Kostas Sfikas
Directing
Biography
Kostas Sfikas (Athens, 1927 - Athens 25 May 2009) was a Greek film director, screenwriter and actor. For his film The Model he won half the award for best feature film at the 15th Greek Film Festival. In 1961 he started as a documentary filmmaker with his short films Inauguration (1962), which is recorded as a directed documentary, Waiting (1963) and Theraic Morning (1968), co-directed by Stavros Tornes, which was later purchased by the MOMA in New York. During the years of the dictatorship he seems to have developed a completely different cinematic approach - problematic, completely outside of anything that had been seen in domestic cinema up to that point. Dedicated to experimental cinema, Kostas Sfikas directed documentaries and fiction films, constituting a consistent alternative voice in the field of Greek cinema, the "last ideal of our solitary cinema". Kostas Sfikas is a director who tested, one might say to the extreme, the tolerances and endurance of cinematic creativity, he reflected and labored for another, completely radical and deviating from the usual narrative cinema, approach to cinematic culture. In other times and under other circumstances he would have been an outcast. In those times and in those circumstances, it was treated as an admittedly extreme but respected and existing trend, which enriched the reflections on what it is, how it is constructed, how it is read, how cinematographic creation is accepted. The Model is a film, outside the Greek data and established norms, which surprises from the beginning. It is silent, without sound and music – basically it has no actors, although there are human figures, dozens of figures, moving in the frame –, consisting of a single shot! The film is based on an idea related to Eisenstein's idea of filming economic relations as described in Karl Marx's Capital. After this pioneering start, Sfikas would continue with the film Metropolises (1975), Allegory (1986), The Prophetic Bird of Sorrows by Paul Klee (1995), Prometheus of Opposite Directions (1998), The Woman of... and the Collector (2002), Metamorphosis (2007). Sfikas' translation work is significant. He translated the works of Sergei Eisenstein: Cinema and Painting, Beyond the Stars, and The Form of Film, André Bazin: What is Cinema (Ontology and Language, An Aesthetic of Realism and Neorealism), Noel Birch: The Act of Cinema. The highlight of his translation work is his work on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. He has also translated Honoré de Balzac's works The Splendor and the Misery of Companies and Lost Dreams. Kostas Sfikas' visits to the Cinetic offices for 30 years have created a tradition of high-level discussions with Lakis Papastathis and Takis Hatzopoulos, creators of the show, and led to the creation of ten of his shows for Paraskenio: The Violinist Tatsis Apostolidis, Notation in the Work of Yannis Christos, The Gospel According to Mark, The Circus, Voices and Haunts of Rebetiko, Expressionism in Cinema, Molière's Misanthrope, Montage in Eisenstein, An Allegory of Power, The Enigmatic Monsieur Jules Verne.
Known For
200 BC. During a merciless drought, the brute nature of man and the delicate essence of woman become inextricably intertwined, as the omnipotence of the carnal instinct demands the total surrender of the flesh.
Young Aphrodites
The assassin of a prominent trade unionist takes a conservative MP hostage, throwing the government into a state of disarray.
Days of '36
A wealthy member of the upper classes and his three sons withdraw to a country villa where they spend their days in complete idleness, having everything done for them by their young and beautiful maid. They surrender to the pleasure of sleep, while idleness permeates the tiny world of these living dead, with the exception of the woman who is the sole representative of positive values, will-power and action. Finally, the youngest son will try to break free.
The Idlers of the Fertile Valley
A mysterious disappearance takes place during the shooting of a commercial on the beach in the early morning hours. An unknown man suddenly comes into the shot, then walks into the sea holding an umbrella and seizes to exist, before the bewildered eyes of the whole crew. After the police are notified, a confusing array of red tape manoeuvers begins, revealing the close affiliations of the Authorities with the advertising company manager and the whole mechanism of Mass Media, all of which are trying not to investigate the event but to conceal or even exploit it in their own interest. Only the musician involved in that commercial is trying to figure out what really happened.
The Colors of Iris
A 30-year-old man returns from America suffering an existential crisis. He goes to Corfu to see his sick mother and tries to find happiness through a desperate love affair.
Melodrama?
Something changes in the relationship of Achilleas and Anna when she starts to dream vividly and insists on relating her dreams to her husband. He is a barrister in the middle of an important murder trial and his temper becomes frayed with Anna's seeming indifference and involvement and preoccupation with her dream world.
The Woman Who Dreamed
In this Greek romantic comedy, Athens bus lines manager Voulis (Giorgos Ninios) has given up trying to salvage his marriage. Instead, he devotes time and energy to feeling-up cute commuters, eventually developing a fascination with one passenger in particular.
Touch Me Not
A timeless poetic wandering in the international museum of vanity with Don Quixote as the guide.
The Triumph of Time
This is an experimental film featuring an allegorical audiovisual symphony of image, text (excerpts from works by Proust and verses from Rilke’s poetry) and music through the use of archival photographs taken from Illustration Magazine. It focuses on the urban establishment and links the wave of Western colonization to the period right before the Great War (1914-1918).
Metropoles
Athens 1967. The political assassinations and the background between the government and foreign powers, on the occasion of the "Polk Case", where an innocent leftist was convicted for the murder of an American journalist in Greece.
Kierion
The story of Ioannis Zachos, a young psychopath who commits a murder in Athens.
John the Violent
Explores gender equality and how it affects relationships and love in the 1990s. Plot concerns Anna, an actress who is performing in a play about a woman artist who had to dress as a man order to attend lectures forbidden to women, and her brief affair with Andreas, a drop-out working as a bar waiter.
A Drop in the Ocean
No description available.
Μετά σαράντα μέρες
A film by Kostas Sfikas.
The Woman... and the Collector - Allegory III
An experimental film featuring a split screen. On the right, a number of people appear moving upwards - symbolizing the ruling class. On the left, we see a production line in a factory, where the products of human labor pass by. Towards the end, the products become human body parts. The film adaptation of Karl Marx's Capital.
Model
The ruins of paganism and the birth of Christianity portrayed by immobile people along with music.
Allegory
A poetic documentary about the island of Santorini.
Thirean Matins
Salesman Gregor Samsa transforms into a reptile from the materials of his merchandise. The affection of his family, who lose their main source of income, turns to hatred and they kill him. They throw him in the trash...
Metamorphosis
An experimental film that ventures a post-modern take on the tragedy of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound.
Prometheus Retrogressing
A film by Kostas Sfikas.