THREE DAYS HAPPINESS
SEVILLA FILM FESTIVAL
Intrview with Javier Melentez
Intrview with Javier Melentez
Three days Happiness-Interview with the director
Javier Melendez
Section Focus Europe European Film Festival in Seville 2013 was devoted to Greek cinema. It was an opportunity to see films that hardly reach the Spanish theaters, which is strange, as Greece is a country of European and Mediterranean culture like Spain.
Three Days Happiness is one of the movies of the Focus I had the pleasure of seeing. It is directed, written and produced by Dimitris Athanitis, with whom I had the pleasure of speaking personally (through translator Enrique Torres).
Three Days Happiness follow the lives of three women during the same three days. Women whose lives are connected, although they ignore each other. The men, who did not stand out well, have to go out of the lives of these women.
Three Days Happiness describe a contemporary Greece, although handles all time problems. The stories could take place in Madrid, London or France. In fact, one gets the feeling of watching a film produced in France (we know that everything that is produced in France has a French tone, but not in this case).
The viewer who does not know the work will be pleasantly surprised-like myself did- if Athanitis approaches his films as in Three Days Happiness. We are facing an atmospheric film, sober, with just needed dialogues, everything is told with images and actions. Clearly we have a film of a director / screenwriter who has matured his technique and feeling confident.
With the body still overwhelmed by Three Days Happiness I approach Dimitri Athanitis, who at once reveals himself as a kind man, who talks to me like a friend from long ago.
I identify with Athanitis screenwriting and say that I was surprised from the use of dialogue, as the story is told in virtually images and actions. Let me know if conceived Happiness Three Days in pictures and later added the dialogue or wrote a script full of dialogues and was cut.
"I write a lot and I'll take some," says Athanitis. "I conceive the film as a whole. Some dialogues are added during filming. I also like having a storyboard frame by frame. "
I ask him if he was in favor of iron script as Hitchcock did.
"I thought about writing a book on Hitchcock," says Athanitis. "It's one of my favorite directors. The others are Buñuel and Terence Fisher. "
(At this point I think Hitchcock, Buñuel and Fisher are three directors sober, they also prefer to solve the scenes with images than with words. Certainly in Three Days Happiness can find certain style references to these directors).
I say that I am surprised that relatively Three Days Happiness do not make references to the crisis. It is a timeless film that talks about things that might happen ten years ago or could happen in ten. The only reference to the social reality is the scene with the bar where there are only Africans.
Dimitris has not wanted much to make a crisis story, prefers talking about the family. To Dimitris family is more than the father, the mother and children, can be formed by a person belonging to a same ethnicity or nationality. Greek families are small groups, antisocial, solidarity barely exists, between them. "The crisis is mainly the crisis of human relationships," says Dimitris. He adds that the lack of communication between individuals and groups also contributes to the crisis is resolved. "A foreign writer said that Greece is a country in which everyone takes bad with everyone," says Dimitris. "That's what I wanted to tell."
(At this point I think in Three Days Happiness protagonists approach the glass between them. The Russian prostitute to the bookstore looking through a window, the bookseller looks to Africans through a glass door, another protagonists go to the Russian prostitute in a video recording. Glass is a metaphor that explains that the players are aware of each other but are not related, are not reported).
I wonder if the crisis has affected the production of the film.
Dimitris responds that production began many years before the crisis broke out, and the end of the film coincided.
Finally I ask what he knows on Spanish cinema.
Dimitris responds quickly: "Almodovar, Amenabar, Buñuel, Bardem, the director of Jamon, Jamon".
We parted with a firm handshake.
Javier Melendez
Section Focus Europe European Film Festival in Seville 2013 was devoted to Greek cinema. It was an opportunity to see films that hardly reach the Spanish theaters, which is strange, as Greece is a country of European and Mediterranean culture like Spain.
Three Days Happiness is one of the movies of the Focus I had the pleasure of seeing. It is directed, written and produced by Dimitris Athanitis, with whom I had the pleasure of speaking personally (through translator Enrique Torres).
Three Days Happiness follow the lives of three women during the same three days. Women whose lives are connected, although they ignore each other. The men, who did not stand out well, have to go out of the lives of these women.
Three Days Happiness describe a contemporary Greece, although handles all time problems. The stories could take place in Madrid, London or France. In fact, one gets the feeling of watching a film produced in France (we know that everything that is produced in France has a French tone, but not in this case).
The viewer who does not know the work will be pleasantly surprised-like myself did- if Athanitis approaches his films as in Three Days Happiness. We are facing an atmospheric film, sober, with just needed dialogues, everything is told with images and actions. Clearly we have a film of a director / screenwriter who has matured his technique and feeling confident.
With the body still overwhelmed by Three Days Happiness I approach Dimitri Athanitis, who at once reveals himself as a kind man, who talks to me like a friend from long ago.
I identify with Athanitis screenwriting and say that I was surprised from the use of dialogue, as the story is told in virtually images and actions. Let me know if conceived Happiness Three Days in pictures and later added the dialogue or wrote a script full of dialogues and was cut.
"I write a lot and I'll take some," says Athanitis. "I conceive the film as a whole. Some dialogues are added during filming. I also like having a storyboard frame by frame. "
I ask him if he was in favor of iron script as Hitchcock did.
"I thought about writing a book on Hitchcock," says Athanitis. "It's one of my favorite directors. The others are Buñuel and Terence Fisher. "
(At this point I think Hitchcock, Buñuel and Fisher are three directors sober, they also prefer to solve the scenes with images than with words. Certainly in Three Days Happiness can find certain style references to these directors).
I say that I am surprised that relatively Three Days Happiness do not make references to the crisis. It is a timeless film that talks about things that might happen ten years ago or could happen in ten. The only reference to the social reality is the scene with the bar where there are only Africans.
Dimitris has not wanted much to make a crisis story, prefers talking about the family. To Dimitris family is more than the father, the mother and children, can be formed by a person belonging to a same ethnicity or nationality. Greek families are small groups, antisocial, solidarity barely exists, between them. "The crisis is mainly the crisis of human relationships," says Dimitris. He adds that the lack of communication between individuals and groups also contributes to the crisis is resolved. "A foreign writer said that Greece is a country in which everyone takes bad with everyone," says Dimitris. "That's what I wanted to tell."
(At this point I think in Three Days Happiness protagonists approach the glass between them. The Russian prostitute to the bookstore looking through a window, the bookseller looks to Africans through a glass door, another protagonists go to the Russian prostitute in a video recording. Glass is a metaphor that explains that the players are aware of each other but are not related, are not reported).
I wonder if the crisis has affected the production of the film.
Dimitris responds that production began many years before the crisis broke out, and the end of the film coincided.
Finally I ask what he knows on Spanish cinema.
Dimitris responds quickly: "Almodovar, Amenabar, Buñuel, Bardem, the director of Jamon, Jamon".
We parted with a firm handshake.
