Nicolas Philibert in Thessaloniki
Dimitri Eipides, founder and director of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, had made the obvious choice to present two tributes at the festival, one for the late Peter Wintonick, who came to the festival so many times to pass his wisdom and inspiration, and a retrospective with Nicolas Philibert, with whom there was an interesting press conference, here is the intro, if you click “press conference” below you get it all:
“I apologize for not speaking Greek. My father, however, did study ancient Greek and this always impressed me about him,” Nicolas Philibert, the French director said in the opening remarks of his press conference that took place in the context of the 16th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, which is paying tribute to his work. Talking about the elements that link his documentaries, he said: “The first one is that I always try to “infiltrate” a group of people. My films are about working people, but I believe that at a deeper level they revolve around language, speech, voice. I am interested in sound, in noise, in language; these are the things that all my films have in common. There is also an underlying political theme in all my work, a moral theme if you will, which could be epitomized by the question: “What on earth am I doing here?”
The festival ends tomorrow, March 23rd.
