In the first “lockdown”, of 2020, the writer, translator, director and screenwriter Panagiotis Evangelidis decided to put in order the countless hard drives that were piling up in his house. Then he found the material he had taken in 2008 from the first two political same-sex marriages in Tilos, the Gay Pride of the same year, press conferences and demonstrations on the same subject.
“In the years since 2008, three of the five protagonists in this case have died. The two brides and the mayor of Tilos who performed the weddings. The decision was a one-way street. On the other hand, the issue of civil marriage of same-sex couples must always be topical as in our country such a marriage is considered invalid “, explains the director of the documentary “The weddings of Tilos”, which participates in the International Competition at the 24th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
In the summer of 2020 one of the grooms of the film, o Dimitris Tsamprouniswas on vacation in Greece and the director took advantage of this to give him a long interview with which he covered information gaps in the archival material and Tsambrounis became the narrator of the film.
With Evangelia Vlami, one of the brides, o Panagiotis Evangelidis were friends and competitors during the years that he actively did loatki + activism. The mayor of Tilos, Tassos Aliferi met him at weddings and appreciated him very much. He also knew her Olga Mariethe other bride, from the spaces and activities of the community.
“I wanted the film, among other things, to be an imprint of the passage of these people that I loved and appreciated a lot”, stresses Mr. Evangelidis.
These people pushed him to make the documentary and these he tries to highlight and describe. “Their place in history, their desires, their character, their humor or their anger, their values ​​and their beliefs,” he notes.
To reopen the debate on same-sex marriage
With “Weddings of Tilos” to claim a social right and the struggle for equality, the director expects on the one hand the visibility of this issue, which is the legalization of same-sex civil marriage, on the other hand the reopening of the debate on theme.
“The Thessaloniki festival -like any festival, especially a documentary festival, must speak and give visibility to the problems of our society and our world, to claims for rights, with the cinema as a vehicle, a means that can mobilize the mind but also with the “the power of his art and the feeling and the spirit and all the other noble areas that a person should have”, the director notes.
THE Panagiotis Evangelidis has already started editing a film that has been shooting for the last four years, about the portrait of a person who lives in Athens, continuing the films-portraits of people that he usually makes. However, this is the first time she is working with a person who is from Greece.
The documentary “The weddings of Tilos” will be screened on March 17, 2022 at “Olympion” and then until the end of the Festival, on 20/3, online at filmfestival.
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