9th Los Angeles Greek Film Festival
June 3-7, 2015 - Egyptian Theatre - Hollywood
OPENING NIGHT FILM:
LITTLE ENGLAND - Director: Pantelis Voulgaris (132 min.)
A turbulent tale of a secret love shared between two sisters and one man set in the seafaring community of Andros, Greece, during the 1930’s. Suppressed feelings are later rekindled and cruel games of fate reveal secrets, leading to devastation.
CLOSING NIGHT FILM:
XENIA - Director: Panos H. Koutras (128 min.)
Following the death of their mother, two brothers undertake an odyssey from Athens to Thessaloniki in search of the father they have never met, in this wry and affecting road movie.
FEATURE FILMS:
AT HOME - Director/Writer: Athanasios Karanikolas (103 min.)
For many years, Nadja has worked as a housekeeper for an upper class Greek couple and their daughter. She’s allowed to feel like part of the family. When she’s diagnosed with a serious illness, and the man of the house runs into financial difficulties due to the economic crisis, Nadja loses her job. Yet she shows no external sign of how these two traumatic events have affected her.
STRATOS (LITTLE FISH) - Director: Yannis Economides (138 min.)
Stratos is a man trying to find redemption in a decadent world, where morals and personal boundaries have been replaced by money as the only value. After years in prison, he now works in a bread factory – and as a contract killer. With the money, he wants to help his friend who once saved his life. He always pays his debts, but he must learn that the price is higher than expected.
FOREVER - Director/Writer: Margarita Manda (76 min.)
Two people alone in a desolate city: Costas and Anna in Athens. Costas is an engine driver. The trains that he drives travel from one end of the city to the other, following the traces of the ancient rivers that were paved over and made into roads. Anna sells ferry boat tickets at Piraeus, the place where the rivers once flowed into the sea. These two people will meet, on the dawn of a bright new day.
NORWAY - Director/Writer: Yiannis Veslemes (74 min.)
Zano arrives in the big city for the very first time. The year is 1984, and Athens beckons. A vampire and a fine dancer, all Zano wants is a “warm girl”. Lured into their shady shenanigans, Zano, a prostitute, and a Norwegian drug dealer traverse mountains and descend into the core of the earth, finding the Kingdom of Mathousalas.
THE FIRST LINE - Directors/Writers/Producers: Coerte Voorhees, John Voorhees (86 min.)
Two Athenian attorneys pursue litigation for the return of the Parthenon Marbles. Just as the bronze statue of Athena Promakhos used to stand guard in front of the Parthenon, they both must find the courage to stand in defense of what they love.
WEDNESDAY 04:45 - Director/Writer: Alexis Alexiou (116 min.)
Athens, Greece, today: 32 hours in the life of Stelios Dimitrakopoulos, a small time night-club owner in Athens, who struggles to salvage his bankrupt business from loan-sharks, while the city and the whole country go up in flames.
DOCUMENTARY FILMS:
A FAMILY AFFAIR - Director/Writer: Angeliki Aristomenopoulou (87 min.)
A Family Affair is an intimate portrait of the famous Xylouris family and their sacred bonds with the musical tradition of Crete. The film follows three generations of family musicians who uphold and pass on the vibrant tradition of Cretan music, performing ceaselessly to followers across the world.
AGORA - Director/Writer: Yorgos Avgeropoulos (117 min.)
The Agorá was a central area in Ancient Greece city-states. It was a gathering place, an assembly of active citizens, and the City centre for political, economic, athletic, artistic and spiritual life. It was the heart of democracy. In modern Greece the word Agorá has lost its initial sense and it has come to denote solely the place and act of commercial transactions. It is a dominant word in the reality experienced today by Greeks, as the country goes through an economical vortex that devours human lives in its path.
A NIGHT IN ATHENS - Director: George Tsioutsioulas (60 min.)
A Night In Athens, takes you on a hilarious ride as Angelo shares many of the challenges he faced growing up Greek in the diaspora. Those experiences have shaped who Angelo is a man and as a comic. Angelo in a memorable performance in Athens Greece, before a sold-out audience.
BENEATH THE OLIVE TREE - Director: Stavroula Toska (76 min.)
Secret journals document the atrocities and the true life stories of the women caught up in Greece’s tumultuous Civil War, fought in the mid 1940’s.
FOLLOWING SHIRA’S JOURNEY: A GREEK JEWISH ODYSSEY
Directors/Writers: Carol Gordon & Natalie Cunningham (50 min.)
The untold story of the Greek Holocaust. History records an 87% loss of Greece’s Jewish population as a result of the Nazi atrocities of the Second World War, and yet the experiences of these once dynamic communities are not widely known.
MEDEA: LOUDER THAN MY THOUGHTS - Director: Nikos Grammatikos (94 min.)
In MEDEA: LOUDER THAN MY THOUGHTS, the text of the play Medea, by Euripides, is the project’s raison d’être. In a magical way, it becomes the discovering climax of the focus for the film. The story of Medea, with its unique force, acts as a channel through which we enter into a thrilling and unpredictable quest, trying to find lost signs and meanings.
PANAYIOTIS TETSIS: PLAYING WITH COLORS
Director/Producer: Yannis Vamvakas (100 min.)
The life and work of the patrician artist Panagiotis Tetsis, who helped establish contemporary Greek painting of the 20th century, is highlighted and celebrated in this colorful documentary.
RECYCLING MEDEA - Director: Asteris Kutulas (75 min.)
Medea kills her kids. Despite being recycled through a myriad of versions since antiquity, this subject has lost none of its everyday and brutal topicality. Script, sound, and dance join forces in a powerful film that reflects the desperation of a society that spent all past efforts turning its children into those who have become today’s lost generation.
The festival also features 19 award winning short films.
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LAGFF 2015
