Kostas Ferris

Kostas Ferris (Cairo, April 18, 1935) is a Greek director, playwright, screenwriter, music producer, film theorist, journalist, and presenter.

He was born on April 18, 1935, in Cairo, Egypt, and his family has Cypriot and Lebanese (from the Lahoud family) origins. His education was oriented towards the international horizon but based on his Greek roots. He studied at the Ambetios School and the Takis Tsakonas Drama School in Cairo, at the Higher School of Cinema in Athens, and continued his studies with stages in Nantes and at the Sorbonne in Paris. From 1957 he settled in Greece, with the exception of the period 1967-1972 when he lived and worked in Paris.

He worked as an assistant director in more than 60 fiction films. Among others, he collaborated with Michalis Kakogiannis, Nikos Koundouros, Takis Kanellopoulos, Grigoris Grigoriou, Andrew Marton, James Neilson, Robert Aldrich, Edouard Molinaro, Richard Sarafian, Laszlo Benedek, Richard Wilson, Pierre Kast, Jean-Daniel Pollet, etc. He joined the research team for rebetiko music and at the same time, primarily on his initiative, the group for the renewal of Greek Cinema was formed.

In 1961, he directed his first short film, Your Eyelids Shine, which was banned by the state censorship of the time. In 1963 he is mentioned in the credits of the film attributed to Manolis Skouloudis, A Delikanis, as “Technical Advisor of Direction”. In 1965 he directed his first (signed) feature film, Some Prefer Khaki. He would later refer to the film A Delikanis in the 2004 book by Yiannis Fragoulis titled “Kostas Ferris”, as “the first attempt to apply the ideas” of the Group for New Greek Cinema.

Before and during his exile in Paris (1967-1973), he closely collaborated with French director (and friend since 1962) Jean Daniel Pollet. Together they actively participated in the May 1968 movement. During this time, he also met Volker Schloendorf, Werner Herzog, Barbet Schroeder, Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller, Ruy Guerra, Anatole and Pascale Dauman, and others. The script for a film (Le Sang), an opera (L’ Opéra des oiseaux), and a rock oratorio (666 Apocalypse) mark his Parisian period.

After returning to Greece in 1973, he directed the following films:

The Murderess, 1974,
Prometheus in the Second Person, 1975,
Two Moons in August, 1978,
Rebetiko, 1983 (Silver Bear Berlin Festival 1984, Special Jury Prize Valencia Festival 1984, and Grand Prize Alexandria Festival, 1985), and
Oh, Babylon, 1988,
as well as nine television series, totaling about 120 hours, for Greek television, and more than 80 hours of music programs, documentaries, educational and research films.

Characteristics are the harsh polemical scenes of directors-critics, in which Ferris has been a leader from 1974 to 1990.

“Director and screenwriter, of cinema, theater, multimedia, and other spectacles, librettist, lyricist, theorist of the audiovisual, film and music producer, editor and occasionally actor, or singer, occasionally journalist, publisher, TV presenter, and directing teacher, with four major international awards and more than 30 national, Kostas Ferris is one of the most versatile Renaissance filmmakers in Europe” (from the monograph KOSTAS FERRIS published by the Greek Directors’ Company).

Source: Wikipedia