Meeting With Remarkable People
by Menelaos Karamaghiolis

After two successful seasons on the small screen and the ERT channel, screenings in cinemas, in film festivals in Greece and abroad, in schools, universities and prisons, the everyday heroes of Menelaos Karamaghiolis’, "Meeting With Remarkable People" documentary move to the even smaller screen of your computer and/or smartphone, allowing you to become part of their stories, supported by Onassis Culture. Attempting an alternative political intervention, these heroes take the viewers to an interactive platform where you can live their stories, expanded in space and time, with interactive material, through an interactive way of reproduction.

The Onassis Channel on YouTube celebrates the launch of the interactive platform with the presentation of 4 films from Menelaos Karamaggiolis’ series, this Friday, November 27th.

12 documentary features, invisible protagonists, distressed and seemingly doomed heroes without prospect or hope. Young unemployed scientists, homeless people in the city center, imprisoned minors, fleeing refugees, Greek immigrants in Germany, injured stray animals. Augmented short films that allow the viewer to move through the stories of the heroes the way he/she wants.

Menelaos Karamaghiolis gives a different dimension to “Meeting With Remarkable People” with the support of Onassis Culture. Through this platform, a new interactive form of documentary is created for the first time in Greece. Thus, these twelve stories filmed in the past are revived and creatively expanded in space and time, capturing what happened after the credits rolled.

Menelaos Karamaggiolis comments:

“Filming the lives of these heroes, who belong to socially disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, for 7 years, at the end of each film there is light at the end of the tunnel, solutions to the impasses of the crisis and a happy end on its way. A happy end they create on their own, without the mediation of a screenwriter, in a country where the crisis lasts for years.”

Read more about the director

Menelaos Karamaghiolis is a filmmaker who works in Athens producing feature films, documentaries, video art and radio-movies that transcend frontiers and stereotypes, as well as for real-life neglected heroes and serve as an essential tool for dialogue and social change. His films have been screened globally and won many awards like the feature documentary ROM, 1989, that was considered "a turning point for Greek documentary films" and "a masterpiece that must become a classic of the history of cinema" and fiction films as BLACK OUT (p.s. RED OUT), 1998 considered as “the first post-modern Greek film” and J.A.C.E. – Just Another Confused Elephant, 2012, participated in 48 international festivals (including TIFF Toronto International Film Festival) and won 11 awards. The interactive documentary series MEETING WITH REMARKABLE PEOPLE which he is directing and producing has been characterized by the press as “the doc-series of the year for 2012” and many of those documentaries have been screened in major festivals around the world. His video art works have been shown at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens and at the Venice Biennale and the Geneva Contemporary Art Center (2020, mini retrospective).

Meet the heroes online and catch up on their stories.

Available from 27.11 to 24.12.20 at Onassis Channel on Youtube

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/ugnV77v5ofU

Six Greeks perform their true stories on stage wondering whether they should stay in the Greece of the crisis or leave. A German tries to understand whose fault this is and all together they attempt a new kind of theatre that turns documentary into a theatrical play. The camera follows the true lives of the heroes both in Berlin and Athens and along with the audience gets involved in the real stories of the protagonists that play themselves on stage. So, should they stay or should they go?

Screeplay – Direction: Menelaos Karamaghiolis
Direction of photography: Giorgos Mihelis
Assistant Directon: Panagiotis Papafragkos
Editing: Theo Skrikas
Research: Prodromos Tsinikoris – Anestis Azas
Sound: Stelios Bouziotis

THE RETURN

Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/jPbbuVXe6S4

Can theater become an educational and rehabilitation medium for underage inmates who have no chance of escaping disobedience?

In a teenage prison, the inmates stage their own lives and become protagonists of a film that attempts to overcome the limitations and obstacles of a “correctional” institution. How can a performance by underage inmates be staged out of prison? Aphrodite Panagiotakou and the Onassis Cultural Center become the audience and discuss with the underage inmates, and host the performance of the prison on a big theatrical stage.

Written and Directed by: Menelaos Karamaghiolis

Cinematography: Giorgos Michelis

Assistant Director: Panagiotis Papafragkos

Editing: Dimitris Peponis

Sound: Stelios Bouziotis

GREEK ANIMAL RESCUE

Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/C1F5MRgBR78

A gravely ill, abused three-legged stray dog, abandoned in the industrial desert of Aspropyrgos, a town near Athens; a London-based charity whose mission is to help the neglected animals of Greece; a group of young volunteers who patrol Aspropyrgos and attend to the strays – these are the characters of the film found in a nightmarish place, a hellhole for many abandoned animals. Does the sick three-legged hound stand any chance of getting adopted, becoming healthy again and running across the fields of Essex? Why are the Greekies – the strays from Greece – so popular when it comes to being adopted abroad? With an unexpected ending, the film tries to discover whether there is any hope for the doomed dogs and for a doomed area outside Athens.

A cinematic allegory of the Greek circumstances during the crisis based on true stories taking place in “invisible” districts near Athens that tourists and Athenians often ignore. The stories of stray animals depict – with a cinematic precision – everything that happens in Greece in times of crisis and motivate a London based charity, that discovered this by chance, to start a European campaign aiming at awakening all those who live “protected” and trapped in big cities.

Written and Directed by: Menelaos Karamaghiolis

Cinematography: Menelaos Karamaghiolis – Panagiotis Papafragkos – Magnus Briem

Cinematography London: Tania Freimuth

Assistant Director: Panagiotis Papafragkos

Editing : Dimitris Peponis

Sound: Stelios Bouziotis

KICK OUT POVERTY

Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/Cz0Uu-Ak6RQ

Football Team competes with other homeless teams (like the Indonesia team whose players are HIV positive) in Poland. The film follows the homeless players in their first journey abroad, while they score and receive goals, and prove that football, sοcialization and tolerance can become important “weapons” for one to deal with the hardships of a life that seems lost and tries to find ways to deal with social exclusion.

Written and Directed by: Menelaos Karamaghiolis

Cinematography: Panagiotis Papafragkos

Cinematography London: Tania Freimuth

Editing: Yiannis Xirouchakis

Sound: Stelios Bouziotis

Visit the platform: https://remarkablepeople.gr/

Read More: https://www.onassis.org/el/news/meeting-remarkable-people-menelaos-karamaghiolis-are-transferred-contemporary-interactive-platform-supported-onassis-culture

With Greek and English subtitles.