Jailhouse flicks - The Best from Greece

IT ALL started when Panayiotis Chionidis, correctional facility employee by day and artistic director of the Patras International Festival of Cinema & Culture by night, was a lad of five years old.

“My father, who worked away from home during the week, used to take me out on a gentlemen’s outing at weekends. It was just us boys.” Their venue of choice was the neighbourhood cinema and their favourite genre was detective films.

“I was really smitten with Jean Gabin and all those French black-and-white film noirs - they were just as dark as their name suggested.” But when his dad went away on weekdays, it was his grandmother’s turn to spoil him rotten. “She used to take me to watch Turkish melodramas on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. My grandma was from Asia Minor and she had a weakness for films that reminded her of her homeland.”

Oriental tearjerkers held a firm place in everyone’s heart at the time, as the Vouyiouklaki phenomenon hadn’t yet taken hold. It was all about glamorous Turkish leading lady Hulya Kocyigit. “I had a special relationship with Turkish films back in the day. It felt like seeing a little bit of yourself on film, your friends, your neighbours. Nothing to do with all these imitation soap operas that are all the rage now.”

Chionidis even remembers what he calls “a summit meeting” between glamour queens Aliki Vouyiouklaki and Hulya Kocyigit in Istanbul in the spring of 1966. Is it any wonder the man fell head over heels for celluloid? The only weird thing was he never wanted to mix business with pleasure.

“My professional orientation was completely unrelated - I studied engineering at the Technological Educational Institute of Serres,” he says. “I always had this phobia that if I turned my passion into a professional occupation my love for the medium would wither and die. It’s like trying to make money off the woman you love!”

So off he went to Thessaloniki to pursue a career, and somehow ended up working at the local correctional facilities. “It’s just like any other job in the public sector,” Chionidis admits with a certain degree of reluctance. “It puts food on the table and that’s the long and short of it.”

During his free time, he got busy spreading the movie virus around town. In 1994 he started his first film club at the local Labour Association, which in 1999 gave birth to his love child, the International Panorama of Independent Film and Video Makers. Meanwhile, he had inaugurated a municipal movie theatre at Polichni and had planted yet another film club at Polygyros, all in the greater Thessaloniki area. But the fast-growing Panorama remained his greatest accomplishment until he was forced to leave Thessaloniki when transferred to Athens.

Changing cities

“It was May 2004, a few months before the Olympic Games, and the festival was in danger of being cancelled due to my absence,” he recalls. In fact, if you do a little digging around the internet you’ll still find petitions demanding that he remain in place.

A staggering 25,000 emails bombarded his employer, the ministry of justice, within the space of a week but all it got him was a six-month extension. The event, scheduled to take place on October
1-9, went ahead just as planned but Chionidis still had to leave - and he took his love child with him.

After a 12-month stopover in Athens, he eventually landed in Patras, reinventing his movie showcase as the Patras International Festival of Cinema & Culture, and got down to business.

The Patras festival, spanning a staggering 9 days and 11 hours of screenings per day, was instantly embraced by the locals, who flooded the cinema from day one. The only problem was that money was dwindling; it came to a point where the entire institution was put in jeopardy. “Things have changed radically since last year,” says the organiser. “The festival was near-enough cancelled.

Twelve years after we first got started, the general secretariat of youth announced they didn’t have any money. The ministry of culture has very limited funds allotted to bigger institutions, like the Thessaloniki and Drama festivals, and we were basically left to our own devices.”

Festival cutbacks

As a result, the Patras International Festival of Cinema & Culture, scheduled to take place on October 1-8, has been cut down to 8 days and 10 hours of screenings per day and is mostly backed by small regional companies, free labour and a lot of love. “What the state doesn’t get is that festivals can be an amazing development mechanism. It’s a cultural reference point that can create work for hotels, restaurants, travel agencies and even involve the educational system on every level,” exclaims Chionidis. “I’ve seen festivals abroad catering to schoolchildren by day and adults by night.”

This year’s event boasts a total of 160 entries from 36 different countries, not to mention all the sideline exhibitions and other happenings. In fact, the only thing this man hasn’t pulled off, considering what he does for a living, is start a film club in prison.

“The thought did cross my mind when I first started but my efforts hit a wall so hard and fast I figured my time was better spent elsewhere. But I still consider myself lucky. I have a friend in Thessaloniki who’s a film critic and works at a mental clinic. Can you imagine that?”