Thessaloniki’s film festival has a long history, stretching back to 1960, in the golden age of Greek film. Starting as a platform for local cinema, the festival hit a crisis in the 1980s when production levels hit rock bottom – around ten films a year, down from a peak of 100 to 120 films a year in the 60s and early 70s. Michel Demopoulos, then a critic and managing international film acquisitions for state-run Greek TV, proposed a new direction for the festival based on showcasing the best in young, international film-makers. His ideas were accepted and he became the new director of the festival.

In 1992, the event appeared in its new incarnation – the Thessaloniki International Film Festival – and in its first year invited the then almost totally unknown Abbas Kiarostami, in doing so making a major contribution to the Iranian director’s reputation in the West. In an environment of ever-increasing competition among international festivals, Thessaloniki under Demopoulos’s direction has grown to become a highly respected event, particularly valued by visiting film-makers for its easy-going, intimate atmosphere that enables a direct connection with the audience. Yet the festival is still also the main showcase for Greek cinema.

Filmfestivals.com met with Demopoulos, still at the festival’s helm, to discuss the contradictions of being both a national and an international festival, the state of Greek film-making and the danger that there may be political interventions in the festival.

Thessaloniki deliberately avoided being a so-called “Class A” festival, and you’ve tried to be more of a film-maker’s event.

We didn’t want to compete with Cannes, Berlin or Venice. We wanted to be a festival showing the best of independent film. We don’t care if some of the films have already played at some other festival. We just want to play the films we like and that Greek audiences will like.

Are there too many festivals? Since you’ve gone international, Sarajevo and Sofia have emerged as major festivals in the Balkans.

I don’t think these are competition. There’s space for two or three festivals in the Balkans, I think. Ten years ago, we created the Balkan Survey section. It has been quite successful. We’ve tried to innovate, and this year we’ve inaugurated a section on Greek films in progress. Next year we’ll do it better, with more films.

Partly you’re an international festival with a lot of international guests and partly you’re a local festival for local audiences. Is it hard to reconcile these different sides of the festival?

It’s not easy. We’re the biggest event in Greece for cinema, in fact the biggest cultural event in the country. At the same time, we don’t have a very strong presence for Greek cinema. That’s a handicap, because if you want to be very well established for international press, critics and buyers you have to have a strong local production and good quality. Unfortunately, we can’t say that we have that. On the other hand, the international part of the festival is something that helps the Greek part a lot. Some of the Greek directors are very old-fashioned and they say that their films are lost in all this great international talent. But that’s a very inconsequential criticism, I think, because if there were only Greek films this festival would disappear, with only 20 films only five of which would be interesting. It would be a very dull atmosphere, like it was in the 1980s.

I think this dialogue between the two levels is a great help to Greek cinema. Audiences like this too, otherwise they wouldn’t keep coming. It’s a symbiosis that is working, and I don’t see any other identity for the festival.

Why do you think Greek cinema isn’t doing so well?

It’s not just a problem of Greek cinema. There is a problem all over Europe. European cinema seems to be out of breadth, with some small exceptions. And for small countries, it is even worse. European cinema is getting older, the infrastructure, and the scripts are not so inspired, the difficulties of finding money, the difficulties of being commercial and finding an audience. Some of the countries are responding better than ours. We are responding worse.

Here we have a Greek Film Centre trying, with peanuts, to keep Greek cinema alive. It’s not enough with USD 4 or 5 million; you can’t have a realistic production with this level of funding. But they are working and trying to do something.

A second problem is there has been no film school. Now, we are trying in Thessaloniki. The first 40 students enrolled this year at a cinema programme at the university. Also, we are the only country in Europe not to have an archive and cinematheque. We have a small cinematheque that is a private foundation, but that is all.

What is the relationship between the festival and the Greek distribution system? Do distributors come to the festival?

Yes, the distributors come here; they always select, not many, but five or six films for theatrical distribution. For example, there are two or three films in the international selection that have already been bought by Greek distributors. Which is not bad.

There are rumours that the festival administration will change as a result of the change in government.

That’s right. This is a big rumour. I don’t know if there’s anything to it, but I’ll continue because I like this work. But I need to have some guarantees that we can continue our work as we intend to and as we started, without interference from the ministry. We want to be independent in running this festival. I can understand the limitations on the budget, because that happens everywhere. But this is festival that I want to make and other people are following us and our choices, our selection.

When you talk about intervention, do you mean making it more Greek and less international?

Maybe that. I don’t know. Maybe more commercial.

Like what happened in Venice?

Yes, maybe. I don’t like that idea. But I don’t know. Some people in the ministry are not against us, but there are other currents and powers that see things another way. There are a lot of contradictions. All we can do is wait and see.

Andrew James Horton is Editor-in-Chief of Kinoeye