The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Gastarbeiter: Sidero-Chalvia”: Will the Estranged Bird Fly Home?

Antonis (Alexandros Nikolaidis) works as a Gastarbeiter (guest worker) at a metalwerks in the German industrial Ruhr area. The short begins in a bar in 1974 where Antonis is drinking with colleague Rainer (Moritz Zeiske) as the television news addresses the fall of the Greek military dictatorship. Antonis was jailed and beaten in Thessaloniki for supporting a Greek political dissident. He escaped to Germany along with many other political refugees.

Rainer is an incompetent alcoholic and a dangerous liability in the workplace. In fact one evening while working overtime with Antonis, Rainer blunders about damaging a machine almost causing a fire. But afterwards Rainer and Antonis shower up and meet a hooker in the rec room of the metalwerks and the symbolism kicks in big time and invites your interpretation. I will not give you my view of it all but historically so many immigrants whether Mexican, Greek, Turkish and many more initially take the position that they will stay in the host country for a short period of time and return home with bulging pockets but that rarely happens. Antonis had promised his wife when he escaped to Germany that he would return to her arms when the junta falls.

Given the symbolism in the final minutes of the short will Antonis return to Thessaloniki now that the junta has fallen? As the song goes at the conclusion of the film, “My estranged bird abroad. My sweet swallow. The foreign land enjoys your presence and I have your sorrows.”

The director of the film is Marco Papadopoulos.

This short plays at The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) running in 11 Canadian cities from 1-31October2024. For details about the festival and when and where this short is playing check out https://gift.ca .

RKS Literature: A Girl of 19 vs. a Woman of 29 (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

“Whereas a girl of nineteen draws her confidence from a surfeit of attention, a woman of twenty-nine is nourished on subtler stuff. Desirous, she chooses her apéritifs wisely, or, content, she enjoys the caviar of potential power. Happily, she does not seem, in either case, to anticipate the subsequent years when her insight will often be blurred by panic, by the fear of stopping or the fear of going on. But on the landings of nineteen or twenty-nine she is pretty sure there are no bears in the hall.”

“Attrractive women of nineteen and twenty-nine are all alike in their breezy confidence; on the contrary, the exigent womb of the twenties does not pull the outside world centripetally around itself. The former are ages of insolence, comparable the one to a young cadet, the other to a fighter strutting after combat.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, 1933.

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Journey into Cyprus: East to West”

“Journey into Cyprus: East to West” is a documentary about a 15-day cross Cyprus hike by Yalcin Adal, a Turkish Cypriot, and Stavros Tszortis, a Greek Cypriot both currently living in Melbourne, Australia.

As a result of a 1974 invasion of Cyprus by Turkey, possibly a result of Greek political maneuvering and a failed assassination attempt on Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus by the Greek military junta, Cyprus was divided into a Turkish and Greek sector separated by a buffer zone and enforced by a U.N. peacekeeping mission. The division, of course was artificial as Turkish and Greek communities lived side by side until the divide. It is estimated that 6-9,000 Cypriots were killed and are missing as a result of the 1974 conflict.

But 50 years later Stavros and Yalcin set out to walk through Turkish and Greek sectors in an east to west 15-day trek of some 400 kilometres in a move to push start reconciliation between the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities. Through their encounters with politicians, journalists, Greek and Turkish pro unitarians. family members and relatives of missing persons it is clear that the Turkish and Greek camps are not entrenched in mutual hatred. Fifty years has passed and many believe it is time to set the clock back and live in harmony uneasy as it might be.

Both Stavros and Yalcin realize their trek is not going to galvanize an international movement for the re-unification of Cyprus hoping that their trek is symbolic of Cypriot unification. Their trek was simply a small step but if their willingness could be adopted by all Cypriots the best is yet to come to Cyprus. As one placard read, “Stop Holding Our Future Hostage to the Past”.

In a mixture of English, Turkish and Greek (in which case there will be subtitles).

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) running 1-31October2024 plays in eleven Canadian cities both in theatre and on-line. For scheduling information check out https://gifft.ca

Directed by Stavros and Yalcin.

RKS Literature: Feeling the Jealousy of Youth (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

“The only physical disparity between Nicole at present and the Nicole of five years before was simply that she was no longer a young girl. But she was enough ridden by the current youth worship, the moving pictures with their myriad faces of girl-children, blandly represented as carrying on the work and wisdom of the world, to feel a jealously of youth.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, 1933.

RKS Literature: England and its Orgies (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

“An Englishman spoke to him from across the aisle but he found something antipathetic in the English lately. England was like a rich man after a disastrous orgy who makes up to the household by chatting with them individually, when it is obvious to them he is only trying to get back his self respect in order to usurp his former power.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, 1933.

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Armchair on the Pavement”: No Grapes of Wrath Here

A retired Greek army general is coping with dementia. He has trained battalions in warfare but today can’t remember if he has taken his pills.

But he does remember a song on the radio that he and Olga his wife danced to at their wedding. And it brings him joy this song so much he gives a twirl and pinches Olga on her bottom!

He insists upon venturing outside to pick up his favourite Agiorgitiko grapes despite a warning from his physician he should not be outside alone. He picks up his grapes and the effort gives him fatigue wobbles and the general hits the pavement with his grapes.

An ambulance is called by a passerby although the general insists, he is not requiring a visit to the hospital. While Olga rushes upstairs to pack him up for the ambulance ride he chats to passerby’s while sitting on an armchair left on the pavement. Olga remembers on the pavement by the armchair with a big smile how the general, then a cadet, followed her home on a trolley and proposed to her. A bad situation sparks a very happy romantic memory.

What is the expression. In every cloud there is a silver lining. Can dementia totally defeat love?

This short is directed by Maria Kolonia.

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) is playing in 11 Canadian cities 1-31October2024. To see when and where this short is playing check out https://gifft.ca .

RKS Literature: Switzerland Land of The Sick and Persona Non-Grata (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

“…throughout this hotel there were many chambers wherein rich ruins, fugitives from justice, claimants to the thrones of mediatized principalities, lived on the derivatives of opium or barbital listening eternally as to the inescapable radio, the coarse melodies of old sins. This corner of Europe does not so much draw people as accept them without inconvenient questions. Routes cross here-people bound for private sanitariums or tuberculosis resorts in the mountains, people who are no longer persona grata in France or Italy.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Tender is the Night”, 1933.

RKS 2024 Film: “Consumed”: Horror with a Dual Personality

The Butcher Brothers (Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) add to their horror output with “Consumed” a dual personality horror film. What or who is the real beast here?

Beth (Courtney Halverson) and her husband Jay (Mark Famiglietti) are hiking and camping the wilds of New Jersey ostensibly to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Beth being cancer free. Asleep in her tent Beth has flashes of fiery lava lights and being on a bed clothed in a hospital gown tethered down by straps with one of her breasts gushing blood. Understandable as no doubt some PTSD from her oncological battle?

Beth is noticeably weak and at points shaking walking on the trail.

As they hike they hear strange noises, screams, monstrous slurping and goo augment. They see a skinned and burnt bear carcass. Their tent is shredded and belongings scattered about and they flee being chased by the beast which is more light, smoke and noise than a physical beast. Quite frankly stock horror techniques.

Matters become interesting when they take refuge with mountain man Quinn (Devon Sawa) who is familiar with the beast that in addition to killing possesses the soul and bodies of the sick. Quinn lost his daughter to the beast. Quinn has his own gruesome agenda of feeding the beast with humans. But why?

Quinn asks Beth if she is sick and unbeknownst to her husband Jay her cancer has reoccurred. Beth is prime meat for possession by the beast. As she battles with Quinn in his attempt to use her as bait more flashbacks which again show her strapped on a bed but this time connected to medical equipment. Why all these “quasi-medical” flashbacks?

Beth is in a battle with the beast for her life. But the question to be asked who or what is this beast and are these experiences something more than the standard horror routine. Beth is having a near death horror experience with the beast which perhaps The Butcher Brothers have given a dual personality to. Is cancer the real beast?

Directed by Mitchell Altieri.

VOD/Digital release 20August2024.

RKS 2024 Rating: 90/100.

The 4th International Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Nothing Holier Than a Dolphin”

Several fishermen, a retired sea captain, a woman and a waitress are in a Greek seaside taverna in the evening. The fishing has not been going well with a mistral making the sea too rough to fish in.

A man tells a mythical tale about a fishing village in the Mediterranean experiencing rough winds preventing fishermen from venturing out to fish. He tells the story in a dramatic fashion recreating the myth. Tables become boats and the entire tavern joins in playing parts of the myth that had two fishermen setting out in the evening to fish. A young man joins them in his own boat. The fishermen haul in their net and a dolphin is entangled. The men rescue the dolphin who repays the favour by pushing to shore the young man floundering in the ocean after his boat capsized being hit by a wave.

It was the waitress that played the trapped dolphin and she is sort of the girl with the dragon tattoo. A band enters the taverna at the end of the story with wild celebratory music and dancing ensues. The myth has taken over the reality and the waitress has become the myth.

In Greek with English subtitles.

You can watch the trailer here https://vimeo.com/739013719

This short film is directed by Isabella Margara.

For screening information for the film check out https://gifft.ca . The festival shows in 11 Canadian cities both in theatre and in some cases on-line.

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Taxi”: Three Times Dead and Ready to be Murdered!

It is the early 1990’s in Cyprus and Soulla drives a taxi.

In this short she picks up three passengers on three separate trips and she is eager to tell them the taxi was her late husband’s. He died in a barbeque related accident. Every time she relates how his death occurred it is related to a barbeque accident but each death is different. One time it is smoke inhalation, the next being stabbed by a skewer and then getting his head crushed by the hood of a car. One passenger believes the story but another finds it amusing and merrily laughs away.

With the last passenger they both share the thoughts that men are a plague upon females.

Is this short film illustrating that taxi drivers like to tell a yarn? Possibly.

At the end of a long day Soulla returns to her home where the three bodies of her husband lie near the barbeque but notice the murderous intent in her eyes in the kitchen.

Very clever!

This Cypriot short film is in Greek with English subtitles and is directed by Constantinos Nikiforou.

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) runs 1-31October2024 in 11 Canadian cities and some films can be seen online. For screening times see https://gifft.ca