New York.- By Vicki James Yiannias

“We have tried to plan a festival that is diverse, entertaining, and at times, challenging,” says cinema critic, scholar and author, Dan Georgakas, Programming Consultant for the Fifth Annual New York City Greek Film Festival (NYCGFF), sponsored by the Hellenic American Chamber of Commerce.  The film Georgakas is most interested in seeing is Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg, the recipient of rave international reviews and the first Greek film to play the Sundance Film Festival.  Lead actress of the film, Ariane Labed, won Best Actress at last year’s Venice Film Festival.

The public and the media are taking notice of the festival, which received much publicity this year with articles in the New York Times, The Daily News, and a WNYC interview, and as of this writing, ticket sales for the festival are more than three times higher than they were at this stage on the game last year.

“The films are very challenging; for the most part they’re provocative,” says Professor James DeMetro, Director of the festival, “It’s Greeks looking at themselves like they’ve never looked at themselves before, looking at society, examining who they are objectively… sometimes finding solutions, sometimes not.  There’s a tension in these films; they’re menacing; disaster is a step away at all times, and it can go either way.  I attribute this to the cultural and economic climate out of which these films come.”  All of the selections in the festival have been produced within the last 1-2 years.

Attenberg’s director, Athina Rachel Tsangari, says in the program for the festival, “I think now, more than ever, making cinema in Greece goes beyond making art.  It is an act of political, social, and moral survival.”  A poignant statement given the relentless horror of Greece’s continuing economic crisis and one that has even more impact as protests escalate.  Bringing this home in a small way in New York was the cancellation of an eagerly-awaited October 20th Greek Press Office conference with two of the directors due to the general strike in Athens.

Despite Greece’s economic crisis, which makes the financing of motion pictures there particularly difficult (or nearly impossible), Greek films are undergoing a stimulating renaissance, and have entered the sphere of international recognition: Giorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth received a 2010 Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film, and Tsangari’s equally bold Attenberg is one of 2011‘s most critically acclaimed films.

“I’m very optimistic about Greece’s film industry.  I know it’s a tough time for Greece, and anyone who denies it is a fool, but I look at this as an exciting time for an artist.  Any artist who has something to say; anybody who feels the need to express himself artistically is going to find a way.  What this economic process is going to do is weed out the inferior filmmakers,” DeMetro declares.

It is not true of every single film in the festival this year, but most of the films are strong, controversial, “tough” films, says DeMetro, “We always try to get a balance of films for every taste, but this year it was very difficult to come up with a sweet little movie with the happy ending, or that somehow lulls the viewer into a kind of peaceful existence… there’s none of that here.  The major films are all cutting edge.  No question about it.”

Stretching delectably before us is the opportunity to see this group of new Greek films with enigmatic titles in Manhattan: Attenberg, Gold Dust, Charisma, Tungsten, Nobody, My Sweet Canary, Knifer, and Strella (shown at last year’s NYCGFF and brought back due to its excellence).

The Festival begins in Manhattan with the Manhattan Gala Reception with screenings of Attenberg at the NYIT Auditorium on October 24, and a free screening of Michael Cacoyannis’ classic, Stella (Melina Mercouri’s sensational film debut), at the NYU TIsch School of the Arts on October 25 followed by a discussion with Dan Georgakas, Gersamius Katsan, and Angelike Contis.

The SVA Theatre, a state-of-the-art screening facility on West 23^rd Street in Chelsea, is where you’ll see all the rest beginning on October 27 and continuing through October 30.

(The first opportunity to see these films was October 20-23 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria.  Keep in mind not to miss the screenings at this state-of-the-art venue at next year’s festival).

The two events that have taken place in Manhattan as of this writing were filled to capacity.  They were My Sweet Canary, directed by Roy Sher, about three musicians’ mission to tell the story of legendary rembetissa Rosa Eskenazy screened October 16 at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan followed by The Meandros Ensemble’s concert; and The Promise of Tomorrow, 1940-1960, directed by Anna Giannotis, about the Greeks of Southern California, screened October 17 at the Rubin Museum of Art, followed by a discussion led by Penelope Karageorge, with the director.

Wanting to get an idea of what to expect beyond the films’ formal synopses but steering clear of “spoilers”, the GN went to Georgakas and DeMetro for comments on some of the films.

It’s difficult for him to say which films he likes the most, even when friends grill him to do so, says DeMetro, because “I love them all.  No matter what your tastes are, he adds, there’s not a film in the bunch that will insult your intelligence, more so than in any festival before.”  He identifies the “big” films as Knifer, Strella, Gold Dust, and Attenberg.

Asked to name what he feels is the festival’s most important film, however, DeMetro’s immediate response was, “the provocative and stunning Attenberg.  In our invitation for Attenberg’s opening night at the Museum of the Moving Image, we said, ‘We think you’ve never seen a movie like this’, and it certainly is unlike any Greek movie I’ve seen, in its screenplay, direction, execution, characterization.”  The film combines two distinctly different story lines, says DeMetro, one dealing with the sexual awakening of a 23-year old woman and the second about her relationship with her father, once a very important avant-garde architect now disillusioned and facing death.

One of DeMetro’s favorites is Margarita Manda’s Gold Dust, “a very sophisticated, emotionally charged, cutting edge human drama about three accomplished, upper middle class siblings who are arguing about the sale of their home to developers.  He says, “This drama becomes much more than the sum of its parts in the sense that it’s about the family, it’s about the city itself.  It indicts the city for being so intent on destroying its past, in the name of the future.”  The director Manda recently said as much,  “The very first idea to make this film was based on a personal need to speak about my city–my city is Athens.  I’m born in Athens, I’ve lived all my life in Athens.  And for me Athens has become [in] the last years a very traumatic city.  Athens has lost its face, forever.”

We’re thinking that it might even be said that as Gold Dust reflects the upheaval of Greek society in modern times, some of its basic questions faced by new generation Greek Americans as values change, as well: the protagonists come away having learned something about what to value: How do you honor the past as you face the future?  What is worth honoring?  What is worth holding onto?  What do you keep as you face the future?”

“I loved Giorgos Georgopoulos’ Tungsten,” says DeMetro, explaining that tungsten, the metal used in electricity conductors because it has a high melting point.   “It’s a metaphorical title because it presents people living close to the edge, close to their own melting point.  It’s made up of three different stories that keep intersecting, all played against a very, very, menacing urban landscape.  It presents an Athens that I have never in my life seen before in a movie.  It’s a stunning film.”  This is the North American premier of Tungsten.

Another film that DeMetro thinks will cause a lot of talk is Yannis Economides’s Knifer, this year’s seven Hellenic Film Academy Award-winner, including Best Picture, described in its synopsis as a “relentlessly gritty film noir” that DeMetro acclaims for its “gorgeous black and white cinematography”.  About a young man brought in by his brutish uncle to protect his dogs from neighbors with whom he is feuding, the film “embraces everything from Anna Karenina to The Postman Always Rings Twice,” says DeMetro.  “The first time I saw it I was actually stunned and mortified by it and then in subsequent viewings I began to see that my first impression was way off.  It’s a very, very powerful film.”

Exemplifying the principle behind horse racing, difference in opinion, Georgakas says, “Knifer strikes me as being outrageous for the sake of being outrageous, but a number of critics consider it relevant to conditions in contemporary Greece.”

Georgakas considers Strella, Panos Koutras’ award-winning film (2009 Berlin Film Festival) about an ex-con’s relationship with a pre-op transsexual, “among the most interesting Greek films in a decade.  Although it deals specifically with transgender issues in a very candid manner, it is about relationships and family.”

“Even people who normally would normally stay away from a film about transsexuals, are in for the surprise of their lives when they see that Strella is about human family values, it’s about people making accommodations in their lives in the name of love.  It’s understanding that things happen in life and they’re not always pretty, they’re not always correct, proper, or good, however, you have to look for what’s important, for the connections that make us human beings and value one another, no matter who we are.   Maria Callas is used on the soundtrack in the most beautiful way imaginable,” says DeMetro.

DeMetro also talks about the “lighter fare” in the festival.  “There is the gorgeous documentary, My Sweet Canary, a joyous movie full of gorgeous music, and a very sweet film, Christos Nikoteris’ Nobody, which is an updating of Romeo and Juliet, in a modern-day setting, in Athens, and Christina Ioakomeidi’s Charisma, which is a love story, a kind of gentle comedy… but even there you see people whose lives are problematic and not what they should be.”

“It’s said that the average Greek film costs about 350,000 Euros, half a million dollars,” says DeMetro, “but the production values–the camera work, the settings, the costumes–look like they cost three times that.  They’re slick productions.  They cost so little because people work on a barter system…’I’ll work on your movie, you work on mine.’”

Aglala Balta, Consul General of Greece is Honorary Chairperson of the NYCGFF, Stamatis Ghikas is Festival Manager, and Minos Papas is Technical Consultant.  The Stavros Niarchos Foundation is the principal benefactor of The New York City Greek Film Festival.  The list of other vital contributors is long, as is the list of dedicated volunteers.

Go to: nycgreekfilmfestival.com