Sophia's Blog: Se ha mezclao la vida

Igual que en la vidriera irrespetuosa
de los cambalaches
se ha mezclao la vida
y herida por un sable sin remache
ves llorar la Biblia
contra un calefon.
(Tango Cambalache)

And the large window to the passions, the laughter, the ambitions, the pain, the inspiration to the larger world, is still open on the screen of the Appollon Theatre, which, is packed every afternoon till late in the evening, after the last film of the day is screened...

Kids, both from Greece and abroad, sitting or lying on the side aisles, with eyes glued to the screen, ecstatic, watching film after film. Grown ups as well, with the same enthousiasm and commitment, all part of what this Festival is, and means.

Farsi, Spanish, Dutch, Greek, Serbian, English, German, Icelandic, French, Arabic, Swedish, the languages you can hear in the seats next to you, but the language of the moving picture, is the same for all... The unanimous laughter with the jokes, the grand intake of breath in the agony of the protagonist, the cries of relief from the kids when everything is resolved, the applause, a whole theatre breathing around you and pulsing to the rythm of each film... The directors, the producers, the creators, sitting next to you, enjoying the impact of their work. Simply wonderful...

And in the streets, the cinema workshops, kids with cameras creating their own stories, making animations, shadow theatre, the screenings of Camera Zizanio taking place every morning with the European section, and the daily news, capturing the beat of all the Festival's activities into pixels and sound bits!

And Roviros Manthoulis, once more left us spellbound with his master class, his words and images of a past that is gone now, unfolding on the large screen... Simply magic... and in his own words:
"Magic is a construct, and in a film you mustn't be able to see the seams... the director must remain invisible."

We traveled around the world with excrepts from his films, from the gitanos of Andalucía, to those of Palermo, singing to the Virgin Mary, the "gitana guapa", to the woman singing a lullaby to put her baby to sleep, as well as the volcano of Aetna, the poem "Thanatos" by Dimitris Christodoulou with the streets under Acropolis of the past...

"Από την Αθήνα στη Σικελία είναι δύο βήματα, ή όπως θά 'λεγε κανείς, δύο κύματα"... And only the flick of a button to travel to the prisons of Louisiana to listen to the blues, to the worn down piano of a lady singing, to the only document of Karen Dalton, to the Abaete laggoon in Brazil, where the linen washer balances the bundle of freshly washed clothes on her head and her toddler on her hip...

"No filming and no film is innocent", and the Tango Cambalache.....