The 26th Thessaloniki International Doc Fest will showcase the internationally acclaimed artist, director, choreographer, visual artist and performer Dimitris Papaioannou, and illustrate the “multifarious aspects of [this] artist through different forms of art and expression, redefining the boundaries of representation, the allegorical power of images and the communication between a work of art and the audience.”
The upcoming Greek doc festival runs 7-17 March.
TiDF underlines how Papaioannou is considered “one of the four most important choreographers in the world” (Le Figaro), “a masterful theatrical magician and imagist” (The Times), “the most original choreographer of our time” (La Repubblica), and “a master of contradictions,” whose creations “cross beauty with disgust, wonder and comedy” (The Guardian), and are an “act of artistic magic created before our eyes” (New York Times).
The documentary Bull’s Heart (working title), directed by renowned Greek director Eva Stefani and produced by Onassis Culture, will screen at the 26th TiDF as a work-in-progress. In the film, Stefani follows and records the tour of Transverse Orientation, Dimitris Papaioannou’s play that was produced by Onassis Stegi and which had its Greek premiere in December 2021, thereafter travelling across 3 continents, 20 countries, 31 cities, resulting it being seen by more than 80,000 spectators.
“The term ‘transverse orientation’ describes the insect’s method of maintain a steady angle towards a distant source of light for orientation purposes.
Multi award-winning Stefani records the play’s tour to some of the most prestigious European theatres, showing how Papaioannou and his team “give shape and breathe life” to the work. “Her camera documented for a period of years snapshots and scenes from the rehearsals and the performances in Lyon, Paris, London, Rome, Tel Aviv, all the way up to the play’s last staging in San Francisco,” the festival writes.
Additionally, Papaioannou has provided the image for this year’s festival poster; a black-and-white drawing of a kiss. The image, drawn in ink, “echoes the power of a kiss and the sweeping beauty of love”, the festival writes. “Two figures that eradicate all segregative lines and the limitations that derive from predetermined identities, are interwoven into an undivided body that praises the unbeatable force of togetherness”.
Between March 8-17, Papaioannou’s video installation Inside will also be showcased in Thessaloniki at MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, together with the film Backside which follows the installation’s creation. This will be presented as a twelve-hour visual meditation. Admission is free.
Inside began as a large-scale artistic experiment, a theatrical installation that took place in Athens in the spring of 2011. Inside a room set up on stage, thirty performers identically repeated a simple series of movements, presenting our daily return home through countless combinations and coatings. The stage action started before the theatre opened and continued after the last guest had left. The theatre was open to the public for six hours each day. Inside treated the theatre as an exhibition space and the work as an exhibit. An unedited single shot of this experience is presented in the video installation. The installation has already travelled to cities around the world, such as Amsterdam, Moscow, Montreal, Taipei, Turin, Dresden, Montpellier, Basel, Kalamata, Ravello, Lucca, and Athens.
In addition, TIDF will screen Papaioannou’s short films Nowhere (Director’s Cut – premiering at TiDF) and Primal Matter, where he “re-choreographs his theatre work through the prism of a filmmaker and an editor, reshaping it under cinematic terms,” the festival writes.
Nowhere, commissioned and produced by the National Theatre of Greece to inaugurate its renovated Main Stage in 2009, was conceived as a site-specific project. A group of humans confronted the spatial challenges posed, measuring space with their bodies. “Nowhere, performed twice daily in overlapping shows, is a contemplation on the very nature of theatre, as a machine that mirrors human life,” the festival writes. The filmed version of the central scene (dedicated to the memory of Pina Bausch who had just passed away) was created in June 2014, and went viral with over 2.5 million views.
Primal Matter, the entire work in seventeen minutes is a condensed cinematic summary of Dimitris Papaioannou’s original production, Primal Matter (2013). “The work is a personal response to a new political, social and ethical reality, where issues of national identity are re-interpreted. The challenge that lies ahead is how to face a wounded national identity, the trauma continues, but so does the resistance of creativity,” the festival writes.
Papaioannou will attend the screenings of the above-mentioned films, as well as the opening of Inside. The TiDF issue of First Shot magazine will be entirely dedicated to the work of Dimitris Papaioannou, as seen through the prism of director Eva Stefani.
