In the Woods (eng version)

In the Woods is the third feature film by Angelos Frantzis. Starting off at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2010, the film is travelling the world and will be released in Greece on September 30th.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xe66wg_yyyy-yyy-yyyyy-in-the-woods-trailer_shortfilms?start=1

Synopsis

Two boys and a girl, archetypes on a paganistic journey in which nature guides the senses and emotions. Minimal dialogue, silence, sounds. Fear, freedom, instinct, desire, pansexuality and always the feeling that something’s looking down from above. Filmed using the video function of a digital photographic camera, imbued with the uncanny and packed with intense hues and violent forms, In the Woods is an existential fairytale red in tooth and claw. A film as elemental as stone, as water or the sky.

Cast
Katia Goulioni
Iakovos Kamchis
Nathan Pissoort

Credits
Director Angelos Frantzis
Script Angelos Frantzis in collaboration with Katia Goulioni,
Iakovos Kamchis, Nathan Pissoort
Producer Panos Papahadzis
Associate Producer Maria Tsigka
Line Producing Denia Safari
Dir. of Photography Angelos Frantzis
Set Design Ilias Lois
Costumes Christina Chantzaridou
Sound & Sound Design Nikos Triantafyllou
Sound Mix Yannis Skandamis
Editing Nikos Vavouris
Music Texturizer
Production Manager Tasos Spyrou
Assistant Director Evdokia Kalamitsi
Editor in shootings Konstantinos Antonopoulos

An Argonauts S.A. production, in co-production with GFC S.A., ERT S.A., Angelos Frantzis

97 min, 35mm, Dolby Digital, 1:66

Director’s note

This is not a love song

…this sense of worship we always reserve for those who have

no qualms about exercising their ability to cause us pain

Marcel Proust

Swann’s Way

The babe in the cradle waves its arm and thinks the whole world’s moving. His mother’s singing and the baby does not know it’s silent. The world is one. Indivisibly. The babe will learn to distinguish in a while. To comprehend its needs. That it and its mother are separate creatures. The pain! Everything’s fragmented. Everyone’s alone.

Two boys and a girl. Quite alone. Trying to come together. To become one again. Around them, huge tree trunks, translucent rivers, an isolated beach, the mountains, and an uncanny red house buried deep in the woods. Why is it there? Who has abandoned them to innocently hurt each other so very much? What is this strange sexual urge exuding from the trees, the water, the leaves? Are they free or trapped? There are no answers. Their journey’s like an initiation. As our journey was when we made this film.

Like children abandoned in the woods by our parents, our experience in nature transcended us. For two months, we slept in tents and ate by the light of the campfire. Without a script, we made the film with the actors day by day, marking the passage of time on our own personal calendar. The trunks determined our thoughts and guided our gaze. A crew of five plus three actors. Our equipment: a consumer digital photographic camera (we used its video function to film the entire movie), a sound recorder and a laptop.

This instinctive approach to dramaturgy demanded an equivalent shooting method that left us free of technical restrictions.

The decision to use a lo-fi digital camera instead of a proper camera imposed a new mode of filming. It allowed me to get in ever closer with my little camera: reach-out-and-touch close, wanting-to become-one-with-them close. To lick the stones or make love to the sand. And other times to train a narrow-angle lens on the bodies, like a documentary on the senses. But making contact, not removed like a voyeur. With the same desire to touch, to kiss, to bite, to become one. To rapturously escape the bounds of oneness. A sexual recording mode for a film about the materiality of emotions. Like a Fauvist painting with its deliberate outlines, intense coloration and violent forms.

Angelos Frantzis

Cast CV’s

Katia Goulioni

Born in Athens, she graduated from the Athens Drama School with honours and has acted in a number of theatrical productions, including improvised playback and the In the woods performance at the Athens & Epidaurus Festival. Over the last two years, she has directed House and Baby for the theatre.

Iakovos Kamchis

He attended theatre classes at the Theatro Technis and the Athens Conservatory, is a member of the Rhodes-based Praxis theatre company, and has collaborated with the visual artist Angelos Spartalis on various theatrical projects, including Wishes (Evches), a feature-length film shown at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in 2009. His blog patouses.blogspot.com includes his own original texts and photographs

Nathan Pissoort

He studied to be a social worker in Brussels and worked in his chosen field until his passion for music took him from Belgium to Greece, where he has been studying the ney under Haris Lambrakis for the past year and playing in a number of ensembles.

Angelos Frantzis

Angelos Frantzis was born in Athens in 1970. He studied film direction at “INSAS” in Brussels. Besides film directing, Angelos Frantzis has been involved in art projects with combined techniques (installation, performance) and has worked as a film critic, publishing reviews in various books and magazines.

FILMOGRAPHY

FEATURE FILMS:

“In the woods” (original title; “Mesa sto dasos”)

Fiction, digital photographic camera (transfer 35mm), 2010

Duration: 97 min

Production: Argonauts S.A., G.F.C., E.R.T., Angelos Frantzis

Script: Angelos Frantzis in collaboration with Katia Goulioni, Iakovos Kamchis, Nathan Pissoort

Direction: Angelos Frantzis

Cast: Katia Goulioni, Iakovos Kamchis, Nathan Pissoort

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM 2010

“A dog’s dream” (original title; “To oniro tou skylou”)

Fiction 35mm, 2005

Duration: 88 min

Production: CL productions, G.F.G. Max, Star tv, Angelos Frantzis
Script: Spiros Krimbalis, Angelos Frantzis
Direction: Angelos Frantzis
Cast: Konstandinos Markoulakis, Peggy Trikalioti, Aris Servetalis, Lina Sakka.

“Polaroid” (original title ; “Polaroid”)

Fiction 35mm, 2000

Duration: 96 min

Production: INKAS production, PPV, KINO, Angelos Frantzis
Script: Spiros Krimbalis, Angelos Frantzis
Direction: Angelos Frantzis
Cast: Stratis Vouyoukas, Ektoras Kolias, Korina Pateli, Thalia Protonotariou, Angelos Frantzis

SHORT FILMS:

“The wedding” (original title; “O gamos”)

Documentary m.d, 2001

Duration: 45 λεπτά

Production, direction, editing: Angelos Frantzis

«A hole in the world» (original title; “Tripios kosmos”)

Fiction 16mm, 1997

Duration: 14 min

Film shot entirely in collaboration with Stratis Vouyoukas

Production, direction, editing: Angelos Frantzis, Stratis Vouyoukas

Cast: Stratis Vouyoukas, Depi Pagka, Petros Christidis, Angelos Frantzis

«Nineteen» (original title; “Dekaennia”)

Fiction 16mm, 1995

Duration : 15 min

Film shot in Athens in the summer of ’93 and completed in 1994

Production, direction, editing: Angelos Frantzis

Cast: Panos, Depi, Yiannis, Aleksandros, Koyia, Michalis.

«Who’s  afraid of the big bad wolf ?» (original title; “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?”)

Fiction 16mm, 1993

Duration : 18 min

Graduate film in the framework of «INSAS» Film School.

Script- Direction: Angelos Frantzis, based on the comic «Oltre le linee» by Lorenzo

Mattoti.

Shot in Belgium, Holland and France

Cast : Denis Vandelbrouk, Michel Mentens,Gusepina Mamone, Akarova

“Visions” (original title ; “Visions”)

Fiction 16mm, 1992

Duration: 8 min

Film shot entirely in the “INSAS” studios

“Short stories for people and oranges” (original title; “Mikres istories me anthropous kai portokalia”)

Fiction 16mm , 1992

Duration : 17 min

Independent production, shot in Athens, produced by Angelos Frantzis and Atelier de realisation

Script, direction, editing : Angelos Frantzis

Cast: Giorgos Kimoulis, Depi Pagka, Tzoni Theodoridis.

OTHER WORKS

“In the woods” (original title; “Mesa sto dasos”)

Year: 2009

Venue: Athens and Epidaurus Festival

Performance/installation based on the shooting material from the film “In the woods”.

“Bedroom” (original title; “Ypnodomatio”)
Year: 2001

Venue: Technopolis of the City of Athens (“Gazi”)

Audiovisual installation on dreams narrated by residents of the Gazi district in Athens.

Combination of 20 audio sources, video, photography, sets, performance.

In collaboration with Kleopatra Charitos

“All for a moment” (original title; “Ola gia mia stigma”)

Year: 2001

Venue: 104, Center of art and speech

Combination of video, sound and live performance based on poems by Marieta Pepelassi

Co-directions with Thalia Protonotariou and Eva Stefani

Performance: Yiota Festa

«The tower»

Year: 2000

Venue: Technopolis of the City of Athens (“Gazi”)

Ηappening live video remixing on comics and the city
Combination of film, photographs and comics

“Images stolen from the future” (original title; “Eikones klemmenes ap’ to mellon”)
Year: 1998

Venue: Technopolis of the City of Athens  (“Gazi”)

Projection in video wall of 60minutes edited audiovisual material on science fiction