More shorts at Drama Festival
It has already been 30 years since Drama’s first Short Film Festival, which started off on a small, almost amateur, basis. This year’s rich event, which kicks off today and will run to Sunday, will feature 230 films, three competition sections, a variety of parallel activities and a master class by famous Russian filmmaker Konstantin Lopushansky, among other activities. The festival’s 30-year anniversary will be celebrated in various ways, the highlight being the screening of 20 films that have been distinguished and received awards in Drama since the festival’s beginning. Part of the tribute will be screened at the Olympia Hall during the opening ceremony and will then move to the Alexandros open-air cinema. The tribute will also travel to Athens later. Apart from the international competition section, which will feature 75 films, and the Greek competition section, with 51 films, this year a third competition section has been introduced, «digi2007.» It has been designed for digital films of a maximum duration of 15 minutes and out of the 53 productions that were submitted, the selection committee chose 23 for participation. Highlights of the parallel sections will be the 14 award-winning shorts of the European Film Academy as well as the 21 productions in the Spanish tribute, which will take place in collaboration with the Cervantes Institute in Athens. The 10-minute film extracts from the ERT Greek Radio & TV Historical Film Archives, which will be shown before the screenings of the Greek competition section, are also bound to be very interesting. The festival’s open-air literary afternoons will have four thematic units: cinema, photography, prose and poetry. Participants will include Ioulita Iliopoulou, Amanda Michalopoulou, Giorgos Bramos, Aristotelis Sarrikostas, Andreas Pagoulatos and Achilleas Kyriakidis, among others. Konstantin Lopushansky’s master class will be one of this year’s most promising moments. The famous Russian filmmaker will give a lecture titled «From the Idea Conception to the Big Screen: The Role of the Director» at Drama’s Municipal Conservatory. A workshop of familiarization with the use of a camera and 16mm film will also be held.
