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Short Film Disenchantments  

The Tribeca Film Festival short films went to the serious side this year, reflecting an artistic disenchantment with the times. 

President Ronald Regan’s 1980 War on Drugs affected Black American communities for a generation.  With Gestapo tactics men were rounded up, then railroaded into the incarceration system.  Most charges stemmed from Marijuana possession. As states legalize dispensaries People of Color find themselves locked of a fast-growing industry valued at $45 billion.

Kiss My Grass, the short film from directing duo Mary Pryor and Martha Whitehead tells the struggles of Black Women trying to gain a small foothold in the cannabis business.   As the polite smile s from investor reply “no” time and time again, the lady’s frustration of hitting brick walls cannot be overstated.  Black Entrepreneurs know fundraising is a high mountain to climb.  In seventeen minutes, the short film encapsulated the structural racial reality in America. People of Color are jail fodder, however when the moment comes to gain economic benefit, The Sharecropper Rules apply.  America does not have enthusiasm for Black Success.

Mary and Martha bring stats and emotion to the film with spots of outrage, sadness and the hard reality of not being in the right club. 

The 80’s

Money Talks frames multiple stories around encounters with a $100 bill used in New York City at the beginning of Ronald Regan’s America.  Tony Mucci takes a cynical view with characters living on the edge.  The stylized short film keeps the forward moving pattern going with each sequence realistically transitioning to another in 34 minutes. 

Tribeca Film Festival Short Festival
OH YEAH! Dieter Meier and Boris Blank

A pleasant short documentary on a tune that became a sort of scamp theme song of the 80’s hit the mark.   Oh Yeah from Nick Canfield will please the Gen X crowd.  The tune was made famous in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and in The Simpsons for Duff Man. Writers Dieter Meier and Boris Blank talk about the process and luck behind 1985 electronic music single.

Freeman Vines the dark open secret of lynching.  Diving into a painful topic, Tim Kirkman and Andre Robert Lee somberly record the story of guitar maker Freeman Vines from Fountain North Carolina.  What makes his instruments special, the wood comes from a true used to murder a Black Man.

Two works inspired by Exploitation Films of the 1970’s, The Wrath of Othell-Yo and ATTAGAIRL.

Tribeca Film Festival Shorts

Wrath is a tale of an actor who gets his chance to play a “big role” in a film production after the lead actor has issues of manhood.

Short mayhem, ATTAGIRL is a fierce short on why you should not get on the bad side of a Bookie from Hell, run for New Jersey!  

All films were screened online from the Tribeca Film Festival platform.

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Stories from the Plantation Life

On My 15th 2025 the largest plantation of them all burned to the ground because of an electrical fire.  The Nottoway Plantation with 53,000 square feet over three floors, 64 rooms was the grandest of them all.  Sitting in White Castle Louisiana, with giant columns, wrap around porches and grand sitting rooms built in 1859 showcased the wealth brought by slavery for owner John Randolf.  What was once a place of violent servitude evolved into a place of celebrations for weddings and selected touristic history.  African Americans celebrated the pyric finality of the antebellum mansion built on the backs of ancestors in chains under a whip.  The Black Social Media memes trended for days. 

Up the river on the opposite stateside shore sits the oldest city on the Mississippi, Natchez, founded in 1716 in the heart of the Deep Cotton Belt.  Grand houses lined leafy streets.  

From the riches of human bondage, Natchez once had the highest concentration of wealth in the United States.

Suzannah Herbert’s absorbing, at times gut punching, documentary Natchez is a story of who tells the tale.  Through 86 minutes the Memphis based director lets the camera roll on her subjects without interference or judgement.   What comes through in the film is a wide divergence of opinions, institutional denial, classism, race and contradictions. 

The first scene shows the real power in Natchez, The Women Garden Club’s gathering with the mayor.   The city’s main source of income is Heritage Tourism and tours. Tourists come to see and learn how the Pre-Civil War Southern Aristocrats lived. Hosts regale visitors with genteel ancestral tales of sitting in magnificently decorated parlors while eating tea cakes, sipping tea in flowy hoop skirts served by the “workers”.  The word “workers” is in the official script approved by the Garden Club. 

Rewritten

On the other side of the tracks, the guided tours tilt to the rawer but spellbinding side. Reverend Collins perhaps has fewer tours, because he tells the horrible tale of rape and daily degradation in the life of a slave and the aftermath of the institution to the disbelief of his clients.   For Collins, exposing the conscience cover up of the 400-year crime is the most important lesson for visitors.  The history of slavery has been rewritten depending on who you ask.

Rev Collins giving a tour in the film Natchez.

 The protagonists in Natchez view each other with mistrust.  Each representing a narrative.  As the tourist numbers and income fall, younger travellers are no longer interested in the “Gone with The Wind” romantic version of slavery Natchez finds itself at a crossroads. Either give a real accounting of how the city’s wealth built on cruelty or for stay with the same narrative yielding diminishing returns. 

Herbert’s slow build story telling ability works well. The contrasting views ranging from pride, dismissive, incendiary to wilful ignorance are handled without a judging eye even if audiences could have difficulty identifying with the figures on the screen concocting a fantasy lifestyle of 19th century Southern Culture.  This could have easily descended into comical vignettes, the filmmaker never loses her grip on the story.  The focus stays on the different interpretations of the American Story. 

Natchez does not pile on racial guilt or morality.  That is the charm, instead the film allows the audience to figure out the truth.

Screened online at the Tribeca Film Festival

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2025 Tribeca Festival Film Shorts Highlights

Tribeca Film Festival is always a film festival with strong short film entries. This year the diverse selection includes an iconic musical tune, an enchanting train journey, racism in the US Cannabis industry, a debt collection from hell and an instrument made from a source of terror.

Stay tuned for our full reviews.

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Tribeca Film Festival Reviews

The 24h Tribeca Film Festival is underway. After many screeningsthere was funally time to write two reviews.

When there is Hollywood commercial weighted talent on the screen the expectations are high.  Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom Ian McShane playing his normal menacing mobster in Tom Kingleys’s underworld fish out of water work Deep Cover never managed to click despite trying too hard.  From a script by Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen, Deep Cover suffers from too many ideas in its brashy 100 min run.  Three misunderstood characters played by Howard, Bloom and Nick Mohammed get corralled into working for the London police as moles in the mafia. 

From improvision to a world of dark forces the trio confront Albanian drug lords, handle false grenades and guns all in the name of performing in character.

It’s difficult to combine the two elements as director Kingley attempts to weave a pace of comedy with risky tension.  There is the problem.  The failure of Deep Cover is the lack of both.

Are the Mitford sisters lives interesting or perplexing? Why did these ladies with the perfect pedigree make these choices?  Outrageous is the latest” Aristocraticplotation” from England complete with scenes in grand rooms, men dressed in black ties and ladies worrying about what to wear while toasting Champagne.   The lifestyles of the misunderstood gentry class. 

Outrageous on BritBox

A series from BBC’s BrixBox covers the book from Mary Lovell on the sibling’s chronicles in the 1930’s before the war.  Series creator Sarah Williams should be credited for trying to modernize the high society “rebels”.  Are the creative team behind Outrageous “Kardashianize” the Mitfords to appeal to a wider audience?  If reality tv existed eighty years ago these six offspring would have made great watching, each deserving her own season as a lead.  Yet, for some reason the latest tales of Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah in their dysfunctional aristocracy world is stale trying to disguise itself as modern mid-level art tv.

Screened online at the Tribeca Film Festival 2025.

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When the Southern Fantasy is not Real

From the Tribeca Film Festival, a documentary on the Mississippi city, Natchez. Once one of the wealthiest area in the United States, the former Cotton Belt enclave today relies on Romantic Southern Pre Civil War Heritage Tourism

Stay tuned for the film review.

Tribeca Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival runs until June 15th.

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Tribeca FIlm Festival

Tribeca Film Festival starts on June 4th with an opening on music superstar Billy Joel. Directors Jessica Levin and Susan Lacy’s Billy Joel: And So It Goes charts the life of the New York City born singer.

The 23rd Tribeca Film Festival starts June 4th until June 15th from New York City. Stay tuned for our coverage.

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Awards from The Greek Film Festival Berlin

For its tenth edition the Greek Film Festival in Berlin presented thirty-three feature films. This included six international premieres, eighteen German premieres and three Berlin premieres. Following five days, three competitions, special screenings and side events was the award ceremony. The award category prizes were for the main competition, documentaries and short films.

Winners

The winner of the main Emerging Greeks Competition award was Meat by Dimitris Nakos. The three-person jury also gave a motivation for the award. Part of it read, “…a feature debut which kept our attention throughout…” Director Dimitris Nakos was present to pick up the award.

Meat by Dimitris Nakos at The Greek Film Festival Berlin

The same jury also awarded the prize for the Documentary competition. The winner was Tack by Vania Turner. Within the jury motivation it read, “The filmmaker closely follows two victims of sexual abuse in their struggle…” Furthermore, they commended the animated sequences in the courtroom that could not be filmed. The use of silence and subtitles heightened the eerie court atmosphere. Director Vania Turner was also present to receive her award.

Honeymoon by Alki Papastathopoulos won the Short Film award. The film is a serious plea from the transgender community to support inclusion. The jury said, “What could have been a story about victims became a story about heroes.” Lead actress Nassia Sydeta picked up the award for the absent director. A Special Mention was awarded to the short Scorched Earth by Markela Kontaratou. The jury justified how, “…the female gaze turned a simple story of a stay by the sea into a thriller…”

Honeymoon by Alki Papastathopoulos at The Greek Film Festival Berlin

This year’s closing film was Athens Midnight Radio by Renos Haralambidis. An Athens late-night radio producer turns fifty and realizes he’s no longer young. On air he reminisces about his life so far with creeping regret. The solitude feels ghost-like, complimented by the beautifully filmed Athens night. For its German premiere, main actor and director Renos Haralambidis introduced the film. Joining him for the Q&A after the screening were producer Angelos Venetis and main actress Margarita Amarantidi.

Following the closing ceremony, a party was held in Berlin to sign-off on this special tenth edition. In the presence of guests, the festival team cut the commemorative birthday cake.

By Steven Yates   

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Documentary Competition

Aside from the main Emerging Greeks Competition, the festival features other competitions and prizes. The Documentary Competition has six films competing for the prize, just like the main competition. Two featurettes are screening together in one program. First Milk, by Panagiotis Papafragkos, takes a more poetic stance for its expression. Farewell: And Suddenly Memory Began to Remember, by Ada Pitsou, looks at creativity after dementia. The subject here is the renowned Greek psychotherapist Toula Vlachoutsikou.

Stray Bodies by Elina Psykou looks at choices and laws regarding the body and dignity. Abortion, IVF and euthanasia now benefit from the trans-national salvation of the increasingly popular “medical tourism”. The film therefore becomes a medical road trip through Europe. Panellinion, directed by Spyros Mantzavinos and Kostas Antarachas, is set in a central Athens chess coffeehouse. It is also the setting for ghosts, obsession, solitude and madness.

#MeToo

Tack at the The Greek Film Festival Berlin
TACK

Continuing the theme of personal health challenges is Loxy by Thanasis Kafetzis and Dimitris Zahos. Young Loxandra, who has Downs syndrome, signs an acting contract with the National Theater of Greece. In this, she becomes the first disabled person to do so. Leaving her city and everyday life behind, she travels to Athens to fulfill this ambition.

Finally, Tack by Vania Turner, is a documentary on the Olympian who pioneered Greece’s #MeToo movement. Sofia Bekatorou, the 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist for Sailing, was a victim of abuse. In this film she helps a young athlete Amalia through her own ordeal. Amalia is seeking justice for the systematic abuse she endured at the hands of her coach. This happened when she was just eleven-years-old, and with Sofia’s help she has finally come forward.  

The Documentary Jury is the same one as for the main Emerging Greeks Competition. It comprises of: Simone Baumann (Germany), Nikos Smpiliris (Greece) and Dr. Martin Blaney (UK).

To showcase new talent, there is also the Short Films Competition, divided into two screening programs. Complimenting this is a Student Shorts Competition.

The Shorts Jury is: Pierpaolo Festa (Italy), Karen Cifarelli (USA) and Marios Gavrilis (Greece-Germany).      

The award ceremony on 30th March is followed by Athens Midnight Radio, the Closing Film.  

~ By Steven Yates  

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My Greek Film Notes

As always with any major, small, or niche festival, all eyes are on the big events. The main competition is also conspicuous, and then there are the other sections. At this year’s Greek Film Festival Berlin, the reception for Stelios justified it as the Opening Film. Many of the audience stayed behind for the hour-long Q&A with director Yorgos Tsemberopoulos.  

Return of the Creeps
Night of the Creeps

Stelios also belonged to an out of competition section called Tribute: Notes on Film. The section pays tribute to the makers of music in Greece throughout the last century. The other four films in the section assimilated retrospective Greek offerings with more recent films. It also balanced documentary with fiction films. Edge of Night by Nikos Panayotopoulos was released in 2000 and draws allusions to Stelios. In particularly, it harks back to the age of seedy bars in remote Greece. The narrative tells of an aspiring singer who leaves Athens, hoping for her big break. The film’s score is by renowned Greek composer Stamatis Kraounakis.   

Made in 2019, Eftihia is a celebration of the life of Eftihia Papagianopoulou. The film portrays her struggles and dreams to become a poet and lyricist. In 1919, before the Greco-Turkish War, she escapes from Smyrna to Greece with her mother and two children in search of fame. Eftihia is further recognition for the poet, who did not become famous until after her death.     

Yani Spanos: A Life behind the Marquee, by Aris Dorizas is an intriguing documentary. Made in 2023 it portrays the humble life of the Greek composer, born Ioannes “Giannis” Spanos. It also follows his collaborations in Paris and fame in his homeland. All this is seen through the eyes of a fan, with rare interviews and documents. The use of animation and collage is also enhancing.     

Nikos Chantzis’ Return of the Creeps (2024) celebrates the famous Athens-based record label. An energetic documentary, it prominently looks at the life of Creep Records founder Babis Dallidis. Despite lasting only four years (1982-1986), Creep Records created a legacy of the Greek New Wave scene. This included the Post-Punk and Dark Wave genres. The featured label artists includes Art of Parties, Clown, Cpt Nefos, and Headleaders.

The Greek Film Festival Berlin runs until March 30th.

~ By Steven Yates  

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Greek Cinema Arrives in Berlin

For its tenth anniversary, the Greek Film Festival in Berlin offers another five days of screenings. The innovative program has benefitted both German and international audiences alike. Once again the screenings take place at Berlin’s legendary Babylon Mitte Cinema. Originating in 2016 the festival was initially known as Hellas Filmbox Berlin. Festival director Sofia Stavrianidou and her team rebranded to its current name in 2020. Since 2022 the festival has also travelled to Frankfurt and from 2023 in Cologne too.

This year the Opening Film is Stelios, directed by Yorgos Tsemberopoulos. It showcases the life of legendary singer Stelios Kazantzidis. Coming from a Pontic refugee family, his immense talent helped him overcome social and personal challenges. With his “Laiko” (a Greek folk-pop music genre) songs he won the hearts of a nation. For an opening film on the festival’s tenth edition, Stelios has an appropriately Greek celebratory factor.

Another intriguing main competition section features this year. Six films are competing for the best prize award in the section called Emerging Greeks Competition. All films are Berlin, German or International Premieres. Brando with a Glass Eye is directed by Antonis Tsonis. Set in the Greek capital, Athens, it concerns a heist that goes wrong and subsequent redemption. Killerwood by Christos Massalas blends fiction with perceived notions of reality. The premise of a young director’s film is a list of unsolved murders in Athens. However, could they be the work of a real-life serial killer?

Aside from Athens, images of Greece that come to mind are the countless Islands. In Kyuka: Before Summer’s End by Kostis Charamountanis, the island of Poros is the setting. It is summer and a single father and his adolescent twin children sail to the island. By chance they will meet their mother, who abandoned them when they were babies. More remote exotic islands are the setting for Maldives by Daniel Bolda. This time the family is a man and his dog in the secluded mountains. However the man’s world turns upside down when the dog disappears.

Back to Greece and domesticity again is Riviera by Orfeas Peretzis. When her mother announces they will leave, Alkistis contemplates one final summer living on the Athenian Riviera. Finally, Meat, by Dimitris Nakos is set in a village in the Greek countryside. After opening his butcher shop, Takis is confronted with truth and loyalty. When his son kills a neighbor who claimed part of their land there is one witness. Trouble is that he is also a long-term employee of Takis.

The 2025 Competition Jury is: Simone Baumann (Germany), Nikos Smpiliris (Greece) and Dr. Martin Blaney (UK). They are also the Documentary Jury.  

~ By Steven Yates