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“IMMIGRATION IN GREEK CINEMA” (ALL FILMS HAVE ENGLISH SUB-TITLES) OPENING NIGHT Tuesday, Sept, 2nd 6:30pm Correction 2007 Dir. Thanos Anastopoulos Feature Color 87’ Yorgos Symeoforidis a dour Greek in his early 30s who checks into a day center for former prisoners. He immediately starts tracking a young mother (Ornela Kapetani), who works in a restaurant and has a daughter (Savina Alimani). Both seem to know him, but she shrugs him off in the street; he responds by getting a job in the same eatery, run by an Albanian (Bujar Alimani). Meanwhile, Yorgos is hounded by some right-wing nationalist thugs he used to hang with. Opening Night Tickets: $25 (incl. Foods and Drinks) DISCUSSION FORUM : "IMMIGRATION IN Greek CINEMA" Wednesday, Sept 3, 7pm (FREE ENTRY) In A Foreign Land”: An open forum discussion exploring the theme of immigration in Greek cinema. Panelists include academics such as Professor Vrasidas Karalis from Sydney University and overseas guests which include Dr Athena Kartalou, Editor of the publication “Immigration in Greek Cinema:1956-2006” The Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria Road, Marrickville, Phone (02) 9550 3666 105 Victoria Road, Enmore
Thursday, Sept 4 7:15pm A nostalgic, bitter-sweet comedy about the coming of age of Fanis, a young Greek boy growing up in Constantinople, whose grandfather, teaches him that both food and life require 'a touch of spice' to give them flavour.
Friday, Sept 5 A segment of the life of a Greek worker who lives and works in France. 7:45pm Yetou/Henriette, Stavros/Gustave, Amphilochios/Frédéric… Two names, two identities. French of Greek descent who live in Marseilles. Men and women with a dual identity that intrigues them.They each have their own answer to give. Some even dare to attempt a “return”. But they all have an unshakeable belief: their history, the family epos that reconciles them with themselves, with their roots.Yetou, our heroine, helps us collect these stories, leading us from one person to another. Her own story is the emblem of all the others. For, like Marseilles is to Greece, so too is she a distant daughter… SESSION #1 ADULTS: $11, CONCESSION: $9 Saturday, Sept 6 11:00AM 3:45pm The letters of an immigrant from Gytheio who went to America at the turn of the 20th century. 4:25pm The film is based on Alexandros Papadiamandis’ short story The American (1891).The inhabitants of a village prepare to welcome back one of their countrymen who had immigrated to America.Thinking that he is immensely wealthy they dream of the charitable contributions that he can make to his island. Their disappointment is great when they realize that he arrives there sick and poor to spend the rest of the time he has left in his village. SESSION #2 ADULTS: $11, CONCESSION: $9 Saturday, Sept 6 Afilm triptych: Three stages in the life of a mountain villager, who comes down to the valley and from there to Piraeus, to emigrate to Australia. The third part takes place in the poor neighborhoods of Piraeus.Alexis Damianos’s film was an attempt to do "auteur cinema" outside the dominant studio system of commercial Greek cinema during this period. SESSION #1 ADULTS: $11, CONCESSION: $9 Sunday, Sept 7 Set in Kreuzberg, this documentary explores the lives and problems in a neighborhood in West Berlin where Greek and Turkish 1:55pm Berlin. The film relates a series of tragicomic stories about people who run into each other in the course of an unsuccessful “Polterabend” (the traditional German party thrown on the eve of a wedding) in honor of an American guy and a German girl, being held in a quirky, dilapidated café. Stories about people who have lost their aim in life: they don’t want what they have and what they desire they will presumably never acquire.When they realize the absurdity of this trap they want to rebel, to pretend, to play, to dream! To celebrate their misfortune if only for one night. A film about the quest for some sort of security in life, a haven, what we call "home, sweet home". SESSION #2 ADULTS: $11, CONCESSION: $9 Sunday, Sept 7 Eight-year-old Lulu gathers snails in the park where she goes every day with her mother. Her obsession with the snails leads her to develop a special relationship with a strange foreigner who haunts the park–with unexpected results. 4:15pm An attorney arrives from America and tries to locate the heir to the huge fortune of a deceased Greek- American.The only information he has is the name “Papadopoulos”. SESSION #3 ADULTS: $11, CONCESSION: $9 Sunday, Sept 7 Thomas came to the village and told us about the four dead kids.Almost all of the back of Thanassis Cotsis’ head had been blown away, he said.We made up our minds.Tonight we ‘re leaving for Greece. Where are we going? To the homeland, says I. To disaster, says Thomas and laughs”. The journey of three young refugees, members of the Greek minority of Albania, and their acquaintance with contemporary Greek society. SESSION #1 ADULTS: $11, CONCESSION: $9 Monday, Sept 8 Natasha, a Russian refugee, seeks a place in the Greek sun. “Are there any lions in Greece?” asks the protagonist of Anton Chekhov’s The Wedding”, and the answer he receives has become a maxim in Russia: “In Greece you can find anything!”. In recent years, thousands of people from the former Soviet Union decided to discover whether the maxim is true. They went through a lot in search of their “lions”. Will they ever find them? SESSION #2 ADULTS: $11, CONCESSION: $9 Monday, Sept 8 One morning, a young man boards an inter-city bus on its daily route to Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. He hijacks the bus at gunpoint and takes seven of the passengers hostage. In his left hand he holds a grenade. In the right, a Kalashnikov. This is the story of 25-year-old Albanian immigrant Elion Senia. While his demands include a ransom of half-a-million euros and safe passage to his homeland, his basic cry is simple: “I want my honour”. As events unfold, they are broadcast live on national television. For the next twenty hours, a wild, and at times bleakly comic chase, winds its way through northern Greece. The bus leads a convoy of police cars, television crews, desperate relatives, and bystanders….all the while heading towards the Albanian border…. SESSION #1 ADULTS: $11, CONCESSION: $9 Tuesday, Sept 9 The film is the first part of a trilogy on emigration. It investigates and dissects the issue from the point of view of the Greek workers’ community in Heidelberg and explores the social problems the community faces, the harsh working and living conditions and the effects of these hardships on the health of the emigrants. The personal story of a young Greek who abandoned his village and found himself in Heidelberg. Years later, Υorgos from the village of Sotirianika in Mani, now a successful restaurant owner, talks about his early years when he arrived in Germany as an immigrant and the difficulties of adjusting to a foreign country. The film attempts to determine and record the differing views that comprise and preserve the myth of Greekness. 8:10pm This documentary attempts a reverse journey from the one described by Lefteris Xanthopoulos in his documentary Yorgos from Sotirianika in the ‘70s. Now settled in Athens,Yorgos Kozombolis returns to Heidelberg in Germany and tries to recognize the people and the city he left behind 16 years ago and to answer the question he asks himself - whether returning to Greece was the right decision.The journey from Greece to Germany awakens the memories of a lifetime. His homesickness for Greece has been replaced by the dream of returning to Germany.“We were uprooted from here and over there we never managed to put down roots”. Suspended between Heidelberg and Sotirianika he confesses that all his life he has found himself “on the border”. CLOSING NIGHT SESSION #1 ADULTS: $11, CONCESSION: $9 Wednesday, Sept 10 7:00pm Summer of 1922. Photographer Norman Harris and Niki are sailing to America aboard the same ship. Norman in first class and Niki in third, together with some 700 other brides.They all carry the photograph of a bridegroom they have never met in their little trunks as well as their bridal gown. Norman is touched when he sees the brides in third class. Niki is the one who makes the greatest impression on him. Gradually, they get to know each other and fall in love.The transatlantic liner "SS King Alexander" sails into New York harbor. On deck, the epilogue of the Niki-Norman relationship is played out. Brides is a story about strong emotions, about dilemmas, about conscience, about a responsible attitude. It is about the little moments, the glances, the touches, the "yeses" and the "nos" that count in life.
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