Tribute to Vassilis Mazomenos...




Vassilis Mazomenos
Born in Athens in 1964. He studied Political Science at the University of Athens from where he received a scholarship to specialize in Mass Media Communications. He continued with post-graduate studies on the theory of Communications and at the same time taught at the same university. He also taught Sociology and Mass Media Communications at Athens technical institutions. He has lectured on film at cinematheques, institutions, universities and festivals. He has taken part and conducted seminars and conferences on film. He has written introductions to collections of poetry and his articles have appeared in a well-known Athens daily. He has worked as artistic director on major feature films and television art programs. He is the creator of a cultural magazine and a large number of advertisements. In 1999 he put on the play "Mythical Zone" for the National Theatre's Experimental Stage. He has served as a member of juries at international film festivals. He is a member of the Greek Film Directors Society and of the Directors-Producers Association. Retrospectives and screenings of his work have taken place at well-known international festivals (Spain, Serbia, Korea, Portugal, Turkey, Cyprus). At the 21st Fantasporto International Film Festival (March 2001) in Portugal he was honored with the festival's special award for his work to date. He writes articles on film theory and culture for a fortnightly magazine.

DAYS OF RAGE, A REQUIEM FOR EUROPE, 73'
Greece, 1995
Director: Vasilis Mazomenos
Script Vasilis Mazomenos
Editing Tassos Bitsakakis
Art Director Tzanetos Komineas N
arration Costas Sfikas, Clara Saslidi-Sfika
Technical Consultant Paris Yannikos
Computer animation Panayotis Karageorgis
Production Greek Film Centre, Vasilis Mazomenos

Man's will to rise above his earthly self and to soar into the abysmal confusion af all our pasts provides the material for a monstrously ambitious plan to create a World City. The journey of Daedalus into myth and history is likened to the birth, the rise and the fall of western civilization and becomes the form taken by the film, an allegory on man's place in the modern chaos of civilization. DAYS OF RAGE, attempts an introduction into a new method, into what is known as "documentary animation". The accepted term "poetic animation with elements of fiction" might perhaps describe what we are amiming at. And this because the film does not completely follow the methods of classical animation . With this method movement is not always used except when the subject itself demands it in order to create tension of a dramatic type but also as a bridge between two scenes. This movement might be the fluttering of Daedalus' wings, the fall of an angel and the coexistence of the animated and the static images in the same shot (newsreel). It is, in other words, an attempt to see a modern explorations in the field of the audiovisual language compressed into the film without subordinating poetry to technology but rather the reverse.

THE TRIUMPH OF TIME, 72'
Greece, 1996
Director: Vasilis Mazomenos
Script: Vasilis Mazomenos
Cinematography: Panayotis Karageorgis
Editing: Tassos Bitsakakis
Music Supervision: Vasilis Mazomenos

A timeless poetic expedition in the global museum of arrogance with Don Quixote for a guide. Like another Prometheus Don Quixote comes face to face with his Creator. He is transformed into a warrior and leads the souls-inhabitants of his world to an imaginary paradise. The Spanish Ulysses follows the golden age of Western civilization as his frustration and guilt and journeys to the twentieth century where this civilization begins to crumble amid the contradictions of its contemporary fiction.


MONEY, A MYTHOLOGY OF DARKNESS, 70'
Greece, 1998
Director Vasilis Mazomenos
Script Vasilis Mazomenos
Art Director Antonis Dousias
Animation Vagelis Zoumboulis, Stelios Pappas
Producer Vasilis Mazomenos, Myron Papoutsakis

The process of a resurrected Christ for bringing to an end the social nightmare and establishing a poetic paradise through purgatories and hells of Myth and History. With “Money” we are able to trace the root of civilization's downfall, motivating Christ's final speech, delivered at the stock exchange. Within this spectacular setting of modern history, the symbol of a forgotten world challenges directly Paternal authority and power, from which springs all that is tragic in the cosmic game. His ultimate death is indicative of the death of civilization itself, from which humanity can expect absolutely nothing anymore, aside from living out the guilt for the lost paradise.

EXCERPTS FROM FILM REVIEWS

DAYS OF RAGE
The best Greek film at this year’s festival. The most consummate, even though it belongs to the marginal category of experimental cinema. Yet Mazomenos’ experimentations are not of the kind that causes the viewer embarrassment. Quite the contrary, the latter is called upon to participate in a fascinating film journey where music, literature and painting co-exist harmoniously, in a personal interpretation of the Myth of Daedalus, seen under the prism of the birth, rise and fall of western civilization.
Babis Aktsoglou, ATHENORAMA 17/11/1995

DAYS OF RAGE
An eschatological look at Judgment Day on this now aged continent. A film requiem to western civilization and its barbarism, through allegories and symbols and a polemic perspective on the new Middle Ages. Mazomenos condenses the tragedy of the people of Europe and denounces the present day.
Eleni Machera, EPENDYTIS (INVESTOR) 18/11/1995

DAYS OF RAGE
A film for the elite…
Bozidar Zekevic, POLITICA 07/02/1996

THE TRIUMPH OF TIME
Arrogance is the subject. Don Quixote is the guide. A journey in the ages through history and civilization. The Triumph of Time stands above film norms, prompting enthusiastic applause from audiences with a television aesthetic. Mazomenos’ work is like a book. You must read it many times in order to discover all its dimensions.
Fred Zaugg. DER KLEINE BUND 30/11/1996

THE TRIUMPH OF TIME
Only one Greek film that is totally different from the others The Triumph of Time demonstrated that avant-garde Greek cinema has acquired younger talented filmmakers. Beyond whatever technological achievements it has to show, the film is impressive due to the work done on its subject: a poetic and philosophical description of the journey of Don Quixote, together with Chaplin who films him, who tries to save civilization from the prehistoric mummy of destruction. A battle waged by Don Quixote, together with Mazomenos himself, to overcome the passage of Time…
Ninos Fenek-Mikelidis, ELEFTHEROTYPIA 12/11/1996

THE TRIUMPH OF TIME
Vassilis Mazomenos returns with an equally interesting film as regards form. With the help of computer animation and the creative use of music the director composes a sort of filmic opera.
Babis Aktsoglou, ATHENORAMA 18/04/02

MONEY
The film is an exercise in futurology at a difficult period. Certainly it is not a documentary but a poetic exploration of the present and the future that takes place at the antipode of classic economic perception and can be read as a revealing commentary on the oncoming crisis.
BANK ASSURANCE WORLD, September 1998

MONEY
The scenes with Christ in Wall Street are not only striking, but are indicative of the whole film. A sort of experiment that charts new roads in cinema.
Ninos Fenek-Mikelidis, ELEFTHEROTYPIA 18/11/1998

MONEY
Mazomenos depicts a universe of money using the terms of the paradise and hell of Christian religion and the lived morality that, moreover, along with worldly power constitutes the crutches of money.
CHRIMATISTIRIO (STOCK MARKET) 7/10/1998

MONEY
When after some years a pile of trashy American films have sunk into oblivion, history will make mention of a pioneer in Greece who forged a path in cinema that many were to follow.
NEMESIS, January 1999

MONEY
“Money” is a challenging, captivating metaphor. In a world on the brink of the Apocalypse, terrified by the ghosts of the Millennium, “Money” becomes the “Divine Comedy” of our days that leads us from Paradise to Purgatory and finally to Hell, since having lost its values Humanity awaits Judgment Day. An extraordinary and authentic creation, “Money” is one of the finest works of European Cinema, an example of the new ways with which the cinema of the future can become.
Antonio Reis, Catalogue, FANTASPORTO, February 2001

MONEY
Mazomenos’ film is nightmarishly apocalyptic. Jesus searches his church desperately for worshippers. His only salvation lies in supporting the stocks of his faithful followers. Idolatry soars. The multitude of the faithful pours forth in the form of the yellowish gold metal, crosses the underground passages, follows the arcades and sweeps up everything in its path as it surges. The Renaissance-like images adorn the books of destruction. The human spirit bedimmed by the raptures and the massacres dreams of a provincial ennui on a universal scale. Who cares about the reactionary angels? Who cares about the confidentiality of psychoses? Hope, the virtue of slaves, sank in the eyes of Botticelli’s Venus. In Mazomenos’ film, the new mythology is full of heavenly toxins, becomes the mythology of darkness. The gods of the West are killing us to entertain themselves. Spiritual Persepolis became as desolate as materialistic Sousa.
Elias Logothetis, ANT1, February 2002

REMEMBRANCE
The triumph (and poetry) of memory. An independent film, a magnificent blend of audiovisual enjoyment, where lust is not confined to love and desire but extends to the lust of poetry and music and the film image in general.
Ninos Fenek-Midelidis, ELEFTHEROTYPIA 15/11/2002

REMEMBRANCE
His film is permeated by the austere assurance that one so often comes across in the poetry of Lautreamon, Papatsonis or the works of Beckett. The core of its themes is of universal dimensions; its technique is startling. This same strength of viewpoint, the disarming pastiche of the most motley materials that Mazomenos also imposed in his previous films, almost all his choices, function here even more creatively since he condenses materials that in another director’s hands would resemble the mismatched pieces of a giant puzzle.
Constantinos Noulas, HIGHLIGHTS, October 2002

MATERIAL TERROR
Mazomenos records the scenes always through a poetic perception, presenting the various details (20th century news footage, images of the poverty and wretchedness of the African continent, of immigrants, of places in Lavrion where Christ’s passion is “playing”, of American commercials that comment on the various subjects indirectly and sarcastically etc.) in order to create a particularly interesting film, an exemplary complement to his fiction film. A diptych that is particularly timely in view of the approaching Easter period, an opportunity for it to be screened in one of the GFC movie theaters that have lately been going, often thoughtlessly, with the screening of foreign films that are moreover big company productions.
Ninos Fenek-Mikelidis, ELEFTHEROTYPIA, 5/4/2005

MATERIAL TERROR
The dramatized film-study by Vassilis Mazomenos, known for his strikingly fictional language and particularly mystic symbolism, refers to the profile of a poet who is mentally ill. Mazomenos’ particular way of filming and his biblical filmic narratives are alternatives to the usual Greek fare since they go beyond threadbare thematic approaches.
Tina Mandilara, TO THEMA, 10/4/2005

WORDS AND SINS
With his latest work that is aptly entitled “Words and Sins”, he turns towards an austere, abstract, purely poetic cinema. His original idea to present Christ’s last moments as an African pagan ceremony using black immigrants makes the film soar poetically, while the chapters of the sins constitute a delicate, ironic commentary on the desire to grow rich since the stockbroker becomes the victim of the world he is serving. A film pregnant with meaning, significant and important, that addresses itself first and foremost to all those who dispose of a clear vision and who love the abstract and totally deconstructive cinema of associative style.
Dimitris Koliodimos, catalogue, Thessaloniki Film Festival, 2004

WORDS AND SINS
From “Days of Rage” to “Material Terror” by way of “The Triumph of Time” and “Money”, Vassilis Mazomenos has never ceased to surprise us but also to fascinate us as much with his views of our world as with his original cinematic perception. Elements that he brings from a cinema of the avant-garde in his first fiction film which is also his most consummate. A work that is clearly poetic, that combines image, words and music in a fascinating manner. With shots that are set up in an inspired way, with images that are visually magnificent (there are moments that are reminiscent of Pasolini’s “The Gospel according to Saint Matthew” but also his “Notes on an African Oresteia”) with wonderfully selected music (that combines classical western motifs with African motifs), with words (from the poetry of Ezra Pound and others) playing an equally significant role, Mazomenos records the odyssey of modern, western, alienated man who mounts, without hope of salvation (?) his tortuous Mount Golgotha.
Ninos Fenek-Mikelidis, ELEFTHEROTYPIA 27/11/2004

WORDS AND SINS
Christ is a black immigrant…
Of the lesser figures in current contemporary Greek cinema that dare to try their luck both within and without non-representational cinema, Vassilis Mazomenos eludes the familiar categories. Using mixed techniques or playing with forms and expressive means, he directs documentaries, animation or feature films with experimental approaches in poetic realism, in fantastic cinema or films d’essai, etc. The reenactment of Christ’s passion conceived by a half-crazed poet (with a black immigrant playing Christ) in his new film “Words and Sins” is yet another example of this avant-garde aesthetic proposal of his.
Voula Palaiologou, OS3, November 2004

WORDS AND SINS
Fortunately, according to Vassilis Mazomenos, there are poets. Thanks to poets, witnesses of the great miracle of the collective unconscious (Christ, his Passion, rejection of the material world) somewhere a flame still flickers that sheds light on the exaltation of human capability: to seek the impossible… The filmmaker, who has won awards at international film festivals and is daring in his choice of themes and forms, moves easily between the documentary and 3D animation. As the pivots of his narrative he uses the clash of two worlds (that of the immigrant who symbolizes the world of faith and that of the Yuppie who represents the material world) and the triadic nature of women (the nurse is also the Virgin in the reenactment of Christ’s Passion and a member of the nursing staff at the baths). With his new film “Words and Sins” Vassilis Mazomenos once again provides the pretext for corresponding questions – always timely, not only because they are beyond the time or place in which he usually sets the films he directs. So there you have it. Despite the cheap, sex comedies version of cinema that deadened every shred of aesthetic enjoyment and soul-searching, thanks to one film we continue to ask.
HIGHLIGHTS, November-December 2004

WORDS AND SINS
Filmmaker Vassiis Mazomenos lived for quite a long time among black immigrants. He heard them tell of their tragedy and the reasons they chose self-exile. A choice that is not at all easy. Not everyone survives the “Golgotha” of a journey to the civilized western world…
Fotini Barka, ELEFTHEROTYPIA 12/10/2004

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