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

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Meetings”: The Madness of Conspiracy Theories?

We often hear about strange conspiracy theories the most prominent these days being the Trumpian fantasy of a rigged election that stole his presidency. Is a conspiracy theory madness or is it those that propound them that are mad?

In “Meetings” we meet the over-the-top intense Aggelos (Elias Valasis) on the telephone trying to convince the victims of his telephone calls of his favourite conspiracy theories such as viruses and vaccines used to control populations, an international conspiracy to benefit from flat tires and invasions of reptilians and a few others.

Aggelos radiates intensity but gets so heated up when his theories are not agreed to by the recipients of his telephone calls he suffers hangups telling the next caller how irrational the previous caller was causing him to hang up on them!

Whether he is preparing dinner in the kitchen or sitting on the toilet he is on the phone ranting about the plots of many.

What is the fine line between skepticism and an obsession with conspiracy theories? Whatever it is Aggelos has crossed it. He is the Rasputin of conspiracy theories but unlike Rasputin has no support of anyone making him a madman?

Now is there a grain of truth in anything Aggelos spouts out? Certainly, but not to complicate matters who controls truth?

A brilliant performance by Valasis. Twenty minutes of the soliloquy of a madman. Should you be smiling watching this short? Should you be thinking about who controls “truth”. Is Aggelos correct about conspiracy theories and just a bit misguided about what they are? Whatever the case Valasis deserves an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Short but as the Academy Awards are controlled by American corporate interests a wild conspiracy theory of course, this Greek actor will not be on the podium. 

Director is Kyriakos Chatzimichaildis.

For screening times and locations for the 11 Canadian cities the festival is playing in https://gifft.ca .

RKS Literature: The Timid Europeans at the Munich Psychiatric Conference (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

“At first there would be an American cast to the congress, almost Rotarian in its forms and ceremonies, then the closer European vitality would fight through, and finally the Americans would play their trump cards, the announcement of colossal gifts and endowments, of great new plants and training schools and in the presence of the figures the Europeans would blanch and walk timidly.”

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

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Dynamo”: Not Trapped at The Border

Yianni Kioussis wrestles under the name “Asperger Dynamo”. He is not wrestling before crowds at large venues, at least not now but that he is wrestling at all is quite an achievement.

Epileptic seizures started at 6 months and by 1 there were 150-200 seizures a day. His first doctor said he would most likely not live past 2 years of age.

A switch of doctors and a ketogenic diet set him on the right path as seizures ceased. At 7 an Asperger’s diagnosis was made with spatial difficulties and social awareness lagging. He was a big adolescent and timid which fuelled bullying. But breaking boundary after boundary was second nature to Yianni who continues wrestling and attending university.

Yianni says that none of us are perfect and that is what makes us human. You should embrace your flaws as you can learn from them.

A documentary that illustrates impossibility in many cases simply does not exist.

This Canadian short documentary was produced by Alexander Bobby Antoniadis.

For screening information check out https://gifft.ca .

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Fantasia”: A Movie That Sings with Its Heart and Soul

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) screens in 11 Canadian cities 1-31October2024.

“Fantasia” will be one of the films presented and it sings to you with its heart and soul. Like much of the traditional Greek music that is full of suffering and personal agony heard in the film many of the characters are living their personal agony.

Fotini (Rena Morfi) as a child survives a motor vehicle accident that killed her mother whose last words as she lay dying in a field were “Paradise” which is the name of the club ex-Athens where Fotini began to be noticed as a singer.

Fotini rises to extraordinary fame assisted and boosted by her mentor Vlassis Christakis (Stelios Mainas) a close friend with her father. On the rise to stardom, she has an affair with Nikos a popular singer. Nikos is badly beaten and crippled by a beating set-up by Vlassis. A jealous lover? Nikos meets a tragic end and Fotini carries on enduring contract disputes, litigation and the Greek paparazzi.

Fotini’s “father” dies and leaves a shocking letter behind for Fotini igniting a desperate search on her part and culminating with the exposure of a secret when coupled with the last two songs of the film may cause a tear to roll down your eyes.

The music is key to the film as the plot is somewhat predictable so you can revel in the music without becoming entangled in a complicated plot. And the music in the film sings with heart and soul.

That odd scene shot in 1967 at the Tropicana in Las Vegas by the duo” Fantasia” will make sense.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVL_3Ndi6SY  .

Directed and written by Alexis Kardaras.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 82/100.

The 4th Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “At All Costs”: Pay Attention!

The 4th Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) will be showing in 11 Canadian cities with some selections being available online. It runs from 1-31 October2024.

“At All Costs” is a stylish and dense Nouveau Film Noir short from writer and director Christos Prantzalos. It has taken me two watches to somewhat understand it and even then I suspect there are no concrete answers as to who did what and why. My advice is pay very close attention as lose your concentration you may be totally baffled. What is on the stolen tablet may be where the Gordian Knot is being untied at least partially.

Achilleas (Agatoklis Gardikis) runs an illegal computerized casino with his father. The casino is busted by the police and his father hauled away. His father says “they” want an initial payment of 10,000 Euros followed by another 8,000. Not having the funds Achilleas scans the bar code of a bus shelter advertisement that offers easy money. A voice on his phone sets forth the challenges if carried out successfully will be rewarded with a payout. One involves breaking into a building and stealing a key and the next is break into a residence using that key and stealing a tablet. It is on the tablet and in Achilleas’ memory the crux of the story reveals itself.

The story contained in video files on the laptop reveals corruption of a high-ranking civil servant and a coverup central to the death of his sister. Pay attention to the police officer questioning Achilleas’ family comforting them saying justice must be done. Is justice finally done on a Thessaloniki rooftop? Just who is the controlling force behind this voice on Achilleas’ phone? Who is the man watching the drama on the Thessaloniki rooftop?

You may difficulty figuring out the conclusion of the film but you will enjoy trying to untie the Gordian Knot.

Justice being achieved is not a certainty. It is a gamble.

For screening of this Hellenic short check out the festival’s website at https://gifft.ca .