Hands Up, Hitler

Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, THE BLUES UNDER THE SKIN dramatizes the tumultuous relationship of a young couple (Onike Lee and Roland Sanchez) as they struggle to overcome the barriers of poverty and prejudice that keep them from finding happiness together.

On the square of a village on a beautiful greek island there are two competing tavernas. One belongs to Aspasia and the other to Anargyros, who is a former Sergeant Major of the Greek Army. Their constant conflict doesn’t affect their children, who love and meet each other in secret. The local elections creates a new battlefield for the two taverna-owners, as they both run for office and promise everything to everyone.

Penniless and without a future, an English teacher agrees to tutor a pampered woman, only to become enmeshed in a strange reality and a downward spiral of desire and illusion, guilt and self-contempt. Will the ugly truth set him free?

Young Alexis Vranas returns to Athens form studying abroad and starts working for a major company. There, he will meet and fall in love with a secretary, Varvara Papadopoulos.

Considered the first creative documentary in Greek cinematic history, this short homage shot by Roviros Manthoulis as his debut film on the island of Lefkada in 1958, commissioned by the Hellenic Press Office, is nothing short of a voyage through a land that takes the poetry of everyday life as its guide, since every image – be it sweeping or small – of this stunningly beautiful island is “translated” via the voice-over into a story forged from many ages of myths and traditions.

85-year-old journalist and Washington resident Elias Dimitrakopoulos recounts his adventurous career to director and writer Robiros Manthouli, which brought him into conflict with Constantine Karamanlis, the Greek junta, and the Richard Nixon administration.

Educational documentary by Robiros Manthoulis, Fotis Mestheneou and Iraklis Papadakis, shot under the archaeological guidance of Yiannis Miliadis, Director of the Acropolis Museum, who is also the narrator. It is a wonderfully consistent mapping of the Acropolis space, in the objects, the spaces, the iconography, the connection with history and tradition. From the opening moments and the presentation of the complexity and specificity of the location of the Acropolis, and through the presentation of every impressive detail, but also of a wider artistic context, the film takes us on a journey through time connecting the centuries of glory of Athenian history with today, with the monument framed not only as the shining relic of an old civilization, but also in its current location, above a large, modern city.

Roveros Manthoules, one of the most important mediators of cultural relations between Greece and France in the audiovisual field, created this documentary in 1997 for the French cultural channel Arte (in co-production with FR-3 and NET), which makes use of rare film footage (from the Democratic Army's film crew, the BBC, and the archives of both opposing camps), as well as testimonies from individuals who fought on one side or the other.