In the heart of darkness
Dimitri Athanitis
on Invisible
CultureNow
on Invisible
CultureNow
Invisible: Traveling to the Heart of Darkness
When in 1993 I shot my first short film Philosophy, the war in Sarayevo had already started. According to the scenario of my film, the wars in the Balkans are expanding, the Greek economy collapses, the President announces the state's bankruptcy. "Philosophy" got to Drama Film Festival at those days, the Phantasy Prize. A few years later, that phantasy was a reality.
My latest film Invisible is attempting the exact opposite course. Invisible is first and foremost a film-response to what is happening around us: a factory worker is dismissed without warning. As he feels literally and metaphorically losing the world around him, he decides to take justice in his hands.
Soon, however, the viewer understands that he will not be the intouchable observer on pre-fabricated false truths. As the camera takes him through the mind and eyes of the hero in a totally unpredictable and extreme way, the story goes beyond a personal drama.
-You see me; Aris asks the man he considers to be responsible for his destruction. And he means, "do I exist for you or I am not, I am invisible?" The same question puts his little son, Aris himself, without saying a word. How invisible are we? How is our place in this world pre-decided? To this question, tries to answer the hero and the ethics of the film.
In the sold out screenings at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and in a series of festivals that followed, many people from the audience said they were identified with the hero although they had nothing in common with him. Q nad A after the screenings showed that it was the hero's morality that touched them, not his close personal story. And also no one, but no one could predict exactly what would happen in the end, or to be more accurate at the choreography of the end.
I tried to explain to them that the cinematic journey that Invisible is taking, is as important as the moral one, and this cannot take place through well-known paths. Only by diving under the surface of the world around us, but also under the cliches of film language can lead to participation and above all to the final request from a film: this unique feeling of exaltation through the journey into the heart of cinematic darkness.
Dimitri Athanitis
for CultureNow
When in 1993 I shot my first short film Philosophy, the war in Sarayevo had already started. According to the scenario of my film, the wars in the Balkans are expanding, the Greek economy collapses, the President announces the state's bankruptcy. "Philosophy" got to Drama Film Festival at those days, the Phantasy Prize. A few years later, that phantasy was a reality.
My latest film Invisible is attempting the exact opposite course. Invisible is first and foremost a film-response to what is happening around us: a factory worker is dismissed without warning. As he feels literally and metaphorically losing the world around him, he decides to take justice in his hands.
Soon, however, the viewer understands that he will not be the intouchable observer on pre-fabricated false truths. As the camera takes him through the mind and eyes of the hero in a totally unpredictable and extreme way, the story goes beyond a personal drama.
-You see me; Aris asks the man he considers to be responsible for his destruction. And he means, "do I exist for you or I am not, I am invisible?" The same question puts his little son, Aris himself, without saying a word. How invisible are we? How is our place in this world pre-decided? To this question, tries to answer the hero and the ethics of the film.
In the sold out screenings at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and in a series of festivals that followed, many people from the audience said they were identified with the hero although they had nothing in common with him. Q nad A after the screenings showed that it was the hero's morality that touched them, not his close personal story. And also no one, but no one could predict exactly what would happen in the end, or to be more accurate at the choreography of the end.
I tried to explain to them that the cinematic journey that Invisible is taking, is as important as the moral one, and this cannot take place through well-known paths. Only by diving under the surface of the world around us, but also under the cliches of film language can lead to participation and above all to the final request from a film: this unique feeling of exaltation through the journey into the heart of cinematic darkness.
Dimitri Athanitis
for CultureNow
INVISIBLE, a Dimitri Athanitis film, trailer from Dimitri Athanitis on Vimeo.
