1. THE NATIONAL HERALD, NOVEMBER 8-14, 2014 COMMUNITY 5
Steppling and Morrow Stir the Audiences with Charismatic Dogmouth
New York City’s Eighth Greek Film Festival Might Well Be Best One Yet
Monica and Richie Barsamian,
who have attended every film
festival and seen every film said,
“It’s like an open window on
Greek culture. We’re avid sup-porters
and we’re always chal-lenged
by how the movies re-flect
current issues, how they’re
part of Greek culture today.”
Voulgaris and Karystiani
came from Athens for the festi-val
and a once-in-a-lifetime dou-bleheader,
the tenth anniversary
screening of Brides and the New
York premiere of Little England,
Greece’s 2014 Oscar entry. The
Museum of the Moving Image
hosted the Brides event.
Brides looks even better ten
years after its inception. A ship
sails from Smyrna with 700 mail
order brides aboard. A seam-stress
Niki falls in love with an
American photographer, played
by Damian Lewis, most recently
seen starring in Showtime’s
Homeland. It is an exquisitely
beautiful film, and resonates
with complex emotions, the sor-row
of separation mingled with
the hopes for a new life. It cer-tainly
deserves U.S. distribution.
This has not been achieved, de-spite
the efforts of the film’s ex-ecutive
producer, Hollywood
powerhouse Martin Scorcese.
Scott Foundas, Variety’s top
film critic, interviewed the film-makers
after the screening. Said
Karystiani, Brides scriptwriter,
“It’s very hard to get films from
small countries like Greece dis-tributed
abroad. It’s like a game
that you don’t know how to
play. We would like to see the
film distributed because there is
pure soul in the film. Speaking
as a writer, I like books or peo-ple
or paintings not because
they are perfect but because
there is some pure authentic
sentiment there. I think Brides
is a movie like that.” With seven
novels and short story collec-tions
to her credit, Karystiani
ranks as one of Greece’s most
popular writers. Now 62, she
did not begin writing until age
42. “I enjoy collaborating with
my husband. It’s difficult but it’s
good. You have so much to dis-cuss,”
she said. “Brides was a
challenging production that
took seven years. It’s the first
film with all Greek girls – 2,500
auditioned for the roles!”
At age 74, Voulgaris im-presses
with his candor, warmth,
and humor. Although he studied
at the Stavrakos Film School in
Athens, he said he “learned by
doing,” working as a child on
film sets, “and through the peo-ple
I encountered. But my most
important education came from
my parents, who were incredible
story-tellers. I grew up sur-rounded
by stories.”
If Brides takes the prize for
beauty, Little England wins the
laurel wreath as an emotional
cinematic experience, the kind
of film we so rarely see today.
The film opens with huge waves
washing up on the shores of the
island of Andros, cuing the vio-lent
and passionate drama
about two sisters in love with
the same man. Penelope Tsilika
plays Orsa, with Sophia Kakkali
her younger sister Moscha. Per-haps
not since actresses like
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
burned up the screen has there
been this depth of cinematic
love and hate in a movie. Little
England sets a new standard for
eroticism on film. Rather than
see a couple making love, a
commonplace of multiplex
films, we listen in on the lovers.
Totally, this film is a five-star
masterpiece.
Litte England was based on
the novel The Jasmine Isle by
Karystiani, who also wrote the
script. Arriving at the Ziegfeld
theater after a packed cocktail
party at the Russian Tea Room
and seeing the crowd waiting
for tickets, Karystiani said, “Pan-delis
and I will give our seats
away. We have already seen the
film.” Fortunately, they stayed
to hear the audience sing
“Happy Birthday” to Voulgaris,
and to enjoy the enormously en-thusiastic
response to the film.
Voulgaris commented, “It is as
if we were watching the movie
for the very first time. I have
never seen it so beautifully pro-jected
and with such a fine
sound quality.”
Karystiani has written a new
script titled One Thousand
Breaths. “It is based on the cur-rent
situation in Greece. Voul-garis
is trying to raise money for
it. It’s not an expensive produc-tion,
like Brides or Little Eng-land,
but the situation is really
very difficult.”
A brief look at some other
outstanding festival entries:
The Enemy Within – A pow-erful,
important film from direc-tor
Yorgos Tsemberopoulos in-spired
by life on Athens’ mean
streets. After thugs invade the
home of idealistic Kostas and
rape his daughter, he sets out for
revenge. The old “if you can’t lick
them join them” applies here.
Common Denominator –
Tyro film-maker Sotiris Tsafou-lias
broke all the rules of film-making
to produce this gem.
The only action in the film is a
tavli game. Three guys meet in
a kafeneion and rap about
women, the conversation veer-ing
between the philosophical
and the physical. Renos Har-alambides
plays one of the men.
Of course a beautiful young
woman comes into the story.
Xenia –A four-star winner
from director Panos Koutros,
who a few years ago gave us
Strella. Following the death of
their Albanian mother, two
(L-R) Translator Sophia Efthimatou, Variety film critic Scott Foundas, screenwriter and author
Ioanna Karystiani, and legendary film director Pantelis Voulgaris join in the conversation after
the 10th anniversary screening of Brides at the Museum for the Moving Image.
brothers, one gay and one
straight, hit the road to seek out
their Greek father. Koutros in-terviewed
a thousand plus ac-tors
to find Kostas Nikouli who
plays Danny, a heart-winner and
heart-breaker.
The Winter – Any film that
features actor Vangelis Mourikis
has to be special, and this film
is no exception. It is wonderful,
a first film from Konstantinos
Koutsoliotis, written with his
wife Elizabeth E. Schuch. A
failed writer leaves London to
return to Siatista and finish his
novel. Theo Albanis portrays
Nikos, with Mourikis as his dead
father. “I die in all my films,”
says Mourikis. “I like it.”
September – The story of a
waitress whose entire life con-sists
of looking after her dog.
When he dies, she intrudes on
the lives of doctor and his sym-pathetic
wife, who befriends
her. Intriguing and Ingmar
Bergmanesque. Committed –
Put two beautiful people on the
road in a white convertible and
send them on a trip through
scenic Cyprus. How can you
lose? George, a sweet, dimpled
hunk picks up a bride who
claims to have had wedding jit-ters.
A twist at the end elevates
this charming romance.
Lost in the Bewilderness –
Thirty years in the making, this
documentary from Alexandra
Anthony traces the life of Lucas,
who was kidnapped by his
mother at age five and taken to
America. Eleven years later, he
returns to Greece to meet his fa-ther.
A fascinating doc with a
happy ending, Lucas’s wedding
at age 38.
The Hellenic American
Chamber of Commerce, includ-ing
executive director Stamatis
Ghikas staged the Festival, with
important support from the
Onassis Foundation, the Agnes
Varis Charitable Trust, Dr.
Alexander Kofinas and Eleni Ko-finas
and the Stavros Niarchos
Foundation.
By Constantine S. Sirigos
NEW YORK – The audience did
not know what to expect from
Dogmouth, the movie adapted
from the play written by John
Steppling. Many of them had al-ready
acquired a taste for “The
Greek weird wave” of films that
have made their way not only
to the annual New York City
Greek Film Festival, which pre-sented
Dogmouth, but to the at-tention
of film lovers world-wide.
They were prepared for
weirdness and violence, and to
be disturbed by the experience,
but how much? Some may have
wondered “who can I take to
this film?”
James DeMetro, the founder
and director of the festival, in-troduced
Stephan Morrow, the
Greek-American director, prior
to the screening at the Cinema
Village Theater.
“Dogmouth is controversial,”
Morrow said. “Steppling is an
equal opportunity offender…
but I find his writing to be some
of the best around. This is a film
that is rare these days, one to
be listened to as much as any-thing
else.”
The Festival program called
Dogmouth, the character was
played by Morrow, “a bitter Viet-nam
vet and rail-riding rene-gade
living his last days.”
But there is some charisma
to Dogmouth, which spawns
disturbing thoughts about that
human quality. He has a follow-ing
and has managed to charm
a pretty young woman, Nyah,
played with excruciating ingen-uousness
by Alexandra Milne.
She not only joined his not-so-
merry-band-of-men, which
Morrow calls “a mysterious
mafia of racist, violent, Vietnam
Vets living on freight trains… a
repugnant set of people” - she
was carrying his baby.
They are not a harmless bank
of misfits. Dogmouth is de-pressed
because his profession
of training dogs for violent
fights has been outlawed, and
it slowly becomes clear that a
murder being discussed was ac-tual,
not hypothetical. The
metaphors come fast and furi-ously.
“This film stands apart be-cause
of its powerful dialogue -
the authentic language of crim-inals
but it’s also intertwined
with ruminations on birth,
death, dreams, even survival of
the fittest,” Morrow writes.
A forest is the setting for the
burnt out men – and one
woman – in Dogmouth’s life.
They are camping out by long-abandoned
railroad tracks,
seeming sometimes to be wait-ing
for a train that never comes
– like Godot.
Among Steppling's many siz-zling
sentences is one simple
devastating line:
“I am not a good man”
Perhaps the question that dis-turbs
is not how much humanity
there is in a bad man – the film
makes it clear there is always
some as even Dogmouth feels
the pain of children and little
birds – but how much humanity
there is in the rest of us who
meet them.
The script has no hints – and
there shouldn’t be – about what
Dogmouth was like before he
went to Vietnam.
Just as Morrow’s gripping
portrayal of a damaged human
being tempts the thought that it
is not evil which lurked in the
forest, Steppling and Morrow-as-
director pull the rug out from
under liberals in the audience
with the edgy scenes of Dog-mouth
fuming or seething in si-lence
as Nyah, clutching her
swelling womb, tries to preserve
the peace and her sanity.
Should we be worried about
her and the baby in an environ-ment
when murder is being dis-cussed
so openly and blithely?
Disturbing/illuminating
thoughts are triggered through-out
the movie.
Aren’t presidents, monarchs
and their generals calm, even
jovial as they plan the next bat-tle
with its guaranteed deaths
for hundreds or thousands?
Hannah Arendt’s haunting
phrase “the banality of evil”
comes to mind as we watch
Dogmouth’s friend Weeks
(William Tate) express how ea-ger
he is to do what he believes
is a just deed. How easily can
we be recruited into a murder-ous
cause by charismatic people
we sympathize with?
Perhaps we learn something
else about our leaders from
Morrow, who allowed some of
the mannerisms of stage acting
to show in his performance,
showing that there is little left
of whatever Dogmouth was. He
too is just playing a role, all per-sona
as Carl Jung might say.
Dostoyevsky would say a dead
soul.What becomes of a man who
cannot reflect on his emotions
and actions? When Nyah tries
to get him to talk about the im-pending
birth of his child, let
alone the apparent murder plot
he was orchestrating, Dogmouth
barks: “Shut up!”
Morrow quoted Steppling:
“Art is not your friend.” But is
should not be ignored. The 20th
century taught humanity that
art is not about pretty things.
Beauty is truth. Ugly is truth too.
“I think an artist’s obligation
is to move to the truth,” Morrow
told the audience, “whatever it
is, under the darkest slimiest
rock if that’s where it exists…
it’s not easy, but it is really im-portant
for our souls,”
Because it throws mirrors in
front of us.
Dogmouth shows illumina-tion
can come from darkness,
and makes a powerful case for
self-reflection as the essence of
our humanity.
Greek-American in Love Triangle Commits Murder-Suicide
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Greek-American theater and
movie actor and director
Stephan Morrow directed the
film adaptation of John
Steppling’s play Dogmouth.
He also portrayed the
character named Dogmouth.
Continued from page 1
ADRIENNE MATHIOWETZ
TNH Staff
PORT JEFFERSON, NY – A gruesome
scene unfolded Sunday evening, Nov. 2 in
the Long Island town of Port Jefferson, in-volving
a Greek-American man who shot
and killed his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend,
and then killed himself.
Frank Panebianco and Jessica Kasten
exited the Pour House Bar and Grill in Port
Jefferson, ABC news reported, and headed
to the parking lot when they were con-fronted
by Michael Skiadas, Kasten’s ex-boyfriend.
Apparently, the couple and Skiadas en-gaged
in a screaming match, according to
NBC News for NY, at which point a friend,
Jack Schneider, attempted to calm Skiadas
as the couple tried to drive away.
To no avail, Skiadas went into his car,
pulled out a shotgun, and hit Schneider
with it.
Then, Skiadas approached the couple’s
car and fired twice, killing Panebianco. Ski-adas
then returned to his own car and
killed himself.
Schneider did not suffer any serious in-juries,
and Kasten was not harmed.
Police continue to investigate the story.
At press time, there were no further de-velopments.
Various Internet sites posted pho-tographs
of Skiadas and Kasten together,
when they were a couple, and countless
comments from random readers ranging
from compassionate to lewd were preva-lent.
TNH continues to monitor the story and
will provide updates accordingly.