Filmmaker and producer Athina Rachel Tsangari (*1966) is currently a fellow of the Berlin Artist Program of the DAAD. She is considered an important figure in contemporary Greek cinema. In her films she takes on the role of a behavioral scientist, placing the human species and its odd conduct under the microscope, in the process inventing formally imaginative films replete with absurd situations and her own idiosyncratic humor.
THE SLOW BUSINESS OF GOING (USA/Greece 2001, 31.1.) Petra Going is a nomadic cyborg. With a rocking chair on her back she travels the world on assignment to collect others' memories, which she then delivers to the "Experience Data Agency." This is both a science fiction road movie with shifting visual textures, as well as a chronicle of collisions between men and women, the real and the virtual.
ATTENBERG (Greece 2010, 31.1.) Marina is more interested in apes than in people. With the help of animal documentaries by her idol, Sir David Attenborough, and instruction in tongue-kissing by her friend Bella, she tries to teach herself about physical closeness. At the same time, her father is dying. This is a film about the mysteries of love and death, with moments of whimsy and interludes of dance-like slapstick.
THE CAPSULE (Greece 2012, 1.2.) Six young women with their chaperone in a villa. Dressed in avant-garde fashions, they practice strange rituals, undergo lessons in discipline and desire, and recite "A Horse with No Name" – all without betraying a hint of emotion. A stylized, choreographed study of femaleness and power, with animated special effects and borrowings from Brontë, Bataille and Buñuel.
CHEVALIER (Greece 2015, 1.2.) Six men on a luxury yacht in the Aegean. They are on vacation, they go fishing and take spins on the speedboat, but their egos are not at peace – especially not after one of them suggests a game to kill the time: who is the best at everything? An absurd contest develops, and friendship turns into competitiveness and rivalry. A farcical comedy about masculine rituals. (bik)
