Nikos Koundouros
Directing
Biography
Nikos Koundouros (Greek: Νίκος Κούνδουρος; 15 December 1926 – 22 February 2017) was a Greek film director. Koundouros was born in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, in 1926. He studied painting and sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts. During the war he was a member of the left-wing resistance movement EAM-ELAS, and because of this was subsequently exiled to the Makronissos prison island. At the age of 28 he decided to follow a career in cinematography. He started his career as a director of the film Magiki Polis (1954), where he combined his neorealism influences with his own artistic viewpoint. He cast Thanasis Veggos, who he had met at Makronissos, as one of the characters in Magiki Polis. After the release of his complex and innovative film O Drakos, he found acceptance as a prominent artist in Greece and Europe, and acquired important awards in various international and Greek film festivals. His 1963 film Young Aphrodites won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 13th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1985 he was a member of the jury at the 14th Moscow International Film Festival.
Known For
Crete 1897. Greek rebels gained their freedom by fighting in the mountains. An allied fleet of French, English, Italian and Russian warships anchored in the port of Chania in protecting Greek and Turkish inhabitants. Rosa Bonaparte, accompanied by twelve girls off at a deserted beach with all the equipment of a Marseille brothel. Installed in a wing of a huge, ruined former Town Hall, where the officers of the allied fleet meet and entertain in the evenings surrounded by undercover agents, military connectors, and speculators : an East-West mosaic of languages, costumes and intrigue ...
Bordello
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
On New Year’s Eve, a timid bank clerk is mistaken for a notorious criminal mastermind who rules the streets of Athens. Embracing his mistaken identity comes with a price though, as his unwitting white lie begins to unravel.
The Ogre of Athens
Poet Lord Byron decides to fight with the Greek revolutionaries in Missolonghi against the Turks but instead the glorious battle wrestles with fever and his own demons.
Byron: Ballad for a Daemon
A comic tale. The issue of film education has been a Gordian link for many years in Greece. Starting from the time of Stavrakos in 1950, the documentary reaches up to the present day, exploring this issue through a dialogue between the people who dealt and are dealing. Among them Theodoros Angelopoulos, Pantelis Voulgaris, Dinos Katsouridis, Nikos Koundouros, Manos Zacharias, Werner Herzog, Emir Kustouritsa, Fatih Akin.
Champions: A Comic Tale
Some months before the outbreak of the Greek Civil War three outlaws struggle for survival in the mountains. Directed by Nikos Koundouros.
The Outlaws
This films tells four different stories, all connected by the banks of a river.
The River
Based on the book by Ilias Venezis "The Number 31328", the film by Nikos Koundouros unfolds through the personal tragedies of three characters, the Asia Minor Disaster and the agonizing travails of the Asia Minor Greeks who had been arrested and led to death by Kemal's troops and armed groups of Muslims. The wife of a merchant, a teacher and a seventeen-year old boy try to survive, following the column of prisoners into the depths of Asia Minor.
1922
An approach to the phenomenon of Thanasis Vengos, the man and the artist, through film excerpts, testimonies of his collaborators and relatives and analyses of his symbolic role in the post-war modern Greek reality. Thanasis Vengos, for more than fifty years, was one of the most important actors in Greece. His films and lines are written in history, raising more than three generations of Greeks.
An All-Weather Man
A cinematic portrait of director Nikos Koundouros, this documentary explores his artistic journey through the voices of renowned Greek artists, tracing the experiences and influences that shaped his visionary work.
Odyssea Corporum - Ballad for Nikos Koundouros
In the early 70s Greek cinema entered in a period of crisis. One of its aspects was said "crisis of issues" and one of the exits heard in the name "erotic cinema". The genre was already acquaintance from the abundance of foreigner films, that was distributed in the grindhouses under the "adults only" motto and its Greek version had a lot of variants.
Naked Cinema
In a port of Peloponnese the local Master Mason, his daughter, a Palestinian commando, a corrupt police chief and 17 girls from eastern Europe await the arrival of a ship with a route from Panama to Israel.
A Ship to Palestine
A documentary about the resistance of the people against the millitary Greek junta.
Songs of Fire
A look at poverty in post-war Athens. Kosmas, a young man living in the slums, constantly tries to make ends meet, hoping for a better day. Because of debts, he gets tangled up in smuggling. His morals are tested and he tries to find a way out.
The Magic City
A documentary about cinema censorship during the dictatorship in Greece (1967- 1974), based on never-before-seen state archives. The film includes clips of films which were either censored or banned, newsreels of that era, interviews with famous directors and also secret documents from the reports of the Censorship Committee that are made public for the first time, portraying a revealing picture of the system’s control mechanisms and providing a fresco of that time.
Affection to the People
In a nonaligned country, where a civil conflict is raging, a team of photographers follows a mercenary war lord, whose men wreak havoc among enemies and innocents alike. The story is a modern version of the tragedy Antigone, in a time when TV and the other media present unrelieved visions of war and bloody mayhem.
The Photographers
A beautiful young woman Hana Angelousi is lured aboard the yacht of a man who is trying to break the spell that turns men into stone. An updated version of the legend of Perseus and Medusa.
Vortex
No description available.
The Snow White Syndrome
An adaptation of the Mikhail Bulgakov novel The Master and Margarita. Power, religion, art, ideologies and love face off against metaphysical forces. Good and evil in eternal confrontation. A surreal wandering from the real to the dreamlike.