CoMo No. 13: Greece (May, 2023)

[sally]

[sally]

bring on the chest hair and weird sex! (devastated that i've only one george foundas (as letterboxd calls him) movie left to see)

will try to refrain from insisting that all ancient greek stuff qualifies and thus spamming the thread with archaeology etc

[niminy-piminy]

hair

https://twitter.com/classicstudies/stat ... 89722?s=20

weird sex

https://twitter.com/classicstudies/stat ... 88802?s=20

archaeology

https://twitter.com/classicstudies/stat ... 58051?s=20

[niminy-piminy]

The Gorgon’s Head (Unknown, 1925) #CoMoΕλλάδα

https://youtu.be/AwkFveYqC8A

[sally]

^ filmed in the style of greek vases, i found a new avatar

[niminy-piminy]

DOMINO (Lotte Schreiber, 2005) #CoMoΕλλάδα

https://dafilms.com/film/8268-domino

"Domino" describes a construction system of reinforced concrete developed by Le Corbusier in 1914. This form of construction revolutionized modern architecture, freeing the walls of their carrier function and thereby opening up entirely new possibilities for design. For this project, the media artist Lotte Schreiber undertook a journey in winter through Greece to film anonymous architectures; the commonly found concrete skeletons. These incomplete spatial fragments, conceived as residences or hotel complexes, inscribe themselves into the Mediterranean surroundings as foreign geometric bodies and are found in barren mountain and coastal landscapes. Schreiber uses these "primary structures" as a framework and geographical reference system for the surrounding landscape by means of strictly framed black-and-white photographs. While the concrete cubes are systematically scanned on Super8 film, Schreiber uses a digital video camera to document the car journeys around Peloponnesus and on the island of Crete. In the metric montage, she allows the filmic material to meet and constructs an exact temporal structure. Whereas the original sound is audible in the staccato-cut video sequences, the film recordings are set to electronic sounds by Stefan Németh. This unusual "road movie" is the third part of a series of attempts by Lotte Schreiber to create "cinematic cartographies".

[sally]

beelden uit piraeus (1920) #CoMoΕλλάδα

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ0ZEsNkpdg

[sally]

okay, beginning the como proper, fabulous start

excursion - takis kanellopoulos (1966) #CoMoΕλλάδα

very greek (fatal, sensuous) beautifully shot (like a silent movie, or attic vases) love story ♥

[niminy-piminy]

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND: 50 GREEK MYSTERY & FANTASTIC MOVIES (Dimitris Panayiotatos, 2009) #CoMoΕλλάδα

countless representatives of the ill-reputed boomer generation,
well-read in Aristotle's POETICS
and active in the field of Greek genre cinema,
reasoning about an ideal film plot




going through this docu epic,
makes a viewer feel no less pain and despair
than what experiences a female alien
trapped inside a giant moussaka

[niminy-piminy]

https://vimeo.com/99947341

RETURN TO AEOLUS STREET (SIX POPULAR PAINTINGS) (Maria Kourkouta, 2013) #CoMoΕλλάδα

Fragments — reworked, slowed down, put in loops — of Greek popular movies of the 50s and 60s, accompanied by Manos Hadjidakis' piano.
A found-footage audiovisual collage journeys into modern Greece and central Athens.

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/anti-ar ... oberhausen

Elsewhere, the cinema is not only not forgotten, but fervently, almost desperately held aloft. In the International Competition was Greek director Maria Kourkouta's new film hand processed at the Paris lab L'Abominable (where Nicolas Rey works), a slowed and repeated montage of 1950s Greek cinema accompanied by music, each film extract paired with a reading of an extract of Greek poetry. Returning to Aiolou Street follows the Godardian line of pulling brief moments of favored cinema out of context, out of their narratives to not only forefront the aesthetic wonder and mysterious power of passing filmed movements, gestures, lightplay and details, but to re-cast cinema's monumental minutia in an expansive, poetically wide field by drilling down to these moments and holding them, trembling, alongside other cultural and political evocations. While the short seems to quietly lack a rigor somewhere in its midst, presumably, as in Godard, knowledge of the sources would serve the re-montage to cut even deeper. Shown concurrently to Mika Taanila's paracinematic programs, watching something as cinephilic—truly cinephilic, in love with film, celluloid, cinema, "We brought back these carved reliefs of a humble art"—as Kourkouta's work is to step into a shadow of sadness. With melancholy already evoked by its collection of flying, fleeing, dancing, anguished faces and bodies, it also expresses something increasingly, inherently sad about movies dedicated to movies, and celluloid dedicated to celluloid. "Return often and take me, beloved sensation, return and take me..."

Movie extracts from...
A Girl in Black (1956) and Windfall in Athens (1953) by Michalis Cacoyannis
One Thanassis for All the Trades (1970) by Dinos Katzouridis
Macedonian Wedding (1960) by Takis Kanellopoulos
The Ogre of Athens (1956) by Nikos Koundoros
If You’re Lucky (1964) by Yorgos Petridis
Theraic Dawn (1967) by Stavros Tornes and Costas Sfikas

Poetry extracts...
Georges Cheimonas
Georges Seferis
Miltos Sachtouris
Costas Karyotakis
Constantin Cavafy
Manos Hadjidakis

[sally]

electric swan - konstantina kotzamani (2019) #CoMoΕλλάδα

new greek weird in....argentina?? anyway, streaming here until 8th May

https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/083259-00 ... swan-2019/

[greennui]

I've had Stella on my my hard drive for a year, perhaps this'll get me to finally watch it. I've also had Eternity and a Day on my watchlist for a decade but previous Angelopoulos films left me a bit cold.

Mourning Rock should be up your sally, alley

[greennui]

I keep returning to the Young Aphrodites soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kqEvpU4HnA

[sally]

Mourning Rock should be up your sally, alley

bookmarked (and noted you'd watched it) yesterday!

[sally]

aldevaran - andreas thomopoulos (1975) #CoMoΕλλάδα

this is amazing, not seen any other greek film like it, love love love it

imdb review:

At this point in time, the Greek cinema that had flourished for two decades and produced enjoyable, well-written comedies and a couple of adequate dramas, was dead and ready to be buried in the ground. In its place emerged a new school of thought and cinema, in which self-important talentless hacks aped foreign directors and classic movies and created some of the worst cinematic abominations the post ww2 Europe has seen.

Enigmatic characters who wandered around, recited platitudes and inanities, engaged in antisocial or autistic behavior and...that's it. That was the whole premise and this movie is no different: a man walks, utters banalities, sings nonsensical songs, wanders around, walks some more. There is also a girl and a singer and an absolutely atrocious narrator, who describes thoughts and happenings naively and in a laughably bad voice. Lethargy, slowness and inaction disguised as profundity and depth.

It's even worse than "so bad it's good", it exceeds such levels of terribleness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAG1rocbxfw

[sally]

with the greeks in the firing line - robert schwobthaler (1913) #CoMoΕλλάδα

aaah, the mythical eternity of war.....





riiiiiiiight, ok. supposedly footage from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Balkan_War and whilst some of the battle scenes might be faked (did the troops really go to war with the little pom-poms on their shoes? (tsarouchia)) the ruins, injuries and dead bodies are not, so they were pretty close to the front line.








smile for the camera before we execute you!

[sally]

loutra|baths - nick collins (2010) #CoMoΕλλάδα

A 5 minute silent film of a ‘cinematic building’, a ruined Roman baths complex in Messenia, Greece.

♥

streaming → here

[sally]

temple of apollo - nick collins (2012) #CoMoΕλλάδα

ok i'm watching all of his greek films now, previous was site as cinema, this one is site as gorgeous song

[sally]

sofiaflickorna i grekland - gösta olander (1955) #CoMoΕλλάδα

swedish gymnast girls performing in the ancient ruins. as you do.

https://www.filmarkivet.se/movies/sofia ... -grekland/

[sally]

the wiener laboratory does not study what you think it does!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_fpskZGtCE

[niminy-piminy]

THE ISLAND OF SILENCE (Lila Kourkoulakou, 1958) #CoMoΕλλάδα

“700 meters far from humans, and million meters far from humanity…”

We watch romantic and emotional adventures, ideological and sentimental conflicts featuring the patients, doctors and several locals.

Doctor Stathis Chtenas (Giorgos Kampanellis) is disappointed at the situation on the island and confesses to the teacher (Orestis Markris) that he wants to leave soon.

Their life changes with the arrival of a young volunteer doctor, Angela (Nina Sgouridou), whose dynamic presence transforms life on the island.

A fine example of Greek neo-realism, which not only features some very nice lyrical shots, it also depicts well — without recourse to make-up sensationalism — the plight of lepers, ostracized to the island of Spinalonga. Although it suffers at points from melodramatic overacting (Kabanellis), it is though a well-acted film with some extraordinary scenes, like the one with the motherless boy sucking milk from a goat.
—dionysus67

https://youtu.be/o5MbyUQoxHg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinalonga

The island was used as a leper colony from 1903 to 1957. The last inhabitant, a priest, did not leave the island till 1962, in order to maintain the Greek Orthodox tradition of commemorating a buried person 40 days, 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years after their death. There were two entrances to Spinalonga, one being the lepers entrance, a tunnel known as "Dante's Gate". This was so named because the patients did not know what was going to happen to them once they arrived. However, once on the island they received food, water, medical attention and social security payments. Previously, such amenities had been unavailable to Crete's leprosy patients, as they mostly lived in the area's caves, away from civilization.

[greennui]

sofiaflickorna i grekland - gösta olander (1955) #CoMoΕλλάδα

Added this one to

https://letterboxd.com/film/the-sofia-girls-in-greece/

[greennui]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXt5_v0BAU

[greennui]

Stella was stellar melodrama.

[sally]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXt5_v0BAU

thanks! ♥

[niminy-piminy]

THE LOVERS FROM AXOS (Nikos Ligouris, 2008) #CoMoΕλλάδα

https://dafilms.com/film/8297-the-lover ... -and-maria

In a village high in the mountains of Crete, 69-year-old Maria works at her loom.
Watching Maria is her 73-year-old husband, Jorgos.

[niminy-piminy]

WAYS TO STRENGTH AND BEAUTY (Wilhelm Prager, Nicholas Kaufmann, 1925) #CoMoΕλλάδα

didactically prepared educational film, aiming (in six chapters) at a re-appropriation of a physical ideal state according to the model of antiquity.

it strikes today's eye as an unintentionally comic melange.
one grins at the documentary images of the modern body beautiful,
chuckles at the contrived sequences that admonish viewers to kickstart fitness regimens,
and nearly guffaws at the hackneyed reenactments of grand physical achievements of ages past (classical Greece in particular).

an ideological precursor of the National Socialist cult of the body.

[niminy-piminy]

A HAIL OF BULLETS (Nikos Alevras, 1977) #CoMoΕλλάδα

A sarcastic, improvisational film, with anarchic origins, strongly cinephile flavor, and largely autobiographical in nature and content.

A film director strives to escape alienation, while, at the same time, expressing his intense feelings for his wife (Litsa Gerardou-Alevra), cinema and Greece during the restoration of democracy.

A Hail of Bullets (a literal rendition of the full title should be: “Bullets strike like hailstones and the wounded artist sighs”) has become one of the most famous “forbidden” films in Greek history thanks to an unusual event that caused an enormous political uproar:


In 28 April 1984, the Channel 2 of Greek State TV screened “A Hail of Bullets” at 10.00 a.m. (that’s a bit early for Greece) but cut it on the air after 20 minutes of broadcast. The opening sequence, where a hairy naked grown-up man (director himself) receives a thick layer of talc on his private parts by a woman who is allegedly his mother, a sequence culminating in a now legendary breastfeeding, incited a huge “hailstorm” of phone calls to State TV offices by infuriated viewers.


Whereas in 1978 this film had been rated as “suitable for all audiences”, received generally warm reviews by established film critics as another worthy specimen of “New Greek Cinema”, in 1984 the next day after the above mentioned incident the film was rated as “adult”, banned from TV and his director was “lynched” in the press. The right-wing conservatives and the church took advantage of the “scandal” in order to attack the government of socialists who easily succumbed to criticism and joined the campaign against “moral decay”.


The director of Channel 2 was forced to resign. Rumour has it that President of Greek Democracy, Konstantinos Karamanlis asked to see the controversial film in a private screening at the presidential palace and had some… good laughs. During the following days, the copy of the film used by state TV was transferred to the headquarters of the ruling party of PASOK. The party leadership had their own screening “in camera”.


After 25 years this print resurfaced according to Nikos Alevras in the flea market of Monastiraki, Athens, along with a large part of the now financially bankrupt PASOK’s property (yes, the once almighty party gone literally bankrupt). That was the only surviving print, bearing apparent marks of censorship, which director re-released without any restoration process in a DVD bundled with a “commemorative” book in 2010.

I’m not sure we should believe everything in this story but the sure thing is that if there’s truly a single film of Greek cinema that deserves the status of “cult”, this is definitely A Hail of Bullets.

[sally]

i seriously thought that dimmy raved about the above on mubi but i can't find any mention of it (that might be because old mubi forum is impossible to search) and it's not on his list....(should probably check out a few of those others tho)

https://web.archive.org/web/20100728094 ... lists/3270

edit, well it wasn't when that one was archived, turns up later tho (along with a particular note to den, lol):

https://web.archive.org/web/20101009102 ... lists/3270

[rischka]

dim is still watching movies at icm he even followed me couple years ago

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/the+ ... +springer/

pathetically, i've seen 7/100 on his list from there, maybe i should be doing this CoMo

his 'personal notation' at mubi is less profane than i remembered that place was awesome and i'm glad we're keeping it's memory alive

now i want to watch attack of the giant moussaka