April 12 – 20, 2024

 

Festival Lovers Quick Talk with journalist Cleanthi Cleanthus

Cyprus Film Days 2014
Festival Lovers

Quick Talk

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Name: Cleanthus Cleanthus

Who is Who: highest form of “time out Cyprus”

I’m a journalist for the last 14 years, considering that I wrote my first published journalistic texts when I was a university student in Athens. But professionally, I’d say I’ve been working in the field for the last 7 years.

I studied cinema at New York College in Athens. I had the pleasure and the luck to have my professors big names of Greek cinema and television, such as Pantelis Voulgaris and Kostas Koutsomitis. I’ve always had a weakness for the script. Maybe that’s why journalism won me over instead of directing. Of course, cinema is always my great love. I watch-almost – daily movies and I am the head of the cinema column in “Time Out Cyprus”magazine.

At the first Cyprus Film Days Festival I was not in Cyprus. I lived in Athens. However, I had heard about the “birth” of the festival and was delighted that such an important institution for cinema began in our country.

The importance of the festival is very important and I’ll tell you why. In addition to the that promotes young and talented local (and non) directors, gives the opportunity to the movie buffs (but mostly the wider) audience of Cyprus to get away from the stereotypes of Hollywood (which is not at all snobbish) and to see the masterpieces of international cinema that, unfortunately, not find a “roof” to the mainstream cinemas of our country, only in some film clubs. Unfortunately many “diamonds” of the world cinema have never been officially screened in Cyprus and this is very sad…

This year I look forward to seeing “Only Lovers Left Alive” because I admire Jim Jarmusch and consider Tilda Swinton one of the top actors of our time. I also very much want to see the “Miss Violence” by Alexandros Avranas and “the small fish” by Yiannis Economides… I love the new Greek cinema!

I never expected the audience of Cyprus to “embrace” with such love the institution. This is the answer to all those who believe that we are lobotomized as a people and that we eat what “potato” serves us. Big mistake!

I remember that last year I couldn’t make it to the festival’s premiere in Rialto after my car tire blew out on the way here! So jinxed!

I hope that at some point I’ll see Tarantino and DiCaprio at Cyprus Film Days? No? Never Say Never!

I would like to see the festival gain the momentum of similar foreign institutions such as Berlinale and the Cannes Film Festival. Why, what we miss;

Short CV

Born in Limassol in 1981. He’s a Pisces and a Sabbat. Ever since he was a kid, he’s been crazy about movies, especially horror and thriller movies. Besides, the first film he remembers seeing as a child is David Cronenberg’s “the Fly”. He was only six years old then… His favorite directors are David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock and Quentin Tarantino, while the movie that shook him most of all is Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream”. Ever since he was a kid, he wanted to deal with the media. He studied journalism at the professional journalism workshop in Athens and then received a Film and TV Studies from New York College. Among other things, in Athens, he worked with director Pericles Hoursoglou and made the first tentative journalistic steps as an external collaborator of the newspaper “LIFO”. Since 2008 he has been working as a journalist in Dias publishing house magazines. For the last two years he has been the head of the film column in “Time Out Cyprus”magazine.