Revisiting the Greek 60s, again

Filmmaker Costas Kapakas returns with yet another nostalgic comedy, ‘Uranya,’ out on Thursday

By Dimitris Rigopoulos - Kathimerini

Short pants, print dresses, sweet fizzy drinks on metallic tables and old box televisions create an atmosphere of nostalgia for the Greece of the 1960s in Costas Kapakas’s latest film, “Uranya,” which is due to hit mainstream theaters on Thursday. Seven years after making the box-office hit “Peppermint,” the Greek filmmaker revisits the 60s, but this time the tale is more concentrated: five boys caught between twin desires. Should they raise enough money to buy a television, or should they wander toward the home of Ourania (played by the Italian actress of “Il Postino,” Maria Grazia Cucinotta) to get a few lessons in the secret art of love? Kapakas describes “Uranya” as a “nostalgic comedy about being a teenager, growing up and the late 1960s.” And we asked him:

There is a personal reason. When you reach a certain age, you feel an urge to revisit the past. I see it with my children. The other day my daughter asked me when I got my first cell phone and the conversation went back to my own childhood, when not every family even had a landline. She listened to me very intently and I got the impression that she was intrigued by the sense of a time so far gone, though I don’t think she can imagine a world without telephones. The choice, however, was not just about my personal relationship with things. The late 1960s was a pivotal period in history. And I think that the past is all we have. We don’t know the future and the present is fluid; we have to let a few years go by before we can grasp it. I also think that films such as these will strike a chord with a large part of the Greek public. Foreign productions cannot have the humor and reminiscences of Greek reality. No French or American filmmaker can really understand the Greek psyche well enough. In the rest of Europe, local productions are always very successful at the box office.

That is one of the biggest questions. Cinema is populist. And anyone who says they are not interested in ticket sales, well, I simply don’t believe them. Cinema should titillate our primal emotions, our sense of humor, it should tug at our heart strings. If more comes out of a film, then so much the better.

I don’t let myself get too caught up in it. I like the things I do and stand behind them. Whether I am successful or not is another story. I like what I like to be liked by others.

It influenced me and the producers. Between the two productions, I also had other screenplays sitting in a drawer which producers were not interested in backing because they were looking for something different. The doors were open to me because they knew from experience that I would know what I was doing.

First of all, the period coincides with the youth of an entire generation of filmmakers who are now at the forefront making movies. The point of view is different. There are those directors who will highlight the political background of a given era and those who will evoke an atmosphere. I personally try to also bring up the major issues of the time – it was a time of huge, rapid change – and draw attention to the contradictions of those years. We are, after all, talking about a time of great problems and repression which, however, also gave people hope of a better tomorrow. Buying a car used to be a huge decision; so huge in fact that you thought attaining it would solve all your other problems.

Maybe, but I don’t just make my films for people my own age. Especially with “Uranya,” I am trying to reach out to a younger audience. Ideally I would like to see people my age go to see my films with their children.

Not really, and we know that because it didn’t do very well in multiplex theaters. In contrast, it did very well in smaller, local theaters. This time around, however, I purposely tried to draw in this category of movie-goers.

I was looking more for a certain kind of face than good actors. It wasn’t very easy because many children today tend to try and look like something else than what they are. I remember my classmates; they had such a clear “look.”

Not at all. Not as long as I am doing what I enjoy and people like it. I don’t understand this obsession with, let’s say actors, playing the same type of roles over and over again. Do they do it well? If so, then I can’t see where the problem is.

Our only real home is our childhood, right? I hope that today’s children will have things worth remembering as they grow up. I sometimes get sad about the way children are growing up today, boxed in a house, in front of a computer screen. But, really, we mustn’t get carried away. Maybe the kids of 2006 will remember the Gameboy with the same nostalgia with which we remember the Viewmaster. Who knows?