“Like Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Greece’s Pantelis Voulgaris has made it his project to confront and illuminate his country’s tortured times.” 
GEORGIA BROWN, VILLAGE VOICE

"Cinema with a human face . . . Voulgaris explores the greek social scene in depth, with rare honesty and understanding.”
COSTAS VRETTAKOS, GREEK FILM CENTRE

APRIL 22-26

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Please Note: Due to travel restrictions in Europe caused by volcanic ash, director Pantelis Voulgaris will not be attending the opening night of this series as originally planned.
- - - - - - - - - - - -

Pacific Cinémathèque is pleased to join with the Consulate General of Greece in Vancouver in presenting a select retrospective of the films of Pantelis Voulgaris, one of the reigning masters of Greek cinema. Active since the mid 1960s, and a leading figure in the era’s New Greek Cinema, a wave of young directors deeply committed to freedom of expression, Voulgaris is an intensely humanistic filmmaker whose sensitive, intimate, insightful work confronts issues political (Greece’s tortured recent history) and personal (contemporary alienation and loneliness). Voulgaris’s award-winning films have been perennials at Europe’s leading film festivals; two have been featured over the years in Pacific Cinémathèque’s annual European Union Film Festival. Voulgaris was honoured with a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1995 (his first major North American introduction) and with a tribute and retrospective at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece in 2002.

“At first glance the films of Voulgaris can be characterized as built on acute observat

ion of small gestures and simple daily moments as they are experienced by ordinary people. These films, however, eventually reveal themselves to the viewer as documenting with great sensitivity and lucidity the history, ethics and atmosphere of a generation perpetually caught in extraordinary situations.

“This paradox prevails when describing the director’s cinematic style, which is at once unobtrusive and direct, intimate yet distant; in the universe Voulgaris creates, he is able to capture specific periods of Greek social-political history.  While filtering it through complex psychological characterizations, he simultaneously acquires universal significance and — above all — an over-all impression of humanity and compassion.

“An actor’s director, Voulgaris coaxes subtle, stirring performances from his casts: his delicate and discreet handling of the characters and their intensely humanistic stories results in films permeated by genuine tenderness and passion.”  JYTTE JENSEN, MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK

Acknowledgments: For their assistance in making this exhibition possible, Pacific Cinémathèque is grateful to the Consulate General of Greece in Vancouver and Consul-General Georgios Ayfantis; Dr. André Gerolymatos, Chair, Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University; the Hellenic Community of Vancouver; the Greek Film Centre (Athens); OMEROS, Hellenic-Canadian Association of Attica & Aegean Islands of BC; and Pantelis Voulgaris.