Queer Times: How Thessaloniki International Doc… | Little White Lies

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Queer Times: How Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Doc Fes­ti­val are cel­e­brat­ing LGBTQ+ Cinema

26 Mar 2024

Two people embracing and kissing near a display of apples.
Two people embracing and kissing near a display of apples.
A report from the 2024 TIDF sees art, empa­thy, a bit of vio­lence and a hope­ful vision for the future of Greek cinema.

In the sprawl­ing port city of Thes­sa­loni­ki, with its com­bi­na­tion of Byzan­tine archi­tec­ture dat­ing back cen­turies, and walls bedecked in vivid graf­fi­ti art, there’s an omnipresent poster of two char­coal-sketched fig­ures in an embrace. The art­work for the 26th annu­al Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val loomed large around the city as the fest opened its doors for a feast of non­fic­tion films from around the world. 

Run by the same organ­is­ers as the Novem­ber edi­tion of the fes­ti­val that focus­es on fea­tures, held in the sec­ond-largest city in Greece, it wel­comes artists, stu­dents and film­go­ers of all stripes. But it is large­ly a Greek-lan­guage audi­ence who sees and enjoys its selec­tions, smat­tered as they are across repur­posed ware­hous­es around the city’s dock-based infra­struc­ture. With that in mind, as a first-time vis­i­tor to both city and fes­ti­val, I endeav­oured to learn as much as I could about the selec­tion of domes­tic film­mak­ing on show.

A par­tic­u­lar high­light includ­ed Cit­i­zen Queer’, a strand of films ded­i­cat­ed to cel­e­brat­ing and depict­ing a wide vari­ety of LGBTQ+ lives in Greece and abroad. At home, though, this was of par­tic­u­lar inter­est: 2024 is a his­toric year in Greece, with the Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian coun­try legal­is­ing same-sex mar­riage. The polls show that the pop­u­la­tion is in major­i­ty sup­port of this rul­ing by a slen­der mar­gin, so the ongo­ing dis­course – and films which con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to it – are cru­cial. Head of the Greek pro­gramme at TIDF, Eleni Androut­sopoulou, spoke to LWL about the process of selec­tion for the fest in terms of domes­tic picks, as well as the nation­al film indus­try in Greece. 

We try every year to have a trib­ute to an impor­tant Greek doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er. This year, we have Pana­gi­o­tis Evan­ge­lidis, a very impor­tant screen­writer and direc­tor, as well as a trans­la­tor. We will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see his new film, Sylvia Robyn, and all of his films are about queer top­ics. Sylvia Robyn is about a trans per­son,” she says. Evan­ge­lidis’ film Tilos Wed­dings was a major con­ver­sa­tion-starter in Greece about same-sex mar­riage, and it was impor­tant to screen this film because the Greek gov­ern­ment has legalised it. So we want­ed to do this as a state­ment,’ she says.

A tox­ic and unfor­tu­nate reminder of the need for that state­ment – and the need to depict trans lives onscreen – came over the week­end I was in Thes­sa­loni­ki. Just a short walk from my hotel, in Aris­totelous Square, a trans cou­ple attend­ing the fes­ti­val were attacked by a black-clad mob who spat and threw bot­tles at them. Mer­ci­ful­ly no one was seri­ous­ly hurt, but this hate­ful trans­pho­bia was pre­cise­ly the kind of thing the pro­gram­mers of TIDF26 were look­ing to combat.

Variety of plush toys and figurines on a wooden table, with a person in a black shirt visible in the background.

In Evan­ge­lidis’ lat­est film, Sylvia Robyn, the film­mak­er takes a deeply inti­mate look at the slow move toward tran­si­tion the pro­tag­o­nist under­takes, but also exam­ines her strug­gles and expe­ri­ences with lone­li­ness, neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and a com­plex fam­i­ly back­ground. Evan­ge­lidis pulls no punch­es, unflinch­ing­ly depict­ing his subject’s dif­fi­cul­ties with self-harm and even unsim­u­lat­ed mas­tur­ba­tion. It’s a sur­pris­ing jour­ney, although it is some­times uncom­fort­able in its inti­ma­cy with the sub­ject (close-ups on slop­py eat­ing, etc). Yet it also paints an increas­ing­ly poignant pic­ture of alien­ation and indi­vid­u­al­ism. That Sylvia’s sense of self and her hap­pi­ness emerges along­side her gen­der iden­ti­ty is clear.

In Lesvia, Greek film­mak­er Tzeli Had­jidim­itri­ou explores the gap between the island of Lesvos as a his­tor­i­cal fix­ture and pil­grim­age spot for les­bian tourists, and its own island pop­u­la­tion, who often feel over­looked or irri­tat­ed by that exter­nal activ­i­ty. A ten­der­ly-made look at ten­sions with­in and out­side of the queer com­mu­ni­ty, set on the daz­zling beach­es of this hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion, Lesvia does what the best of non­fic­tion film sets out to: bring to vivid life an oth­er­wise-unseen niche.

Oth­er social con­cerns appeared among the docs shown, not least the migrant cri­sis in the Mediter­ranean. Inter­na­tion­al co-pro­duc­tion The Pick­ers, direct­ed by Elke Sasse, is a med­i­ta­tive and effec­tive explo­ration of sev­er­al nations’ exploita­tive rela­tion­ship to migrant fruit pick­ers and farm labour­ers, includ­ing Greece. Fol­low­ing indi­vid­ual sto­ries of those who took per­ilous jour­neys from Mali, Pak­istan, Moroc­co and else­where – only to find them­selves caught in a web of immi­gra­tion red-tape and back-break­ing, under­paid work – the film cap­tures the sto­ry of the hands that picked the fruit in our super­mar­kets in unset­tling ways.

TIDF pro­vides a vital and some­times rare plat­form for Greek doc­u­men­taries to be shown on domes­tic Greek screens, since cin­e­ma dis­tri­b­u­tion is expen­sive and hard to man­age. As Sylvia Robyn film­mak­er Evan­ge­lidis told HPFA’s Gold­en Globes in 2023, “[Doc­u­men­tar­i­ans] are bad­ly treat­ed here in Greece – no one gets paid, the state doesn’t give much, the foun­da­tions maybe give a lit­tle bit… so even a lit­tle bit of mon­ey sounds like a mir­a­cle from heaven.” 

Androut­sopoulou agrees: Most doc­u­men­taries are hand­made, with a small crew and very small fund­ing. Most of the Greek direc­tors are ded­i­cat­ed to doc pro­duc­tion with pas­sion, effort, and the help of their friends,” she adds.

Autumn-coloured leaves on tree, person wearing white hat and dark clothing, standing among foliage.

Along­side their work at TIDF to pro­vide a plat­form for Greek doc­u­men­tar­i­ans, there is also a larg­er ded­i­ca­tion to get­ting Greek issues, themes, and his­to­ry to inter­na­tion­al audi­ences beyond just the realm of doc­u­men­tary film. Androut­sopoulou and a team of her hard-work­ing col­leagues are cur­rent­ly deep in the research in order to build an online, bilin­gual Greek film archive, some­thing she calls a Greek IMDb”, of sorts.

Along with pro­duc­tion infor­ma­tion, stills and oth­er mate­r­i­al, the key fac­tor is that this data­base is set to con­tain infor­ma­tion about the where­abouts, for­mat, and rights-hold­ers for those who would like to exhib­it Greek films. It’s a part­ner­ship of the film fes­ti­val, the Hel­lenic Acad­e­my of Cin­e­ma, and the Greek Film Cen­tre. We’re scan­ning the archives and try­ing to put it on a plat­form. We also will have video inter­views with impor­tant Greek film­mak­ers speak­ing about their expe­ri­ence. We’ve start­ed with 2000 films for the first year, and it’s a big under­tak­ing, because most of the time the archives are in the house of the direc­tors,” Androut­sopoulou explains.

This move will help pro­mote the work of direc­tors like Takis Kanel­lopou­los, a TIDF-cel­e­brat­ed film­mak­er who made both non-fic­tion and fea­ture films and one of the few who remained based in Thes­sa­loni­ki for his entire career. In spite of a remark­able series of New Wave-influ­enced ethno­graph­ic and roman­tic films in the 60s and 70s, his work remains lit­tle-seen in Greece – nev­er­mind out­side of it.

The most impor­tant thing is that it will be in Greek and Eng­lish, and if there is a print avail­able in case a fes­ti­val from abroad, for exam­ple, might want to organ­ise a ret­ro­spec­tive. This is impor­tant for us, because right now, if I want­ed to do a trib­ute, I have to call my friends from the indus­try to ask for infor­ma­tion, or chase to find out if the wife of a direc­tor is alive. And it’s a pity, because many organ­i­sa­tions from abroad want to do trib­utes,” she says. 

With such ded­i­ca­tion from Androut­sopoulou and her col­leagues to pro­tect­ing Greek cin­e­ma past and present, it seems like a mat­ter of time before more of it is being beamed into cin­e­mas and dis­cov­ered by inter­na­tion­al cinephiles. In the mean­time, to vis­it TIDF’s cin­e­ma ware­hous­es, muse­ums, and fes­ti­val hubs, and to explore the work they do, is to be impressed by the pas­sion and knowl­edge therein.

The Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val ran from 7 to 17 March. The Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val runs from 31 Octo­ber to 10 Novem­ber 10.

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