The Peloponnisos International Doc Film Festival's purpose has always been to introduce the audience of Peloponnese some very special films from all over the world. This year according to the difficult circumstances it was decided that there will be a hybrid version of the festival with an ONLINE release in February and a live premiere in May. In this situation we asked volunteers and festival staff to interview the directors of the ONLINE program to bring them closer with the audience even if they couldn't have met in the theaters. Behind the scenes information, personal stories and more in depth approach to the films are available through these interviews. The interviews of the films included in the "Claiming Freedom" tribute have been conducted by the students of Theater Studies of University of Peloponnese, as one part of our collaboration with the University.
The interviews of the directors were conducted by: Manos Kalafatelis, Dina Sotaki, Stella Papakonstantinou, Kostas Metsos, Giannis Koutresis, Ioannis Manoloudis, Andrianna Giannakopoulou, Daphne Alihatzoti, Ornela Koutrolli, Ilektra Katsimiha, Valia Orfanidou, Antonia Pternea and Maria Siamatra, Maria Nikolakopoulou, Giorgos Geranakis, Aggelos Kourepis, Maria Galani, Kalliopi Kalpodimou, Katerina Mefsout the great team of student from Theater Studies faculty of University of Peloponnese.
Tekla Taideli "BEDU Beddna Naiesh"
In 2002 she graduated in Direction at the School of Cinema Television and New Media in Milan where she also attended the Filmmaker course in 1999. Director, author and curator of documentaries. In 2004 she self-produced her first feature film 'FUORI VENA', selected at the 58th Locarno Film Festival and winner of the 23rd Sulmona Film Festival. In 2013 she founded the 'STREET CINEMA SCHOOL' (FB A Scuola di Street Cinema by Tekla Taidelli), where she, the only underground female neo-realist director in Italy, teaches her idea of cinema. How to make a short film in two weekends with few means by making the invisible speak with classic texts.
We would like to thank Tekla for the wonderful interview with Manos Kalafatelis that you can check out here.
Minsu Park "CHADDR-A river between us"
Minsu Park is a German director of South Korean origin. His graduation film at the University of Television and Film in Munich „SEWOL-Die GelbeZeit“ (2017) won many awards, including Studio Hamburg Prize for Best Documentary, Bavaria Culture Prize and Grimme Prize.
We would like to thank Minsu for the wonderful interview that you can read here.
Julia Saponova "Eating an Elephant"
Graduated from St. Petersburg University, specialty - psychologist. In 2013, she taught a short film course at the Talantino children's film school. In 2014, she graduated from the editing direction, in 2016 - the direction of Alexei Popogrebsky at the Moscow School of Cinema. During the training, four short films were shot: “Choked”, “Mermaid”, “Brownie” and the diploma film “Birthday”. Among the director's works are commercials and music videos. Specializes in filming with children and animals. Starting to work with social videos featuring actors with Down Syndrome, Julia became one of the creators of the inclusive multimedia project Interaction, in which she became the author of the idea and director of the lyrical documentary comedy Eat An Elephant.
We would like to thank Julia for the wonderful interview with Ornela Koutrolli that you can check out here.
Javier Corcuera "The Journey of Javier Heraud"
He studied film in Peru and received a degree in Image Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid. Javier Corcuera made himself a name after his first feature film The Back of the World" a film that includes three stories about human rights violations in the US, Turkey and Peru. The film won the International Critics Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival (2000) and the OCIC prize at the New Latin American Film Festival in Havana. With his second feature film "The Guerrilla of Memory" (2002), he jumps into the past and portrays a forgotten part of the history of Spain. The story of a group of men and women who refused to accept the defeat ended the civil war and continued fighting in the mountains of Spain against Franco. In 2004, together with four other directors, he made the film "En el mundo, a cada rato", five stories that speak of childhood in five places around the world. Javier Corcuera performs "Daughters of Belen", a story of three generations of women in a place in the Amazon of Peru. His next film, the feature film "Winter in Baghdad" (2005) shot before and during the US occupation in Iraq, he won(among others) the following awards: best documentary film at the Spanish Film Festival in Málaga (2005), and best documentary film at the Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival (2005)In the film "INVISIBLES", a collective film made with directors like Win Wenders, Fernando León, or Isabel Coixét, Javier Corcuera makes the chapter "La voz de laspiedras" a documentary about the internal war in Colombia. INVISIBLES obtained the Goya from the Spanish Film Academy. Then he made "Check Point Rock, Songs from Palestine", a documentary about the occupation in Palestine from the perspective of their musicians. His latest film “I still being (kachkaniraqmi)” won the Lima Film Festival for Best Latin American Documentary Film (Lima, 2013) and other seventeen international awards. Javier Corcuera has also made documentaries for television in Spain and is the director /founder of the International Film Festival of the Sahara FISAHARA, created in the Saharawi refugee camps in 2003. He works as a professor of documentary film at the Madrid Film Institute and other Film schools. He is currently part of the management team of the Cineteca of the city of Madrid, movie theaters dedicated to documentary film and independent cinema.
We would like to thank Javier for the wonderful interview with Ioannis Manoloudis that you can check out here.
Don't forget to check out the films in today's program till 23:59 GR Time in this link