The Thessaloniki International Film Festival announced January 6 the death of former director Dimitri Eipides. He passed away in an Athens hospital after being admitted with pneumonia.
Eipides founded the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival in 1999, and served as its director until 2016. “Dimitri Eipides taught us how to watch documentaries, how to discover filmmakers. Cinema was his life. In myth he found the anthropocentric stories that originate from reality. He served this kind of cinema throughout the world, in Thessaloniki, Montreal, Toronto and Reykjavik,” wrote the festival in a press statement.
At the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, which he referred to as “his child”, he also created the New Horizons section, “opening a window to a great cinema, which was unknown to Europe until then,” the statement continues. “He convinced viewers that documentary is a love affair that surpasses its own art and becomes part of our life.”
In 1971 Eipides co-founded the Montreal Festival Du Nouveau Cinema, serving as director for 14 years. From 1988 until 2019 he was worked for the Toronto International Film Festival, as head of the international program. From 2005 to 2010, he was head programmer of the Reykjavik International Film Festival. In 1993, the Iranian Culture Minister gave him an honorary award recognizing his contribution to the promotion of Iranian cinema internationally.
“We will always remember him in front of a screen, watching a film, explaining passionately why it is ideal for a festival, ideal for our soul,” the Thessaloniki statement underlines of Dimitri’s passion for, and commitment to, cinema and documentary.
