Reviews
Agelastos petra (2000)
History lesson
Outstanding!!! Perhaps the best documentary ever shot in the history of Greek cinematography. With a humble and tender look the director takes a look at the life of people of Elefsina, a city divided between antiquity and modern times as shown through the ruins revealed each time a new building is raised, although the course towards modernization is irreversible.The film displays the dignity of local people as well as their pride of being residents of this historic site. It also displays their awareness of the historic importance of the place they live. This is shown especially as the director watches an old homeless man ,illiterate perhaps, who collected stones from ancient monuments and carried them to the the Archaeological Museum without anyone to tell him to do so. In my opinion every teacher should take his pupils or students to the cinema to watch it. Sometimes history lessons are not always given in the classroom!
Parakalo, gynaikes, mi klaite... (1992)
Ingeniously simple
This 1992 film was directed by Stavros Tsiolis and Christos Vakalopoulos who unfortunately died of cancer a little time later. The film tells the story of a painter of religious paintings and his apprentice who are hired by the town council of a small town in the Greek province to restore the paintings of their church. The painter and his apprentice begin their journey, arrive to the town, meet with all kinds of people, make philosophic conversations, do almost everything except getting their job done, but this doesn't matter at all. As the Greek poet Kostas Kavafis writes in his poem "Ithaki". what is important is not reaching the destination but the journey itself. This is exactly the case in the film. There is a strong comic aura in the film and the plot flows smoothly without the film becoming boring or "pseudo-sophisticated", something that was happening in most of the Greek films of the 80's and early 90's.This film reconciled me with the Greek cinema.