réel » d’Alexandre, de ce qui l’a entouré, de ce qu’il a vécu, que savons-nous vraiment ?

La plus grande partie des documents ont disparu. Quantité de discours prêtés à Alexandre sont des faux ou des reconstitutions fantaisistes ou intéressées. Les seuls documents véritables qui nous parlent de lui et de son temps ont tout d’abord été retrouvés inscrits dans la pierre dans les cités grecques d’Europe et d’Asie.

Une inscription, notamment, rappelle les conditions imposées aux peuples et aux cités grecs qui adhérèrent à la Ligue de Corinthe en -338 après la victoire de Chéronée par Philippe II, le père d’Alexandre, qui en fût le premier général en chef.

C’est à partir de cette ligue qu’Alexandre put lever son armée et partir pour les confins du monde.

Un royaume qui, au nord de la Grèce, suscite haine et fascination de la part de toutes les cités grecques.

Or que savons-nous de ce royaume, de son histoire, de sa supériorité ?

watch?v=BEgXNdrQCSo&feature=related

ALEXANDER THE GREAT (Pictures from the documentary's production)

DIRECTOR: Bernard George

PRODUCTION: Le musée du Louvre, Arte, Les Films du Tambour de Soie, Minimal Films, ERT

WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY ON LINE:

https://vimeo.com/34132970

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2148829/

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Un bruit qui rend fou / 1995

The complexly interwoven lives of the residents of an isolated Greek island form the basis of this psycho-sexual drama from iconoclastic film-maker Alain Robbe-Grillet. Living on the island are a few native Greeks, several Chinese, who spend their days playing mah-jongg, Nordmann, a boozy screenwriter, and seductive Sarah la-Blonde, the madam at the Blue Villa, the town whorehouse, in which Sarah hides Santa, alias Lotus Blossom. Sarah is teaching Santa to sing an aria from Wagner. One day, Frank, who could be a ghost, arrives on the island. At first he never speaks and appears to be looking for something or someone. It is later learned that he was involved in the supposed death of Santa, who just might be Nordmann's daughter. It is up to the local police chief, Thieu, to figure out what parts of the story are true and what parts are fiction.

Alain Robbe - Grillet pour UN BRUIT QUI RENT FOU

Directors: Dimitri de Clercq, Alain Robbe-Grillet

Writers: Dimitri de Clercq (adaptation), Alain Robbe-Grillet (dialogue)

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114774/

L'écrivain public / 1993

Pour retrouver les ardeurs de la belle Fanny, qui fut la femme de sa vie, Jacques demande a un ecrivain public de composer des lettres d'amour enflamees pour une belle inconnue que, pretend-il, il vient de rencontrer. No genres have been added yet.

Director: Jean-François Amiguet

Writer: Anne Gonthier

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108678/

Αθηναιοι - The Athenians / 1990

This is a series of intersecting stories. A petty crook and former lover of a lazy ingénue steals the box-office receipts from the Odeon of Herodus Atticus, on the day an important football game is also taking place. There is also the story of the half-mad mother of the ingénue who refuses to put shoes on because she believes that shoes lead people astray. An eccentric grave-digger produces a two-seater coffin for couple-victims of car accidents. The film also tells the story of one of the Odeon's cleaning women and of a watermelon that goes all around the city, pursued by a tired theater technician and his sister, who is a tour guide. The impresario conducts an inquiry after the theft, but the thief and his two associates, the ingénue and the technician, use what was stolen to set up a small theatre. Small everyday stories and comic incidents combine to create a portrait of modern-day Athens.

Director: Vasilis Alexakis

Writer: Vasilis Alexakis

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235992/

Λαβύρινθος - Labyrinth / 1988 (short animation)

Η ταινία στηρίζεται σε μια ιδέα του Ν. Γιαννόπουλου: Κάποιος αποφυλακίζεται. Καθώς περιπλανάται, καταλαβαίνει ότι βρίσκεται σε ένα λαβύρινθο. Ο λαβύρινθος αυτός είναι...

Director: Giorgos Baganas

Writers: Nikos Giannopoulos (idea), Giorgos Baganas

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1423952/

Κλειστό Κύκλωμα - Closed Circuit / 1989

This is the story of divorced couple, of two young people who have a seven -year old daughter.

The little girl lives with her mother, and her father lives in the same neighborhood, so that she can visit him often. The father comes up with the idea to install a closed TV- circuit between the two homes, so that his daughter can contact him any time of the day and this feel less the separation of her parents. The mother permits the installation of the circuit...

However, none of the two parents suspect that this new means of communication will ruin their clear cut relationship, since the circuit gives them the possibility to interfere in one another's privet live

Director's commentary

This story rhymes. like a poem, like the Ivrics of a song: Ever repeating events in a game of reflections and «mirages» between facing mirrors, a game where everything is the same and different at the same time.

The heroes struggle in the «whirlpool» of a realitv where charm is svnonvmous to the uncertainty. the mistakes, the contradictions and the retrogressions that characterize their begaviour. Nevertheless they make no effort to escape.

Charmed by this dangerous communication game, thev try to live with one another, relying solely on their insticts. st) thev improv ise.

Fort theY know that «katharsis» will not come, unless they master the rules ol the game.

Director:Nikos Giannopoulos

Writers:Nikos Giannopoulos, Soula Pierakou

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0263575/

Το Βλέμμα του Δαίδαλου - Dedalo's look / TV 1985

The dominant subject of this telefilm titled "Dedalos' look" is time.

Through an ordinary relationship between a young film-director and a journalist, who work together on a documentary on the great author Nikos Kazantzakis, arises the question of our link with the past and whether it exits.

We all feel the need to make history, but we eventualy realise that we cannot bring back or recreate the past through facts and people only.

There are other elements as well (such as the wishes, the ambitions, the secret thoughts, the different attitudes towards behaviors and statements) which, though absolutely necessary for the objective evaluation of the past, are often omitted, being forgotten as time goes by.

When the hero of the film reaches this conclusion, he leaves the documentary on Kazantzakis unfinished seeing it like a puzzle, some pieces of which are missing, while even those existing are not necessarily put in the right place.

His girlfriend, the journalist, firmly disagrees with this attitude, considering it to be a luxury in our times' conventionalism

This disagreement puts an end to the young couple's relationship that was built on their common effort in creating the documentary.

The creators of this film, while never aiming at convincing the spectator, try to make as clearly as possible their point on an existential problem, naturally seen through their own angle.

Director: Nikos Giannopoulos

Writer: Dimitris Nollas

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292282/

Big Blue - Le grand bleu / 1988

Enzo and Jacques have known each other for a long time. Their friendship started in their childhood days in the Mediterranean. They were not real friends in these days, but there was something they both loved and used to do the whole day long: diving. One day Jacques' father, who was a diver too, died in the Mediterranean sea. After that incident Enzo and Jacques lost contact. After several years, Enzo and Jacques had grown up, Johanna, a young clerk in a security office, has to go to Peru. There she meets Jacques who works for a group of scientists. He dives for some minutes into ice-cold water and the scientists monitor his physical state that is more like a dolphin's than a human's. Johanna can not believe what she sees and gets very interested in Jacques but she's unable to get acquainted with him. Some weeks later, back in her office, she notices a championship for divers that is supposed to take place in Taormina, Italy. In order to see Jacques again she makes up a story so the firm sends her to Italy for business purposes. In Taormina there is also Enzo, the reigning diving world champion. He knows that only Jacques can challenge and probably beat him. This time Johanna and Jacques get closer, but Jacques, being more a dolphin than a man, can not really commit and his rivalry with Enzo pushes both men into dangerous territory...

Director: Luc Besson

Writers: Luc Besson (story), Luc Besson (screenplay)

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/

Liban, le pays du miel et de l'encens / 1988

Fournier, a doctor, arrives in Beirut, having previously practised in Paris. He is met by Morin, another doctor who is disillusioned with the situation in Beirut and wishes to return to Paris.

Médecins des hommes (TV series 1988)

Director: Maroun Bagdadi

Writers: Maroun Bagdadi, Didier Decoin

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0655664/

Olympus Force: The Key (1988)

A group of terrorists hijack a bus in modern Greece. The gods intervene...

Directors: James Fortune, Robert Garofalo

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1964972/

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Mangeclous (1988)

French/Israeli filmmaker Moshe Mizrahi wrote and directed this adapation of the fanciful comic novel by Albert Cohen. Set in 1938, it tells the farcical story of a band of five French speaking Greek Jews who seek to have their status as self-appointed ambassadors of a Palestinian Zionist state recognized by the League of Nations in Geneva. The five are played by veteran French comic actors Pierre Richard, Bernard Blier, Jacques Villeret, Jacques Dufilho and Jean-Luc Bideau. The film follows their rambling odyssey from their native Greek island to Marseilles to Geneva, where they involve a Polish Jewish immigrant (played by actor/singer Charles Aznavour in their scheme.

Director: Moshé Mizrahi

Writers: Moshé Mizrahi, Albert Cohen (novel)

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095582/

Ο Παράδεισος ανοίγει με αντικλείδι - Flying Ants / 1987

In Athens during the 1950s, two children meet an acrobat (Ian Dury) and his assistant, who make their living doing dangerous stunts. When the assistant is arrested, the children decide to help the acrobat rescue her. The police chase them, but they manage to escape thanks to the acrobat’s balloon.

Director: Vasilis Boudouris

Writers: Vasilis Boudouris, Petros Tatsopoulos

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0180038/

Η Φωτογραφία - La Photo / 1987

Un film qui mêle les genres : sur fond politique (le régime militaire des colonels dans la Grèce de 1971, et la difficulté d'intégration des immigrés à Paris), c'est une comédie de mœurs en même temps qu'un suspense tragique et une allégorie poétique.

L'argument en est simple : Ilyas, qui a quitté la Grèce qui est alors sous le régime des Colonels, fait tomber la photo d'une chanteuse et dit à son cousin que c'est sa sœur. Gérassimos tombe amoureux de la photo, et Ilyas pousse jusqu'au bout ce mensonge avec beaucoup de mauvaise conscience, car il s'est mis à aimer passionnément son cousin.

Une amitié-passion entre le jeune Ilyas et son cousin « parisien » Gérassimos, qui se développe sur fond de trahison, et ne peut qu'aboutir au drame :

Amitié-passion entre deux hommes, sorte d'homosexualité sans sexe, retardement infini de l'orgasme pris de vitesse par le mécanisme tragique, "La Photo" va plus loin que la simple idée de sexe suggérée par le mot homosexualité, peut-être justement parce que le film ne montre pas de sexe.

Tuer par amour

L'amitié que porte Ilyas pour Gérassimos contient en elle le germe de la trahison. Le jeune trahit moins par volonté délibérée de trahison qu'en raison de l'intervention du destin, donc d'un élément qui lui échappe. Il y a cette photo qui occasionne un petit mensonge, sur lequel il lui est désormais impossible de revenir. Il est pris alors entre l'amour réel qu'il porte à cet homme et l'impossibilité de lui révéler sa trahison. Quant au personnage féminin du trio de "La Photo", il est mythique, il représente une sorte d'idéal de la féminité pour lequel Gérassimos s'est enflammé. Et c'est pour que Gérassimos ne soit pas déçu par la réalité, qu'Ilyas, par amour, provoquera sa mort.

Director: Nikos Papatakis

Writer: Nikos Papatakis

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093733/

WATCH THE FILM ON LINE AT YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cErmrI7wXs

L'arbre sous la mer (1985)

Mathieu, un jeune géologue, d'esprit très cartésien, se rend sur une petite île grecque pour y étudier les arbres pétrifiés. Cette île n'est habitée que par un pêcheur et sa fille, étrange personnage qui passe sa vie dans la mer et prétend y rencontrer un être avec lequel elle se sent en parfaite harmonie : un dauphin. Peu à peu, sous l'effet de la magie de l'île, Mathieu abandonne son assurance et ses certitudes. Lentement, cette envoûtante fille de l'eau va l'attirer dans son monde.