The award-winning director, producer and writer passed away early Wednesday morning at the age of 79 after a months-long battle with cancer. Lakis Papastatis.

He was one of the main representatives of the New Greek cinema, but also a multifaceted creative personality who left his mark on various arts and in various media (cinema, television, literature, criticism, etc.).

A multi-faceted intellectual personality, Papastatis is considered one of the most important directors of his generation and at the same time one of the founders of cultural documentaries in Greek television, mainly due to the show “Behind the scenes” that he created with the director. Takis Hatsopoulos in 1976.

His resume

Born in Volos in 1943, Lakis Papastatis graduated from high school in Mytilini and studied at the Film Studies Center (1963).

Since the beginning of his career, he has made short films and feature films that have received critical acclaim for their aesthetic excellence and depth of content, as well as numerous awards.

He began his film career with short films in 1963. In 1972 Letters from America won the Best Short Film award at the Thessaloniki Festival of the same year.

His path to cinema was decisively influenced by Evdokia, the famous and innovative film by Alexis Damianos. In Evdokia, Papastatis served as an assistant director and a key participant in the completion of the production. Looking back, Lakis Papastatis published (Patakis, 2006) an extensive monograph titled “When Damianos Filmed Eudokia”, specifically dedicated to the background of a landmark film in the history of new Greek cinema.

In total, Lakis Papastatis directed four feature films: The Time of the Greeks (1981), Theophilus (1987), The Only Life of a Taxi (2001), Journey to Mytilene (2010).

His films have won numerous film awards in Greece, including Best Director and Best Film at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and the National Film Award, and have participated in international festivals.

For example, in 1980 “Theophilos” participated in the competition section of the Berlin Festival, and “The Only Life of a Taxi” based on the story of the same name by Georgios Vizinhos was part of the official program of Toronto. Festival 2001.

The element that made the director’s cinematic image completely unique and original was the close connection between cinema and literature. In the end, Lakis Papastatis became the creator of a completely unique cinematic language, combining cinematic shots with texts and favorite authors.

“Behind the Scenes” at ERT

At the same time, perhaps the most important chapter of his creative life was the cultural show “Behind the scenes”, which he created with director Takis Hatsopoulos and which began to be shown on ERT in 1976. Papastatis himself directed dozens of episodes of Behind the Scenes. “, which immortalized the great figures of the country’s intellectual life and, over time, form a large part of the historical archive of Greek television. Among many others, Lakis Papastati’s documentaries about the poet Manolis Anagnostakis, with whom he was close, stand out.

By June 2013, when ERT closed and the show was discontinued, Paraskenio had topped nine hundred topics (eighteen minutes, half an hour, or 52 minutes). From time to time, about two hundred directors worked in Behind the Scenes, as well as prominent journalists, scientists and film technicians.

Lakis Papastatis has also made historical documentaries as part of the In Search of the Lost Image series based solely on documentaries. His swansong on the small screen was directing a show as part of the ERT series P.S. until 2022.

Once in an interview he gave to Jason Triantafillidis, Lakis Papastatis admitted that: “Behind the scenes was a defining event in my life. Every day we thought about the next show. I think it affected me in two ways: firstly, in delaying the making of the movie, because it was kind of a replenishment, I had a daily creative activity. And, secondly, it illuminated my attitude to modern reality. “The Background” made my own cinema want the haze of the past, because I was fed up with dealing with modern intellectual life. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to the turn of the century, a time that I love, which can be looked at not as a historian, but poetically. During this period lived the beasts of Greek spirituality.

His writing work

In addition to being a filmmaker, he was a writer with a wide and original writing work.

“I started by making cinema influenced by literature, and now I write literary texts, which are defined by how cinema tells,” he said in an interview with Vima in 2011.

In addition to the book about “Eudokia”, he wrote four collections of short stories: “The bat flew by” (ed. Nefeli, 2002), “Quiet and other stories” (ed. Nefeli, 2005), “Summer will be performances” Clytemnestra (ed. Polis, 2011) and The Teacher Loved Silent Movies (ed. Polis, 2014).

Friendship with Savvopoulos

A separate chapter of his life was also close friendship and cooperation with Dionysius Savvopoulos. In December 1973, Lakis Papastatis collaborated with Savvopoulos for the first time, taking over the film direction for the songwriter’s musical play The Third Shadow at the Kyttaro boutique. Immediately after the dictatorship, Lakis Papastatis directed the show “I am very happy, Savvopoulos”, Savvopoulos’ first appearance on Greek television. Their last collaboration took place in 1999 during the production of a video clip for the song “The First of Two Thousands” from the album “Time Keeper”.

Finally, in the field of theater, Lakis Papastatis collaborated with the legendary Free Theater group, making short films that were included in the performances Life in the Bay (1974) and The Last Tram (1976).

Lakis Papastatis was married to actress Yvonne Maltezu. Together they had a son.

Source: RES-IPE