The unseen side, 2000+1 Shots
an interview with
Vena Georgakopoulou, Eleftherotypia
2000+1 Shots
Vena Georgakopoulou, Eleftherotypia
2000+1 Shots
At the invisble side
Four films in six years are a big deal ... Low-budget films follow each other without any of them resembling each other, ranging from extreme extroversion to extreme innerity. Addio Berlin, No Sympathy for the Devil, A Summer Night's Dream and now 2000 + 1 Shots.
On the eve of New Year's Eve in 2000, eight persons cross unexpectedly and dramatically. A businessman swinging between hiswife and his mistress, an unemployed person who ends up being a hired murderer, a kid wandering through the streets.
"I see my film as a kind of a political document," he says, and I am surprised. "While it focuses exclusively on human relationships, through the reported news that is inserted, the personal story becomes a social one."
But what is the need that drived him to 2000 + 1 Shots? The festive way in which we welcomed the new century, how did it not work against it?
"On the contrary. Just because I saw in how a superficial and annoying style the millenium was presented, I wanted to make a movie that focuses on the unseen side of life, the invisible one which even when it is presented, that is made in an exaggerated way, like in tv series. Me, on the contrary, I chose a "cold" look on faces and situations, although in the end the film has a lot of emotion, but an emotion that does not scream. "
There is yet another, more personal reason, that brought Dimitris Athanitis to the everyday life and simplicity of the 2000 + 1 Shots.
"From a moment of my life and then I remember that I began watching things happening next to us and we were so accustomed to them, that we did not even see them. Let's say I remember how shocked I was when I first saw in Paris the special Police forces to patrol with automatic guns. And now it's a scene we see in Athens everyday and it does not make any impression. A series of such events, or the street children, I wanted to look at them again and somehow record them. "
When you ask him which of the stories of the film he feels more as his own, even though he has an answer ("the story of the married man with the wife and the mistress") he hastens to clarify.
"This film is the least personal I've ever done. It may seem contradictory, but that let me completely free, I had the opportunity to see things objectively and to keep balance, which in a more personal film is difficult to achieve. "
Vena Georgakopoulou, Eleftherotypia, 03-04-2001
