To each their voice; Theo Angelopoulos & Nikos Panayotopoulos – by Antonis Kokkinos, Yannis Soldatos
Thursday, March 30th 2023, 6:00 p.m., Hall 3, German premiere
– Out of competition –
In the mid-80s, Aigokeros publishing house intended – although without success – to publish a magazine themed around film and theatre. The main topic of each issue would be a conversation (in the form of an interview) between two auteurs, either of cinema or theatre. Theo Angelopoulos and Nikos Panayotopoulos were chosen by the editorial board for the first issue. The two of them were indisputably the key figures of Greek cinema at the time, and they were also placed among the pioneers of New Greek Cinema. In this context, Antonis Kokkinos and Yannis Soldatos recorded a three-hour interview between Theo and Nikos on a summer evening at Angelopoulos’ house at the coastal area of Mati, Attica. The interview brought to the fore not only their shared trajectory, but also the different routes they followed from one point onwards, starting from their years in Paris and moving to their spectacularly failed attempt to prepare Angelopoulos’ first film – in the short film The Forminx Story, Panayotopoulos worked as an assistant director. 35 years later, this previously unreleased conversation was traced in-between tapes and transcripts! Given that the two protagonists have passed away, this conversation stands as a valuable piece of documentation of the creators’ perspective on their own work (both the existing and the future), as well as a thorough insight into New Greek Cinema and world cinema by and large.
The film will be screened out of competition for Documentary Award by MuSou.
Antonis Kokkinos
Antonis Kokkinos is a civil engineer and a graduate of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He studied cinema at Hellenic Cinema and Television School Stavrakos, while working as an assistant director with Nikos Nikolaidis and Thanasis Renzis, among others. His first feature film The End of an Era won eight state awards and participated in more than 40 international film festivals worldwide. He has directed a lot of feature and short films, documentaries and TV series. He has also worked as a radio producer for many years. He also teaches cinema at private schools. Since 2018, he has run educational film programmes in the prisons of Korydallos and Thebes.
Yannis Soldatos
Yannis Soldatos was born in Lefkada. He is a film historian, novelist, playwright and filmmaker. He is the author of the History of Greek Cinema and the founder of Aigokeros publications. He has written and published, among others, the books: In Aries Constellation (novel); Alexis Damianos (critical biography); The Riddle (novel); Thanassis Vengos: An All-Weather Man (biography); Love Underwater (novel); Dionysus: King of the Mountains (novel); The Odyssey of Bodies in Nikos Koundouros’ Work (biography); Α History of Nudity in Film (critical research); Lovestruck Train (novel); Greek Cinema and Greek Literature (critical research). He has created the television series Adventure of a Poem and The Book. He has also directed the features Theofilos Tsafos’ Apology; Steps; The Riddle; Love Underwater; The Lives of Saints; Fyodor, the Player; Apache Invasion; the documentary An All-Weather Man and other documentary films for television. 20 of his plays have been published and staged. He has taught cinema history in film and drama schools. He has served as the General Secretary of the Greek Film Critics Association (PEKK) and as the President of the Association of Book Publishers (S.E.K.B.).
