A different way to be

Poetics had never been to the Aegean. Halls, foyers, tents, a cinema in a suitcase, but not one afternoon where the sea is the first thing you see when the headset comes off. In June we fixed that. Hours after BEYOND closed in Athens, the cases were on a boat to Anafi.

The yard

Anafi International Film Festival, fourth edition, 19 to 25 June. Seven days, free entry, films at the school, under the open sky in Chora, in a club at the top of the cliff.

Our room was Margarita’s yard: whitewash, an old oven with our sign on it, a terrace over the sea. Four afternoons, five to seven. Four works on time, perception, the body and the cosmos. We called the program What Appears, Slowly, and the island took it literally.

You sit down at five. The light is white. When the headset comes off, it is gold.

Set and setting, outdoors

We have one law: set and setting. The mind someone brings, the work we choose, the room we build around the headset.

Indoors, we own the room. In a yard on Anafi the room is the island, and the island takes no notes from an operator. So we did less, and let the place do what no room of ours can. The quiet between two works was part of the program.

Dimitris Papaioannou

Dimitris Papaioannou also came to the yard and put on the headset.

What he said after stays in the yard. What we can say is what we wrote that week: light, beauty, and magical energy. We are still processing. Thank you, Dimitris, for everything.

First-timers

Most people who sat down in the yard had never worn a headset. Filmmakers with a rough cut to show the next day, festival guests, islanders.

Stelios Christoforou and Stavros Markoulakis built a festival where that is normal: a rough cut at the school, a party at the top of the cliff, a VR work in a yard, all free, all within walking distance. It is the best kind of audience: curious, unhurried, and not there for the technology.

We will be back

It’s all about the experience.

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