The Audience - Mariano Pensotti
Onassis Stegi in the 61st Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Become "the Audience". Watch the pan-Hellenic first of the film by the great Argentine director Mariano Pensotti, produced by the Onassis Stegi.
A film for the spectators of a theatrical performance and the city where they live.
Monday November 9, 2020 | 10:00 (E.E.T) | Online on the digital Thessaloniki’s International Film Festival platform.
Watch the trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGCO9OqmgIY
Athens 2019. The core of the city – the Exarchia neighborhood – as seen through the eyes of the renowned Argentinian director Mariano Pensotti. Pensotti, one of Latin America’s greatest theater talents and one of the most distinguished experimental directors currently active on the world stage, presents a film, commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi, in which every generation of the Greek theater scene appears.
Roads we’ve walked, record stores we’ve browsed, unmistakable market day on Kallidromiou Street, a theater performance, and an audience who also play the lead roles – all in “The Audience”. Α film about a theater audience, and the city they live in. It is also about a theater piece that we only get to know through narrations describing it. The audience that goes to see a play in a venue. The audience leaving the venue right after the show ends.
The camera follows eleven audience members, and their stories as they unfold, to create eleven short-form films. What are the stories of the people who go to see a theater piece? How much their lives are transformed by that experience? To which extent what they saw is modified by their memories? How it is to become a character in your own city? Which effect transforms an audience into protagonists?
“The Audience” was shot in Athens, Greece, commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi, Athens and is part of an ongoing project by Mariano Pensotti / Grupo Marea comprising of films about audiences, and their relationship with theater. Sometimes it is just a film, while in other cases it also includes a specific staging as well.
Credits
Author, Director: Mariano Pensotti
Project Curator: Katia Arfara
Producers: Dimitra Dernikou, Vassilis Panagiotakopoulos
Researcher, Dramaturg & Casting director: Theodora Kapralou
Production Designer: Mariana Tirantte
Music Composer: Diego Vainer
Director of Photography: Soledad Rodríguez
Editor: Agustin Rolandell
Αrt director: Lucas Economopoulos
Costume designer: Lita Kokkonari
Make up Artist: Ioanna Symeonidi
Sound recordist: Dinos Kittou
Production Manager: George Tsitsas
1st Assistant director: Agustín Gagliardi
Production Coordinator: Florencia Wasser
With: Periklis Moustakis Anna Κalaitzidou Mary Mina Kariofylia Karabeti Panagiotis Exarcheas Ioanna Kolliopoulou Dimitris Xanthopoulos Lefteris Giakoumakis Stergios Ioannou Ilektra Nikolouzou Kimon Kouris Alexia Kaltsiki Zeynab Mehrzad Zalvazany Zarifah Ektoras Liatsos Yiannis Mpakalis Pinelopi Riga Iro Bezou Αιneias Tsamatis Aris Mpalis Kostas Berikopoulos Tomohiro Watanabe, Thimios Koukios, Marina Symeou
Commisioned and Produced by Onassis Stegi
Read more
Onassis Stegi commissioned in 2019 the Argentine writer and director Mariano Pensotti to create a site-specific work – his own portrait sketch of Athens. Following trips he made to Greek capital, research he conducted in the city center lasting many months, and a series of interviews with local inhabitants, Mariano Pensotti picked out the Exarchia area as the most fitting neighborhood in which to narrate the history and relate the atmosphere of Athens in cinematic terms.
Exploring the neighborhood’s multiple facets, Pensotti created eleven short films that weave a collective portrait of Exarchia, combining little stories about disparate people as they interact within the city. Residents, restaurant and open-air cinema owners, immigrants, tourists, regulars and passers-by all take on lead roles in a single, communal story that at times follows a clear narrative, and at others has more of a documentary feel.
This is not the first time the Argentine director has presented a work in Athens. Five years ago, in November 2014, Pensotti brought The Past Is a Grotesque Animal to the Onassis Stegi Main Stage as part of Transitions 2 America, a festival dedicated to the contemporary independent Latin American scene under the artistic direction of Katia Arfara.
About Mariano Pensotti
Mariano Pensotti is an Argentine author and theater director. In his work he has developed two different lines: one composed by stage performances where he writes his own literary texts and the play is strongly based on the work with the actors, and in parallel, he has produced several site-specific performances where the main intention is to create a particular contrast between fiction and reality, with fiction performed in public places.
He has created more than fifteen performances in the past twelve years, which have been presented in many important theaters and festival around the world. Among the latest creations are: “Diamante, Arde brillante en los bosques de la noche”, “Cuando vuelva a casa voy a ser otro”, “Cineastas”, “El Pasado es un animal grotesco and La Marea”.
Mariano Pensotti has become one of the most noted experimental directors throughout the world. He has been heralded as one of Latin America’s brightest theater talents and he and his company tour extensively throughout the year. He formed the Grupo Marea along with the set designer Mariana Tirantte, the musician Diego Vainer, the light designer Alejandro Le Roux, and the artistic producer Florencia Wasser.
Read more
https://www.onassis.org/news/audience-premieres-61st-thessaloniki-international-film-festival
Book your seats now and watch the film online on Monday November 9, 2020 at 10:00(E.E.T.).