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47th THESSALONICA FILM FESTIVAL Written by Giannis Frangoulis Translated by Konstantinos Vassilaros

CLOSING CEREMONY – THE AWARDS

After ten intense days of screenings and premieres, the 47th Thessalonica Film Festival reached its conclusion. As scheduled, this past Sunday the closing ceremony took place and today the Festival organized more screenings of all Greek films for the people who missed them.

Before the Ceremony The closing ceremony had precisely the same concept as the Opening Ceremony. Before referring to the Closing Ceremony we have to mention some problems that took place before the commencement. The attendance was far more than expected and as a result a chaotic atmosphere was created in front of the entrance. The first question that rose was how to enter the building? Somebody told us the entrance was the side doors, just like what happened at the Opening Ceremony. After a tribulation of different and contradictory answers, we finally found out that we were actually once again had to enter from the same side doors from the Opening Ceremony. The Press Office must have forgotten to notice the security staff. Who knows? When finally we managed to get in we noticed that the seats were far less than the actual invitations given out. We soon after learned that the invitations were given out without any control and also were not sufficient, in order to invite all the appropriate people. At this point someone could easily tell me, why was it so bad to give out so many invitations? By no means! Only if in fact they had booked a bigger room, similar to the Music House (where the Award ceremony for the National Award will take place) or the Royal Theatre. This is an matter that the Administration of the Festival and the Organizers should solve for the next Festival. After acquiring the respectable seats, the Closing Ceremony commenced with the usual hosts, actors Giorgos Pyrpasopoulos and Athina Maximou, the same as the ones at the Opening Ceremony. Yet another time we realized that Athina Maximou simply cannot deliver a simple phrase without clogging every 2 minutes. Why did they even offer her this job? Did we run out of decent actresses? The direction of the ceremony was precisely the same as the first, without any surprises or fresh ideas. I have gone to many Festivals abroad, small or big, and never have I encountered such problems with people handling, access to the venues and never have I been to such Ceremonies with unjustifiable showy, dazzling and glamorous happenings. In our case there wasn’t any reason for this travesty of phony superior concepts. On a positive side, Despina Mouzakis’ (The Director of the Festival) speech was very humane and warm. She proved that she can combine her tough administration skills with her gentle human behavior.

The Award Ceremony This year two films had to share the same Award and two new awards were added to the long list. This caused a dramatic increase of the length of the Closing Ceremony and thus prolonging the screening of the closing film. To begin with the National Awards for Quality were given out by the Selection Committee followed by the suspenseful award ceremony for the International films starting from the least important Awards and moving towards the first, the highest award, “The Golden Alexander”. The Selection Committee was constituted by: Christine Vachon (USA), producer and Chairman, Diego Galan (Spain), cinema critic and director, Katia Lund (Brazil), director, writer and producer, Lefteris Bogiatzis (Greece), theatre director and actor, Mogens Rukov (Denmark), writer, professor of script and play writing, Pierre Rissient (France), director, distributor and cinematographic adviser, Xu Jinglei (China), director, writer and actor. I believe that the choice of sharing the award for Best Script for the two films was completely reasonable. Both films, “Familial Ties”, Kim Tae-yong (Korea) and “Suely in the sky”, Karim Ainouz (Brazil-Germany-Portugal-France), were excellent films that stood out. Specifically the first film was by far the best film shown during the whole Festival. Tribulations were caused by the announcement of the two new National Awards of Quality. This tribulation can be described as such: Which committee watches the films in order to judge which one are the best? The procedure for presenting the Awards given by the Pan-Hellenic Union of Cinema Critics and Union of Cinema and Television Technicians is clear to all, but what about the other Awards? An additional problem to the mystery is whether the members of the committee are appropriate to select the best films. Shouldn’t someone finally tell us who are these members of the National Awards committee?

The Awards Award for Best Feature Film, ‘Golden Alexander’: “Family ties”, Kim Tae-yong, N. Korea, 37.000 Euros. Special Award from Selection Committee – ‘Silver Alexander’: “On a Friday afternoon”, Mona Zandi Haghighi, Iran, 22.000 Euros. Award for Best Director: Slawomir Fabicki for the film “Retrieval”, Poland. Award for Best Script: (shared) Mauricio Zacharias, Felipe Branganca, Karim Ainouz for the film “Suely in the sky”, Brazil-Germany-Portugal-France and Sung Ki-young, Kim Tae-yong for the film “Family ties”, N. Korea. Award for Best Actress: Moon So-ri, Goh Doon-shim, Kong Hyo–jin and Kim Hae-ok for the film “Family ties”, by Kim Tae-yong, Ν. Korea. Award for Best Actor: Antoni Pawlicki for the film “Retrieval”, by Slawomir Fabicki, Poland. Award of Artistic Excellence: “Suely in the sky”, Karim Ainouz, Brazil-Germany-Portugal-France. FIPRESCI AWARDS: FIPRESCI (Selection Committee from the International Federation of Cinema Criticics) is constituted of: José Carlos Avellar (Brazil), Genoveva Dimitrova (Bulgaria), Thilo Wydra (Germany), Sergey Lavrentiev (Russia), Ioanna Papageorgiou (Greece) FIPERSCI granted the following Awards: Official In-Competition Program Award: “Suely in the sky”, by Karim Ainouz, Brazil-Germany-Portugal-France. For the Greek Films of 2006 Award: “Eduart”, by Angeliki Antoniou, Greece Award “Everyday routine: Overshooting or Reconciliation”: This award is given by the Ministry of Macedonia/Thrace. To the film: “Rome rather than you”, by Tariq Teguia, Algeria-France-Germany, 15.000 euro. Award “Woman and equality of occasions”: The award is given by the General Secretariat for Equality part of the Ministry for Internal Affairs and Public Management. To the film: “Grbavica”, by Jasmila Zbanic, Austria-Bosnia Herzegovina-Germany-Croatia, 6.000 Euro. Award from the Greek Parliament “Human values”: “The violin”, by Francisco Vargas, Mexico, 15.000 Euros. Award “Crossroads”: This Award is given by Nokia. To the film: “Pandora’s box”, by Yesim Ustaoglu, 10.000 euros. Pan-Hellenic Union of Cinema Critics: The Pan-Hellenic Union of Cinema Critics once more wishes to express its complete disagreement against the institution of the National Awards for Quality. The procedure does not guarantee a just voting process and neither corresponds with the actual needs of Greek cinema. In addition we want to point out we should focus on the potential of digital films since they integrated to the Festival’s program the “DigitalWave” scheme. Although, so far the results are not satisfactory, surely those are the films that reflect the efforts of a new generation of filmmakers who at last can make films easier and cheaper, outside the boundaries of “Greek Identity” and the committees. Unfortunately, the ongoing inflation of the program undermines the content of the films, by distracting the attention of the audiences and prohibiting the assessment of all the events and screenings. The award from the Pan-Hellenic Union of Cinema Critics is granted to the film: “With the soul in the mouth/Suspenseful Waiting”, by Giannis Oikonomidis, for his bold directorial view, for its creative exploitation of abstracting, for the vigorous performances and for the aggressive portrayal of Modern Greek savagery. The Special award from the Union of Cinema and Television for Best Technical Achievement to the film: “Eduart”, by Angeliki Antoniou AUDIENCE AWARDS “JAMESON”: For the “A Glance at the Balkans” program, to the film: “12:08 east of Bucharest”, Corneliou Porumboiu, Romania, 2.000 euros. For the new “DigitalWave” program, to the film: “Summer Dreams from the Province”, Giorgos Akseherlidis, Greece, 3000 euros. For the International Department, to the film: “Family ties”, Kim Tae-yong, N. Korea, 3000 euros. For the “Greek Panorama” program, to the film “The son of the guard”, Dimitris Koutsiampasakos, Greece, 3000 euros

A short commentary As I previously mentioned, the award for best film to “Family Ties” is completely evenhanded. A film with a fresh style, deeply exploring the problems of family relationships, not simply telling a story by describing these bonds. The film accomplishes to re-create an image of the modern Korean society, which sadly from what we can see is in decay. On the other hand the film “Retrieval”, by Slawomir Fabicki, did not deserve the Award for Best Direction, only the actors deserved some kind of Award. The direction was very timid and did not rightly empower the personality of the protagonists, and their inter-relations. Something similar is in effect with the film “Friday evening”, by Mona Zandi Haqiqi. A typical Iranian film that dares to touch a painful and burning subject but did not deserve the ‘Silver Alexander’ Award. The award should have been given to the film ““Suely in the sky”, by Karim Ainouz, which only won the Best Script Award. If our readers want to find more information about the films mentioned, they can look back to our previous daily correspondences from the Thessalonica Festival. With this note we henceforth bid farewell to Thessalonica and from here and on we will write our reports from our base in Athens regarding the other events that took place during the Festival.

Monday 27th November 2006, Giannis Frangoulis

47th THESSALONICA FILM FESTIVAL – CLOSING CEREMONY - AWARDS