Thessaloniki International Film Festival x Art Explora

In Greek with English subtitles

Alinda Dimitriou, Nikos Kanakis, Fournoi, A Female Society, 1983, 47′

On the island of Fournoi in Ikaria, a researcher observes the life of the inhabitants. He has no script or questions prepared; he merely observes. The island thus comes to life before our eyes, through its people, through memories, through struggles and daily toil. On the island, men are sailors and women have taken on all the jobs that one would more conventionally expect men to perform, from construction to farm work. Alinda Dimitriou and Nikos Kanakis’s camera captures the relations between the two sexes and how the division of labor is a key gear in the operation of the social machine.

This is one of the first documentaries by Alinda Dimitriou, who throughout her career has served activist documentary filmmaking, connecting social observation with the exploration of the women’s position in Greek society in recent decades. It is also one of the most important works of the editor and director Nikos Kanakis, who, having completed his documentary series Greece of the 5 Oceans, applies his expertise and vision here, onto a smaller but denser semantic canvas.

With great dedication to oral history methodology, where history is narrated through the experiences of the witnesses themselves – usually with no outlet or voice of their own – Dimitriou and Kanakis perfect a kind of political documentary that does not remain in sterile recording but connects observation with ideology and the social paradigm. Their anthropological gaze provides a roaring platform for voices marginalized by the official history records. The case of Fournoi perfectly points this out, as feminism develops organically, due to the economic and social conditions on the island.

The film Fournoi, A Female Story by Alinda Dimitriou and Nikos Kanakis (1983), produced by the Ministry of Culture, was restored and digitalized at the expense of the Ministry of Culture (2021).

Cinematography: Alexis Grivas
Editing: Nikos Kanakis
Sound: Mimis Kimouliatis
Format: DCP
Color: Color

Special Screening in collaboration with Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Filmography:

1977 Coalmen (short)
1978 Spata, Saint Peter's Stew
1982 Fournoi, A Female Society (codirection)
1984 Dimitris Pikionis
1985 Theater on the Μountain
1988 Human Rights
1994 All of Us 1995 Athens (short)
1995 For a Μoment (short)
2003 Life on the Wires (short)
2008 Birds in the Mire
2009 Among the Rocks
2011 The Girls of the Rain

1976 A Riffle in Clear Blue Water (short fiction)
1980 Venice (short)
1980 Ships' Power Supplies (short)
1980 Rotterdam (short)
1980 Naval Battle of Naupactus (short)
1980 Ship Safety (short)
1980 Antwerp (short)
1981 Lighthouses (short)
1981 Skaramanga Shipyard (short)
1982 Fournoi, A Female Society (co-direction)
1985 The Necklace (fiction)
1989 Markos Vamvakaris

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