Cognac zéro étoile

The Idomeni refugee camp housed people from the Middle East who were trying to cross the border into Europe. When the Greek police closed the camp, the refugees resisted and blocked a railway line used to deliver goods. Maria Kourkouta’s minimalist documentary not only observes these events but also presents carefully modeled static images that open up the space within and without the frame of view, and in the closing black-and-white sequence offers a poetic commentary. The result is a bleak portrait of a place where endless lines of refugees try to preserve the final remnants of their individual freedoms. “This film is a call to welcome the refugees that cross the European borders, as well as the ghosts that return with them.”

Insignificant fragments, reworked, reassembled, slowed down, put in loops, of Greek popular movies of the 50s and 60s. These fragments are accompanied by short extracts of poems written by Greek authors and by Manos Hadjidakis'music. It is a found footage movie, a collage which evokes a return journey to contemporary Greece, in the center of Athens. – Light Cone

The tale of an encounter...

A long panoramic sequence constructed from images captured at the end of Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island (New York City), this film is a tribute to the Greek musician Lena Platonos and the culmination of a series of visual experiments with static and moving images.