As soon as I got my discharge papers from TED - the Greek Armed Forces Television – in the winter of 1968, I left a for the second time for Munich. At that time Germany gave us residence permits, because of the military junta. I met again my old friends from the student theatre and we staged 'co-operative' productions in small private theaters, but I earned my living as a graphic designer working first in a train and tanks factory, then for a pharmaceutical advertising studio and later as draftsman in an architectural firm that designed whole villages for Bavarian Television's live Sunday comedies. There I learned the Bavarian dialect.
The 1971 my old partner from the student theater, Alf Brustellin and his friends Edgar Reitz and Ula Stöckl, already known as Filmautoren, that is filmmakers, asked me to work on a movie about the Argonauts with teenagers as the heroes. The results can be seen on the relevant page. In 1972, the four of us, together with Αlexander Kluge and Bernd Sinkel founded the joint venture U.L.M. - Unabhängige Lichtspiel Manufaktur - in order to share the technical resources necessary for independent film production, which was then the dogma of the Autorenfilm - the cinéma d' auteur - and the New German Cinema. Alexander was indeed crazy enough to give me a guaranteed letter of credit to produce my first film, “Die Wohngenossin” ("Comrade Housemate"). Because even then independent filmmakers needed capital. So I became a producer as well, and whenever I had no work as a designer, I wrote and shot as a movie-manufacturer.
In 1979 I shot my first film in Greece, the English-language "MILO MILO" - "Behold Milos" in Greek - for which my associate von Vietinghoff had managed to gather a serious amount of Deutschmarks. For my first Greek movies it was necessary to have friends. Luckily I had two Georges and one Vasilis. In the film list on this page it appears that from 1987 to 1997, I was absent. Actually, I was scouting for locations in many and distant places – see PRODUCTION DESIGN - and shot only "POLIS", a docu-drama for Bavarian Television, whatever that means, ...and lots of commercials, not just for the money but also to keep from getting rusty.
Maybe it was also the disappointment when “LIVING DANGEROUSLY” ("BIOS + politia") did not cover its production cost at the box-office, and failed to secure funding for the next film in Greece. I had been foolish enough to shoot an anti-establishment movie while the party-controlled state and the home video phenomenon were at their height. In 1997 things were already out of control and perhaps that was why audiences were hesitant to return to the cinemas, especially the new cineplexes.
SUCCESS STORY
SUCCESS STORY /
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Katerina Bei
Panagis, a charming, wealthy and unscrupulous psychiatrist with political ambitions falls recklessly and passionately in love with beautiful Georgina, a struggling actress determined to get past her provincial working-class parents and their dead-end life. They marry but in her desperate efforts to fit into Panagis's world Georgina denies her true self and soon realises that nothing in her married life is as she imagined it. A difficult pregnancy combined with creative frustrations begin to transform her. The couple's differences are sharpened when Panagis insists that his wife support his involvement in politics. Things take a critical turn when his deeply indebted father commits suicide and the family's wealth is threatened. Their mutual admiration, attraction and passion give way to disappointment, isolation and antagonism. But the hatred and vengefulness that become their ruling passions only feed their separate ambitions to succeed at any cost. Ultimately they will both resort to extremes in order to survive.
SIRENS ON THE ROCKS
ΣΕΙΡΗΝΕΣ ΣΤΗ ΣΤΕΡΙΑ / SIRINES STI STERIA
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
Seven years after the international incident in the Aegean, the soldiers of the old island unit, whose bravery had provoked the crisis, are back to civilian life in Athens. Except for Minos, now a livestock breeder and hemp grower on Crete, who travels to the capital, where the police have kidnapped and plan to deport Nouri, the illegal immigrant orphan girl, now age 12, whom Minos had 'illegally adopted'. While searching for her, he runs into his old comrades-in-arms, now well-connected in Greek society. With their help, he finds Nouri in the clutches of human traffickers and discovers that the crisis in Greek society is not just an economic one...
ARTHERAPY
ARTHERAPY /
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
In the heart of the historic and multicultural center of Athens, in the heat of summer, three youngsters with a passion for the arts come together in the musical, theatrical and visual arts scene: Ilia, front woman of the band Stiletto Scag, Alexandros, a muralist and street artist, and Andreas, a senior at the drama school of the National Theatre. Three days are enough to disrupt the “social truce”, when their expectations are shattered by the multi-faceted establishment, whether it be the instruments of public order, or simply the prevailing mainstream culture...
COOL
ΨΥΧΡΑΙΜΙΑ / PSYCHREMIA
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
The parallel, and often interwoven, stories, and the common fortune of some very different young people during a 24-hour summer day, from behind prison bars to the escalators of the Venizelos Airport, and the beaches of the Saronic Gulf to the pasture lands of Mt.Psiloritis in Crete. All the heroes have inherited various problems from their corrupt parents. Uninvolved until now, their loss of youthful bliss brings on a sudden and forced 'adulthood'...
SIRENS IN THE AEGEAN
ΣΕΙΡΗΝΕΣ ΣΤΟ ΑΙΓΑΙΟ / SIRINES STO EGEO
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
The Turkish yacht Ege Güzeli puts two men and a six-year-old girl ashore on a rocky little Greek island. The three are illegal immigrants and castaways who were rescued by the Turks in Greek territorial waters. Apart from the captain and a deckhand, there are three women on board, two of them contestants in a beauty pageant and a former winner, as well as a reporter and a cameraman from the local Turkish network that organizes the annual event. The six Greek soldiers stationed there force the crew and passengers to disembark and impound the yacht...
LIZA AND ALL THE OTHERS
Η ΛΙΖΑ & ΟΛΟΙ ΟΙ ΑΛΛΟΙ / I LIZA KE OLI I ALLI
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Katerina Bei
Lisa is a 'lifestyle' child and functions as its reflection. The fact that she works for a women's magazine and writes articles about relationships and sex, makes her situation even more difficult and magnifies her neurosis, since she is unable to practise what she has assimilated as theory. Through an oppressive behaviour regime of "must" and "should not", she tries to play the game of balance in relationships, and to choose between Yannis and Paris...
THE BUBBLE
Η ΦΟΥΣΚΑ / I FOUSKA
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Katerina Bei, Nikos Perakis
Makis, a barker at a barbecue taverna who is financially trapped with his savings invested in the stock market, meets and falls madly for Roula, former Miss Mass Tourism and current mistress of Manolas, the opulent chairman of OLYMPOURGIKI earthworks, in which the hapless evzone has invested. Makis witnesses a nearly fatal attempt on the tycoon's life, and while the police are implicating and chasing him as a member of RO17N (Revolutionary Organization 17 November), Mr Fotis, member and cold-blooded executor, attempts to recruit him for the organization’s purposes...
FEMALE COMPANY
ΘΗΛΥΚΗ ΕΤΑΙΡEΙΑ / THILIKI ETERIA
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Katerina Bei, Nikos Perakis,
In a provincial town, five emotionally unfulfilled and sexually undervalued wives and a young widow find that the only things they have in common are hair-rollers, playing-cards and the nefarious interests of their husbands, both large and small players in the local community. This heterogeneous group of women moves its regular card game from the back room of a girlfriend's hairdressing salon to the dowry flatlet of the prosperous 'best friend', and their sexual activity is now a matter of time and co-ordination...
PATERFAMILIAS
ΠΡΟΣΤΑΤΗΣ ΟΙΚΟΓΕΝΕΙΑΣ / PROSTATIS EKOGENIAS
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
The untenured primary school teacher and aspiring writer Alexandros Kontos undertakes editorial responsibility for the autobiography of the once-popular singer Calypso, wife in second marriage of the tycoon-contractor and owner of HELLAS TV Sotiris Mandrakas. The material Calypso entrusts to Alexandros, including cassettes, photographs, clippings, poems and other documents potentially corrosive to the fabric of society, falls into unknown hands and Alexander becomes victim of a nightmarish conspiracy...
LIVING DANGEROUSLY
BIOS + ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ / VIOS KE POLITIA
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
On the day of the World Cup Final, Karamanos, an employee of TOE, the Hellenic Telecom Organisation, connects his CEO's personal computer to a satanically complex explosive device. He threatens to blow up the floor and the satellite links above, unless he is allowed to appear on a national network ten minutes before the soccer match is broadcast in order to denounce all the evils plaguing the life of the Greek citizen that make him the victim of a corrupt, party-controlled state...
LOAFING + CAMOUFLAGE
ΛΟΥΦΑ + ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΗ / LOUFA + PARALLAGI
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
In 1967, infantryman Papadopoulos is transferred from an outpost on the snow-bound Greek-Bulgarian border to a unit in Athens, near his wife and his twin daughters, who were born just before he was conscripted. He becomes part of a group of soldiers, who, in the course of their compulsory service, have to deal with the military dictatorship which seizes power. The men are assigned to the recently-formed ”Armed Forces Television” unit. The events are only 95% true, but only because the reality was even more absurd...
ARPA COLLA
ΑΡΠΑ COLLA / ARPA COLLA
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
After wasting time and money making unpopular films, two young directors must resort to commercials to make a living. Hoping to return to serious filmmaking, they call on producers and try to persuade rich friends to invest in their talent. The film is the visualization of their common unrealized visions...
MILO MILO
MILO MILO / ΙΔΟΥ Η ΜΗΛΟΣ
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
Barbara, pretty daughter an archaeology professor, arrives on the island of Milos determined to prove that the statue of the Venus de Milo exhibited in the Louvre is a copy, and the original is still on the island. She pretends to be a geologist, provoking the suspicion of U.S. multinational corporation ALUMINE, which is about to sign a contract to mine bauxite on the island, although the deposit is extremely rich in uranium-235...
BOMBER & PAGANINI
BOMBER & PAGANINI /
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
In the course of an unbelievably bungled burglary, Bomber loses his eyesight and Paganini is crippled. Condemned to make common cause, Bomber finds himself blindly pushing Paganini’s wheelchair through the mean streets, while the lame Paganini acts as navigator. Waiting for a miracle to happen, they are surprised by a golden opportunity: It seems the gang is planning to rob an armored cash transport and Paganini has worked out a risky scheme to take advantage of their getaway...
COMRADE HOUSEMATE
DIE WOHNGENOSSIN / ΣΥΝΤΡΟΦΙΣΣΑ ΣΥΓΚΑΤΟΙΚΟΣ
DIRECTED BY:
Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Nikos Perakis
Otto, a 35-year old architect, is an avowed bachelor who lives and works in his six-room, 250-square-metre austere but richly furnished apartment. This world of design and misogyny is invaded by the graceful but left-leaning Cleopatra, who has just arrived from Cairo with her huge backpack...
THE GOLDEN THING
DAS GOLDENE DING / ΤΟ ΧΡΥΣΟ ΠΡΑΓΜΑ
DIRECTED BY:
Ula Stöckl, Edgar Reitz, Alf Brustellin, Nikos Perakis
SCRIPT:
Ula Stöckl, Edgar Reitz, Alf Brustellin, Nikos Perakis
Eleven year-old Jason, with pubescent Heracles, Castor and Pollux, and other coeval sons of kings, sail on the Argo, seeking a golden treasure.