Giorgos Karypidis
Directing
Biography
George Karypidis (1946-2019) is one of those rare examples of Greek directors who have observed and recorded in a meticulous yet lyrical way the Greek reality of four decades. Born in the city of Thessaloniki in 1946, George Karypidis and his diverse cinema have been inextricably linked to the Thessaloniki Film Festival from a very early age. The beginning was in 1975, when the excellent Last Station, Kreuzberg won the Second Prize in the Short Film category. In 1979, the short film The Painter Theophilos was honored with three awards (including the Best Short Film of the Festival), while three years later, his feature debut, Dangerous Game (1982), won the Panhellenic Union of Film Critics Award. In 1988, the moment of triumph came, as the film In the Shadow of Fear won 7 awards – including those for Best Picture and Best Director – and was selected as Greece’s official submission for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 61st Academy Awards. Equally noteworthy, but also shockingly productive, was the activity of Giorgos Karypidis in the documentary genre. Initially, he worked as a director at the Berlin public radio station (SFB), while he later directed a multitude of documentaries for Greek television, and in particular for the legendary ERT shows Monogram and Paraskenio. A multidimensional and pluralistic spirit, Giorgos Karypidis moved beyond the boundaries of cinema. A large number of his articles and short stories have been published in magazines and newspapers, while his writing credits include the books: East of Zanzibar, The Dialect of the Scorpion and Diving Champion. Throughout the work of George Karypidis, the concepts of escape and wandering dominate, through spectral characters and fluid stories that slip away from reality and everyday life. George Karypidis waved goodbye to us in January 2019, at the age of 73, and at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival that year, Achilleas Kyriakides gave him a particularly moving farewell: “George Karypidis stood out not only for his work, but also for his integral and special personality. Those who knew him closely speak of a man whose attitude to life was completely in line with his beliefs. Uncompromising and visionary, with the ideal of a just society. Throughout his life, he was modest, serious and deeply noble, with an immense tenderness for humanity, but especially for the wronged of the planet."
Known For
During his summer vacation in Mytilene, a young and lonely small-time clerk, Kostas, becomes bewitched by a femme fatale, Anna Parisi, a thirty-five-year-old German woman married to a wealthy local businessman.
Dangerous game
In an unspecified near future, humanity seems to have turned into a fishbowl: everything is transparent, monitored by an all-powerful central authority, while people are trapped and suffer from almost complete amnesia—just like goldfish.
Utopia
In late-1950s Athens, a big sister and her twin brothers sneak in their grandfather's distillery to perform a strange rite. But, how important is the last drop of the rare "Dead Liqueur" to the experimenting adolescents' budding sexuality?
Dead liqueur
After 11-year-old Petros loses his father in a car accident in Melbourne, Australia, his mother decides to move the family to her homeland, Greece. Petros has been planning to run away from home ever since the big move. After persuading his classmate, Adonis, to join him, the two boys decide to make the journey to Australia together. Their parents look for the children all over Greece to no avail. The only one who knows the boys' whereabouts is their best friend, whom nobody believes. Petros and Adonis' pictures are published all over the press, but no one comes forward with any information. Meanwhile, the boys continue on their journey...
Trip to Australia
A music composer tries to deposit money in his bank one morning, and is accused of counterfeiting. Harassed by the police, the gang of counterfeiters and a stranger, he becomes panic-stricken. The unjust charge brought against him ignites his deeper feelings of guilt which stem from his sterile existence and, mainly, from his inability to produce creative work. Then he flees and begins wandering in an unfamiliar "country" where his painful adventures will finally prove redeeming. The film is an existential drama in the form of a "dreamlike" thriller.
In the Shadow of Fear
Greek documentary that includes texts written by Odysseas Elytis.
The painter Theophilos
No description available.
Witches
The Kreuzberg district of West Berlin is home to foreign workers - Greeks and Turks who are struggling for a better future, while trying to maintain their national identity. The lives, problems and collective political action of the Gastarbeiters are explored in this great documentary by Giorgos Karypidis, who for a while had also lived and worked as a director in Berlin for the public television SFB.
Last Stop, Kreuzberg
Anthology film by: Despoina Karvelam, Giorgos Karypidis, Alexandros Papailiou, Thanasis Skroubelos, Lena Voudouri
@thens Blogs
Andreas, a 45-year-old widower and architect, tells the coroner of events leading to his young daughter's death.