Greeks have been making meaningful contributions to all aspects of Australian culture for a long time now.
We have Greek politicians, Greek musicians, Greek restauranteurs, Greek writers and filmmakers.
The names Petro Georgiou, Irene Vela, George Calombaris, Christos Tsiolkas, George Miller (Milliotis) roll off the tongue.
Now Greek independent short film makers feel it’s time to make their contribution known, which is why local film-makers Jim Koutsoukos and Ange Arabatzis are putting on the Short Greek Film Festival.
In staging the festival, the pair hopes to showcase the vast array of talented Greek-Australian film-makers.
“We were frustrated with the limited roles offered in the Australian Film industry,” the pair told Neos Kosmos.
“We’re always type-cast as ‘working class’, or ‘gangster’, or ‘ethnic’.
We felt like it was time to create our own opportunities and we find that the more we move forward, the more doors open up for us. It’s very exciting and inspiring to have more and more like-minded artists come on board.
”The festival will feature short films by Jim Stamatakos, Christos Linou, award-winning documentary film-maker Christina Heristinidis and others, including Koutsoukos and Arabatzis.
The pair first met at Aleksi Vellis’ film acting class at the Film Space, many years ago.
Since then they have together and individually acted in and produced many and varied productions.
Koutsoukos has featured in long-running TV soap Neighbours, feature films Kick and Crackerjack, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the Melbourne Fringe Festival and the Antipodes Festival.
Arabatzis has been an actor and film-maker since age 21 and has produced many short films including Thicker than Water and Where the Heart Is, both of which will feature in the Short Greek Film Festival, as well as the award-winning film Shortchange, for the 48-hour Film Festival.
Looking forward Koutsoukos and Arabatzis hope that the Short Greek Film Festival will become a regular event and will inspire Greek-Australian film-makers to continue pursuing their art.
“We hope to grow the festival and continue to showcase some brilliant films from our local film-makers,” they said.
“If we can get sponsorship that would be a great help and we have already shown that by just deciding that we are going to put this festival on, people have come into our orbit and that gives us the incentive to just keep going and keep creating.”
The Short Greek Film Festival will screen at 7pm on Thursday 25th March at the Loop Bar, 23 Meyers Place in the city, opposite the Waiters Restaurant.