Athens International Film Festival
aiff

Carte Blanche to Yannis Bakogiannopoulos

Opening Nights revive Yannis Bakogiannopoulos’ legendary television show, "Film Club", that nurtured generations upon generations of movie lovers on public television. The renowned critic chooses five plus one little-known masterpieces and then writes and talks about them, as the program is accompanied by live presentations.

Opening Nights revive Yannis Bakogiannopoulos’ legendary television show, "Film Club", that nurtured generations upon generations of movie lovers on public television. The renowned critic chooses five plus one little-known masterpieces and then writes and talks about them, as the program is accompanied by live presentations.

The films run the entire gamut of world cinema and are timeless and cross cultural: from 1955 India and the birth of one its most significant directors, Satyajit Ray ("Pather Panchali"), all the way to 1956 North America, the beloved Western genre and the high point of John Ford’s sprawling career ("The Searchers").

From the intricate Borgesian labyrinth of trailblazing Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci ("The Spider's Stratagem", 1969) all the way to the tortured metaphysical existentialism of great Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi ("The Illumination", 1972) and Alain Resnais’ extraordinary essay-documentary about concentration camps ("Night and Fog", 1955).

The cherry on top is an essential and totally unknown gem of contemporary European cinema, a beautifully choreographed ballet of bodies and light that introduces us to French filmmaker Clair Denis’ vision of Africa in "Beau Travail" (1999).



    Publication date: 2013-09-11 12:30:30

    The Searchers

    The Searchers

    John Ford's brilliant Western marks the high point of his ideological and formalistic maturity, that balances out the glorification of the Western mythology.

    Pather Panchali

    Pather Panchali

    In his directorial debut, Satyajit Ray revives a 20th Century Bengali village focusing on a poor family that's fighting for survival. He documents their traditions, the ancestral habits and the old belief systems that still survive, as if frozen in time, but it's plain to see that a crucial change is taking place.

    Night and Fog

    Night and Fog

    Four years before "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and 10 years after the end of WWII and the revelation of the monstrous factories of mass extinction, Alain Resnais makes a poetic essay-documentary, delivering the most devastating film on Nazi concentration camps ever made.

    Beau Travail

    Beau Travail

    Claire Denis freely adapts Herman Melville's novel "Billy Budd, Sailor" and two of his poems to conjure up a microcosm in heat, a fascinating ballet of bodies and images, a battle of passions in a French Foreign Legion outpost in Djibouti.

    Illumination

    Illumination

    A highly complex film, ?The Illumination? is as intricate in storytelling as it is in style. Deeply existential, it poses some serious questions throughout the young hero's trajectory from 20 to 30 years old, using him as a role model.