Galery

1

Today Zinos Panayotidis, director of the Rosebud talks about the cinema preferences of the Greeks, the situation of the seventh art in the country and of what it means to be a distributor of quality art films. It is exactly because of Rosebud that quality films from European festivals reach the Greek cinema screens, and later the souls of the Greek audience.
 
Do the Greeks love cinema?
 
Zinos Panayotidis: No. Greece occupies a very low position according to the statistics. Now we have to take into account also the fact that we are not 10 million, but 11 or 12 million. This means that annually there is one viewer per capita. Greece sells 12-13 million tickets annually, and this is very small ammount. Only the former socialist countries are ranked behind us. Respectively, we can not say that the Greek loves cinema very much. A bad feature of the Greek cinema market is that the ticket-movies ratio is disproportionate. Here come out distributed about 350 or 400 films a year. It really is a great figure, that means we have 7 new movies a week. Most of these movies are high quality and need criticism. The problem, however is that they all come out at the same time. Now for example on 30-September 11 films will be released, 7 of which need criticism. The viewer is influenced by critics to go and see them... But can we fine place in a newspaper for all 7 of them? This is an exaggeration. The Greek has always been extreme about everything. As once upon a time people were opening right next to each other video clubs, dvd-clubs or kiosks with suvlaki and then they were closing them, so it is now with the movies ...
 
 What are the preferences of the Greek today?
 
Zinos Panayotidis: fiction, blockbuster and some of the movies of famous directors, which we might call both quality and popular. These include for example the films of Almodovar, Fatih Akin, Michael Haneke. Here is very popular and loved also Woody Allen. We can play movies from Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona, which sold 350 thousand tickets to Scoop, which only had 25 thousand sold. But unlike America in Greece Woody Allen is famous. What is regrettable is that there are many other quality films, which can not even sell 1000 tickets. And some time ago the lowest figure for them amounted to 5000. Another thing to add is that the data relate mainly to Athens. In Thessaloniki, viewers are less and outside Thessaloniki they are even less. For example the film "White Ribbon" by Michael Haneke, which won the award for best European film at Cannes last year, registered in Greece great success. 70 thousand tickets were sold, but out of them nearly 60 thousand were sold in Athens. The remaining 7500 in Thessaloniki and around 2000-2500 in the other part of the country. Imagine what proportion we are talking about. Iannina, Patras, Iraklion, Komotini, Xanthi, Larissa, all of these cities have universities in them... If we have, however, a Greek comedy the situation is more optimistic. Sales are half-half. A film like this which goes well and sells about 300 thousand tickets usually sells half of them in Athens and the other half in the province. The situation with quality films is different. Thessaloniki and the rest of Greece are only involved with 5%. This is related to the culture of the province. There, people prefer to sit in cafes, to talk and to drink frappe. There are some romantic people left who attend exhibitions, film and theater halls, but they really are not many.
 
What does it mean to be a director of a company such as Rosebud in the times of crisis?
 
Zinos Panayotidis: Look, as a whole in our work there is a great deal of risk. Years ago we were watching this kind of films and if we liked them we simply bought them. Now this is not the case. Once the new film of a director is released, you go and buy it, even if it is expensive. Then it may turn out that the film has no success because it is not good. Only think of how many films of the filmmakers have turned out not to be good, but distributors have bought them, based solely on his name. Sometimes buying is based solely on the name of the director, actor, topic or even the on the script. It is difficult. Rosebud is a company that is 50% mine and 50% of the Odeon. Odeon is large, it has production, distribution, cinemas Kosmopolis, Starcity. Of course, we have an associate with whom we discuss, but the choice of films is mine.
 
Has it ever happened to you to take a movie that, contrary to all expectations later turns out to be failure?