By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Head Of 56-Year-Old Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Dimitri Eipides, Steps Down After 24 Years

Posted Tuesday, January 12th, 2016 - Comments Off on Head Of 56-Year-Old Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Dimitri Eipides, Steps Down After 24 Years
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TIFF Director Dimitri Eipides’ Resignation Announcement

After 24 years in the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Mr Dimitri Eipides, also founder of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, announced yesterday his resignation as TIFF Director via a letter addressed to the Greek Minister of Culture Mr Aristidis Baltas. The announcement is as follows:

Dear Minister,

Dear Friends,

When a circle is completed, mixed feelings are inevitable. Following 24 years of a working relationship and life relationship with the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, I feel that it is the right moment to retire from an institution with which I share bonds and memories of a lifetime. This is the right moment to pass the torch to the younger generation, hoping and wishing that during all these years I have managed to convey to them my passion for cinema and my experience in organizing a film festival of international recognition.

This artistic path began in 1992 when TIFF became international, continued until 1999 when a dream of mine came true by establishing the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and was further developed in 2010, when I was named director of this institution, during a particularly difficult period for Greece. These unfavorable circumstances didn’t daunt us, on the contrary; they made us even more persistent into strengthening the Festival without downgrading its quality. Today, I decide to complete this course with the 18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival which will take place March 11-20, 2016.

I would like to warmly thank my associates, to the disposal of which I will voluntarily continue to be, the spectators who whole-heartedly embraced our work and the directors who entrusted us with their films and hopes.

Even if this circle is completed, my love for cinema will remain ceaseless. This love will continue to inspire and connect me with people and images, with all of you who believe in the power and magic of cinema.

Dimitri Eipides

TIFF Director

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon