MANIERA GRECA
The night comes to its end at the greek night club (bouzouki-dance floor). It’s five o’clock in the morning. The few last clients left at the club are clapping out of habit for the opening singer while she finishes her appearance with a long ‘goodnight’.
Nobody could have guessed what would happen when the leading star of the night program, the famous singer Koureas, begins to sing his brand new hit, a zeibekiko* song called, ‘the bearded man’.
A sequence of ecstatic events? A raised challenge? Hugs hanged on alcohol?
Maniera Greca or in other words, the way the world goes round?
We are the witnesses of the clients leaning on their drinks with their eyes on us, our eyes on them and Katerina Gogou, still looking straight to all of us..37 years later.
*Greek folk dance of free choreographic structure
Director Biography
Kirineos Papadimatos was born in Athens in 1967. He graduated from the Hellenic Cinema and Television School “Stavrakos” in 1990 with a degree in Film Directing. Since then he has been working as a director and film editor for cinema and television. He has also directed music videos.
Filmography
• 1991: “The sun was too hot”, based on a novel of A. Samarakis, 35mm, 20 min.
• 2006: “Where to?”, 35mm, 11 min.
• 2008: “Lilly”, 5 min.
• 2010: “Be a useful man when you grow up”, fiction, 10 min.
• 2015: “Paolo’s dream”, DOC, 43 min.
Director Statement
MANIERA GRECA is based on the homonym short story by Vassilis Kizilos.
In the movie, we hear Koureas (Yannis Kritharas) singing “The Bearded Man”.
The stage name “Koureas” (means “barber” in Greek) is taken out of the name of the 1990s Greek rock band “Koureas and his Worst Clients” of Yannis Kritharas, which came up from Yannis’ profession at that time, which was barber and the unwillingness for… haircut of the long-haired, in their majority, musicians of the group. They released their first, homonym recording in 1995, with Greek lyrics and music by Yannis, and later, in 2006, Koureas released the album “Kolo Tamam” as Dr. Koureas, signing the lyrics and the music himself.
Mind the fact: The movie doesn’t end at the closing credits!…
The last shot consists a reference to Greek director’s Pavlos Tassios (1942–2011) film “Parangelia!” (1980), from where the shot is taken, and to the rebel poet and actress Katerina Gogou (1940–1993), who says the final line of the film “That’s it. It’s all over”, from her free verse poet collection “Idionymo” (1980, Kastaniotis Editions).
iChill Manila International Film Fest
Kuya Manzano (festival director)
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