Filopoimin Finos

 

             Filopoimin Finos                                         ΦΙΛΟΠΟΙΜΗΝ  ΦΙΝΟΣ                                                                                       

               Born 1908                                                   Died January 26, 1977

The Father of Greek Cinema

 

Section 14, Number 118A

When I first came across the grave of Filopoimin Finos I was a tad disappointed. It seemed too modest for a man whose production company had dominated the Greek film industry from 1943 to 1977. I had at least hoped for a semi-circle, a stone version of the famous Finos Film logo, something grand that would signify the end, not just of his personal story, but of a cinematic era.

 

Filopoimin Finos created the biggest and most prolific film production company in Greece, indeed, in all of southeast Europe. He produced 187 (1) films and personally oversaw each production from start to finish. He was an innovator, building the first sound recording device in Greece, and shooting the first colour film with stereophonic sound. It is an amazing story, a love story really, from its start to its surprising finish.

 

 

 

His Life:

Filopoimin was born Tithorea, in the foothills of Mount Parnassos but his family came to Athens before he reached school age.  His father, Ioannis, was a doctor by profession but also a businessman who also owned cinemas in the provinces and the Alcazar (2) in Athens near the Larissa train station.  In the earliest days, such venues presented live shows with cinematic reels available as an intermission and an extra incentive to bring in customers.

 

Open air cinemas are still a favourite summer pastime in Athens

As a child and young man Filopoimin spent a lot of time at the Alcazar watching movies, helping around, and even as a projectionist. He was especially fascinated by cinematic machinery and eventually became so adept at tinkering with their inner workings that he was nicknamed  “The screwdriver man”. (A colleague would later comment that from the years 1930 to 1960, if any sound, camera, or lighting mechanism did not meet his needs, he fixed it  or invented some variation of it until it did).

As so often happens, his father had a different future planned for his son. He sent him to the Ionian School, to high school in Pangrati, on to Law School in Athens and then on to post graduate studies in political science in Germany.

To no avail.

His father should never have let him loose in the Alcazar.  Filopoimin was hopelessly hooked on cinema.

The Thirties and Tzella

In the early 1930s Filopoimin’s aim was to add sound to movies and by 1935, he, with the help of friends, introduced a modern sound system that obviated the need for dubbing. It was a huge step forward for cinema.

In 1936, he met Tzella, a well known singer at the famous Mandra of Attik, (3). He contrived to meet her and they fell in love but the affair ended quickly, apparently because of his intense commitment to film.  But they reunited after her short and disastrous marriage to someone else.

 

 

They became lifelong partners and soul mates until his death. It is an unusual story for many reasons. Firstly, they did not marry until 1947. That in itself would have set them apart from the Greek norms of the 30s. Secondly, her devotion and belief in Filopoimin was so great that she decided to end her own career in 1939 in order to assist him.

In 1938 Filopoimin and colleagues founded the Greek Cinema Studio «Ελληνικά Κινηματογραφικά Στούντιο» (ΕΚΣ) and almost immediately they began filming The Song of Separation (Το Τραγούδι Του Χωρισμού) with Filopoimin directing. Tzella helped as did his parents and, it being the depression, a lot of communal pots with beans or lentils were cooked up for the entire crew.

Unfortunately, it was a flop, a fact that had Filopoimin wondering if he should quit altogether. He did not, but chose never to direct a movie again and to stay wholly on the production side of things.

 

Song of Separation can be seen on youtube and, failure or not, its plot is pure Finos: a poor fisherman with a great voice loves a local girl but is persuaded to go to Athens to find fame by a sophisticated Athenian woman, changes his mind, and returns to the island and his first love. Naturally, there are songs throughout.

The Forties: The War Years and the Birth of Finos Film

 

When the Greco-Italian war broke out in 1940, Finos enlisted in the geographical branch of the army and filmed the war effort on the Albanian front.

 

When the Germans invaded in 1941, he was back in Athens and released from the army. He did film the German occupation of Athens but the Germans confiscated his film and destroyed it. (4)  In spite of that and the horrors of the occupation, he somehow managed to found Finos Film. He rented a building on Stournara Street and began filming Voice of the Heart (Φωνη της Καρδιας).  

 

Success and then Tragedy

In spite of the German occupation (or maybe because of it) Voice of the Heart was an astounding success. It starred Aimilios Veakis and premiered at the Rex Theatre (5) near Omonia Square on March 29, 1943.   The plot was simple: an old man after many years in prison for killing his wife’s lover, returns in the hopes of being reunited with his daughter.

 Apparently the line ups to see the film stretched all the way past Syntagma Square.    

Months later Filopoimin and his father were arrested by the Gestapo and held in its notorious cells on Merlin Street in the centre of Athens.(6) The charge against his father was being an ‘active communist’ because he was charged with giving wheat from properties he owned to the resistance.  Tzella would later say: My father in law was a patriot - who should he feed – the Germans or the Greeks? If that made him a communist, then he was.  Tzella managed to bribe a guard and send encouraging letters. Filopoimin was released but his father was hung in July 1944 with other ‘traitors’ - just a few months before Athens was liberated. 

Filopoimin was in front of the Grande Bretagne hotel to film the liberation of Athens and to record the devastation the Germans left in their wake. No doubt with his father’s fate in mind, and his own brush with the Nazis, he weathered the turbulent civil war years by staying out of the fray. Who can blame him?

In 1947, he and Tzella married. Apparently his friend Alekos Sakellarios, thinking it was time, brought a priest to the studio to marry the couple. Filopoimin was willing, but told the priest to keep it short, because he had work to do.  (Τέλειωνε, παπά, γιατί έχουμε δουλειές).  He was, of course, a workaholic and, happily, Tzella had the knack to meld their domestic life with his professional one.

 

 

 

 

The Rest

In 1953 the offices of Finos films were founded in a neoclassical building at 53 Chiou Street in Metaxourgiou. It was both his office and his home. Every aspect of a film (displays, editing, mixing etc) passed through this building - from preproduction to the final copy.

 

53 Chiou Street

It was not exclusively used for his own productions. For example, his studio aided in the production of Kakoyiannis’ Electra, the 1962 classic starring Irene Pappas. It won many awards, including one for Finos for sound.

 

Irene Pappas with Tzella and Filopoimin

The way in which Finos chose to work is one reason why Hollywood never tempted him as it did so many other Greek entrepreneurs. He said: In Hollywood they would not let me dig around in the cameras with my screwdriver. There they make films with their head. I make them with my heart. (7)  His life style was simple.  He literally lived over his work. Tzella made sure he was looked after domestically and except for his love of fine cars, he poured all of his money into his next film.

Finos and Tzella never had children of their own but they did not lack family. Over the years, they employed over 12,000 actors and technicians and many would work again and again for Finos Film: actors such as Aliki Vougiouklaki, Dimitris Papamichael, Thanasis Vengos, Rena Vlackopoulou and  Kostas Voutsas , just to name a few.  Voutsas has the record. He appeared in 30 Finos productions. Finos was godfather to Aliki and Dimitris Papamichael’s  son and so on. Many actors and technicians, not to mention writers and musicians, became close friends.

 

He was not always correct in his choices. He did not believe Melina Mercouri had a future in cinema; her mouth was too big and he passed up the opportunity to co-produce Never on Sunday. She was the one of the few who got away!

By 1958 there was a growing need for new stages and sets and a new one began operating in Agios Anargyros, a suburb of Athens. It had two stages, a carpentry shop, dressing rooms, a ‘city’ set and so on. It was on these stages that many of his so-called ‘Golden Age’ films were made

Filopoimin continued to innovate. Κορίτσια για φίλημα  (Kiss the Girls)  which premiered in 1965 was the first Greek colour film in stereophonic sound. The company seemed poised to go from strength to strength.  

1970 saw a new and larger studio being completed in Spata outside of Athens. Finos wanted to create a Greek Cinecittà. He even sent his architects to Rome to get ideas. The new studio had two stages and all the necessary attendant spaces. The Spata venue is still one of the biggest in Greece.

 

Spata Studio on Finos Film Street (of course!) is now used mainly for television

 .

But trouble was coming with the advent of television, his struggle with cancer,  and his own inability to work with financial partners. His lifelong friend Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis offered Finos a government subsidy and his refusal amazed Aliki Vougiouklaki: He wanted not just veto power but also the risk,( "ήθελε να έχει όχι μόνο το βέτο αλλά και το ρίσκο").

His own assessment of his difficulties was as laconic as it was perceptive: as a producer I am a real success; as a businessman, no. (8)

He died in debt in 1977.

 

His funeral was attended by actors all across the spectrum. The line between serious theatre, art film, and popular film has always been a permeable one for actors in Greece.

 

Tzella struggled to keep his name and contribution to film alive. She succeeded. Finos Film has now digitized all of the films and is doing well with rentals.  

Tzella died in 2010.

 

Afterword

For the body of his work (drama, melodrama, comedy, farce, (sometimes in the same film!) Finos has drawn criticism over the years: his films are not serious, the plots are unreal and avoid serious themes. I admit to many of these feelings but enjoy a good many of them for precisely those reasons. (9)

Cinema has always been the popular medium of the people: everyday lives viewed from inexpensive seats in cinematic Alcazars all over Greece - little fortresses from which some of the harsh realities of life can be ignored or at least filtered through rose coloured glasses for an hour or so - and endings can be satisfying.

In reality, Finos’ output was only about 20% of the films made in that era. And yet his name defines it because he had his finger on the pulse of ordinary people and his characters touched a chord in Greek hearts. That was his genius; he produced what people wanted to see more successfully and more consistently than anyone else.

His films can be called classics today because people still want to see them.

 

The Greek Ministry of Culture and mayor of Athens recognized his contribution in 2023 with a marble stele topped by his bust in a park hard by Stathmos Larissa not far from where his beloved Alcazar once stood.

 

Yes, People still leave roses…

 

The Grave

Section 14, Number 118A

 

ΤΕΛΟΣ

Footnotes

 (1)  For a complete list of his films and the actors in them see the Finos Film website: https://finosfilm.com/  Each film is shown alphabetically with its    poster. The text is in Greek.

(2)  The name ‘Alcazar’ comes from the Arabic “al-qaṣr” meaning a palace or a castle. It was a popular name for early cinemas worldwide and, in fact, very apt. These venues were palaces for the people.

(3) Attik was a cosmopolitan composer and entrepreneur who, after many years abroad, started his club in Athens.

(4 For what is left, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4OWmBiiLl0  from ERT Archives.

 

(5) The Rex on Panapistimiou Street was built between 1935and 1937 and was inspired by American Art Deco. The cinema was on the ground floor. The building is still there and quite a landmark.

 

 

(6) During this terrible period with the Nazis in charge and successive quisling governments attempting to appease them, many people found themselves in Merlin Street cells and many never knew why or who had betrayed them.  Sometimes they were kept, and sometimes they were freed, perhaps just because of chaos, a whim, or sometimes a judicious bribe. It was a terrible period in Greek history and left its scars on all who lived through it.

 

(7): «Στο Χόλιγουντ δεν θα με άφηναν να σκαλίζω τις κάμερες με το κατσαβίδι μου, εκεί κάνουν σινεμά με το μυαλό, εδώ κάνουμε με την καρδιά».

 

(8) «ως παραγωγός, πράγματι είμαι πετυχημένος. Ως επιχειρηματίας, όχι» and "ήθελε να έχει όχι μόνο το βέτο αλλά και το ρίσκο" from (https://www.athensvoice.gr/politismos/kinimatografos/719015/finos-films-giati-oi-tainies-toy-finoy-skorpoyn-akoma-gelio/ )

(9)  I have come to admire almost all of the Aliki - Papamichael films, and the comedies but have a little more difficulty with his musicals.  Just last night, Skai showed Κορίτσια για φίλημα (Kiss the Girls) and I found it cringe-worthy except… the sets were sometimes real blockbusters and the costumes just over the top and pretty fabulous. Finos Film today guards his legacy so only bits can be found on youtube. They are, however,  reproduced often Greek television.

 

 

 

Sources

https://finosfilm.com/tainies/  For a list of every movie he produced

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4OWmBiiLl0  a documentary on F inos

 

Yannis Tsarouchis

 

Yannis Tsarouchis                                       Γιάννης Τσαρούχης

Born January 1910 in Piraeus                   Died July 1989 in Athens

                                      Section 12, Number 445
 

...this painter dared to look for Hermes not on mount Olympus but in the 'Olympus Coffee-House' (1)

Rather than merely recording an era, Yannis  Tsarouchis created art in which depictions of ordinary people and landscapes were transformed, becoming part of a larger mythological construct, illuminating what he himself called the ‘complex ingredients that compose ‘Greekness’. He was such a great artist that I was a little disappointed to find his grave tucked way back in Section Twelve of the First Cemetery rather than in the Plaza at the entrance reserved for ‘distinguished Greeks’.  No matter; his work speaks for itself.  Tsarouchis was articulate and self aware, never afraid to express and defend his own aesthetic and how it fitted into the broader history of art, especially the history of art in Greece.

He was the consummate alchemist, melding the Renaissance, impressionism, post-impressionism, Hellenic sculpture, Byzantine art, Greek folk art and more into the body of his work in a way that is both contemporary and timeless.   

He was fortunate in his early mentors and experiences. Many of his contemporaries had those same opportunities and yet, there is only one Tsarouchis.

 

 

His Life

Yannis Tsarouchis was born in downtown Piraeus at the corner of Louka Rallis street and King George Avenue at a time when the city’s streets were still lined with neoclassical houses.  His formative years (until the age of 17) were spent there. He was the second son of merchant Athanasios Tsarouchis and Maria Monarchides. His maternal aunt was wealthy Despina Metaxa whose husband was the brandy baron.  So, no silver spoon in his mouth but he did come from a comfortable environment where ambitions could be realized. By all accounts, he was a happy child whose earliest dream was to become an acrobat for the sheer fun of it.

His early artistic efforts reveal a young man eager to experiment in all the new genres, an eclecticism he would always defend on the grounds that ideological consistency should not dominate a painter’s development. His first public showings consisted of a set design and watercolours at Nikos Velmos’ Art Asylum in 1928 and 1929 when he was still a teenager.  Nikos Velmos was a self taught artist, actor, writer, anarchist and cultural iconoclast. He had opened the ground floor of his home at 21 Nikodimou Street in the Plaka to give young, often unknown, artists a chance to show their work and, at the same time, to snub his nose at the entrenched Athenian establishment with his periodical Fragkelio.  It was the perfect environment for budding artists to gather, share ideas, and foment new ones.  Tsarouchis’ contributions to the Art Asylum were well received.

 

 

The Velmos home is still there - a little bit of an older Athens, facing the Electra Palace Hotel.

In 1928 he enrolled in the Athens School of Fine Arts where he would study until 1935. He was extremely lucky in his mentors there who included sculptor Thomas Thomopoulos (1873-1937) and the modernist painter Constantinos Parthenis (1878-1967).

 

Parthenis posing with his portrait of Julia Parthenis

 

It was a busy time. Between 1930 and 1934 he worked at Parthenis’ studio and as an assistant to icon painter Photis Kondoglou (1896-1965), experiences that would have a tremendous influence on his own work.

 

 

Kondolgou (Κόντογλοu ) introduced him to the simplicity, form, and spirituality of Byzantine Hagiography.

 

The skewed perspective, two dimensionality, high seriousness, the sense of timelessness and even the ‘weightlessness’ of Byzantine icons were all elements that can be observed again and again in Tsarouchis’ work even if his subjects are secular.

 

 

1980:  Sailor seated at a Table with a Coffee Cup

In the early thirties Tsarouchis met Angeliki Hadjimichali  who taught him about folk costume and Eva Sikelianou who taught him weaving. These women were important in the new artistic movements in Greece after the Asia Minor catastrophe. Eva was married to poet Angelos Sikelianos and Angeliki’s home in the Plaka had become a focal point for the intellectuals of that era. These connections were a learning experience and a portal into the closely knit cultural world of Athens in the 1930s. It was during this period that many of the elements which would characterize his life’s work were already coming together.

 

                                     

                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Angeliki in folk costume on the left and Eva, being Eva, on the right

 

 

In 1934 he began working on stage design with director and innovator Karolos Koun (1908-87) who became a lifelong friend. Creating stage sets and costumes for theatrical productions in Greece and abroad would become a hallmark of his long career and may have made him better known to the Greek public than his paintings.

1935-6 saw him in Paris studying Renoir and the Impressionists. There, he met sculptor Alberto Giacometti, etcher Max Ernst, the Greek painter Theophilos and the very influential Teriade, art critic, patron of the arts, and publisher.

                                      Teriade (aka Stratis Elevtheridis from Mytilini)

 Before returning to Greece in 1936, Tsarouchis visited Pompeii  –  another influence to be absorbed.

In a short  piece like this one, so much has to be left out. Tsarouchis was a prolific artist, juggling many genres, subjects, and mediums to perfection. What follows is a small taste, presented in chronological order, along with his story.

His Work

The Thinker in 1936 is a reference to Rodin’s work of the same name. Instead of representing a majestic figure in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Tsarouchis presents an ordinary young Greek man about town in a striped suit, lost in thought, a cigarette dangling from his right hand and his shoe resting casually on the bottom rung of his chair.  I love the way that Tsarouchis had to alter Rodin’s parallel treatment of the legs so that his young man could accommodate his legs to those notoriously uncomfortable coffee shop chairs!  (2)

 

 

1936: The Thinker

 

1937 Italian Nude Sitting in Profile

 

1938 saw his first solo exhibition in Greece on Nikis Street and his work presented at a Pan Hellenic exhibition at the Zappeion. During that same year, he designed the set for MarikaKotopouli’s production of Stella Violandis.

He was still only 28.

 1940 and the War

Tsarouchis fought on the Albanian front where his painting talent was put to work camouflaging a bridge!

 

On the Albanian Front

He experienced at first hand the terrible waste of youth that war entails. It would influence many of his later paintings which would depict young men, often with wings, in mourning, melancholy, or fatalistic poses. There is always a sense of sacrifice in these paintings.

During the German occupation, he made ends meet as best he could by creating stage designs and restoration projects.

Tsarouchis rarely painted current events, preferring the suggestiveness of the  symbolic and the mythic.  But one of his paintings is an exception of sorts. It depicts a situation in 1944 when Greek communists were being rounded up by the Nationalists and Security battalions. It is done in his own inimitable style.

 

 

          1944: The Arrest of Three Communists, First Days of the 1944 Uprising

After the war, he was back to work painting and creating sets for the National Theatre.

 

                                            1948: The apotheosis of Athanasios Diakos

The above was shadow theatre artist Evgenios Spatharis who had dressed in the part, holding the Greek flag, after a performance. Tsarouchis was a great fan of the shadow theatre. (This angel has a hair ribbon, de rigueur in the Orthodox iconic program for angels.)

 

 

1948:  Seated Sailor and Reclining Nude

                                      1949: Portrait of Miss N.A. With Two Roses

In 1949 he became a founding member of the Armos Group (3) of artists which held its first exhibition at the Zappeion where he showed eight works painted between 1938 to 1948.

1951 saw paintings dating from 1936-39 and 1948-50 exhibited at the Galleri d’Art du Faubourg in Paris, followed by a 1953 group show of Armos at the Zappeion. The Iolas Gallery in New York featured his paintings during this period. It was a connection that would make him financially independent.

The Neon (still there in Omonia square), the Parthenon and the Mavrokephalos coffee shops were featured in many of his paintings, venues habituated  by working class youths, and sailors who held such a special fascination for Tsarouchis.

 

1953-7:  Two are on display at the National Gallery in Athens

In 1958 he presented work at the Venice Biennali along with sculptor Antonis Socho and  painter Yiannis Moralis. The same year saw his paintings at the Guggenheim in New York and at the National Museum of Modern Art In Paris. That year he somehow found time to create the sets and costumes for Alexis Miniotis’ Medea starring Maria Callas. It would be fair to say that, by 1958, Tsarouchis had truly ‘arrived’.

 

 In 1959 Tsarouchis designed the set and costumes for Aristophanes’ The Birds directed by Karolos Koun. It was intended for the Herodes Atticus Theatre. The scheduled production was cancelled by presidential decree. Dressing the ancient priests as Orthodox priests had ruffled certain feathers in Athens. It was, however, a resounding success abroad.

 

The Birds

This was not Tsarouchis’ first run in with the authorities. His homoerotic themes made authorities uncomfortable.  In 1952 his painting of a Sailor on a Bed with a Naked Man was taken down from an exhibition in Athens at the insistence of the Royal Hellenic Navy which considered it an insult to their institution. (4)  Tsarouchis complied at the time because he feared that, if he did not, the police would come and destroy the entire exhibition. Such was the temper of the times.

Tsarouchis was gay, as were so many of the great Greek artists of the era.  Being gay in the art world in Greece was pretty generally accepted (except during bouts of authoritarian leadership) when more puritanical views prevailed in the broader society.

Times have changed.

 

1964: ‘Lovely White Flowers’ inspired by the Cavafy Poem (5)

 

1964-7: Flowers

Everyone has his or her favourite Tsarouchis. I am especially fond of The Offering of Two Winged Men. The scene is ancient and modern at the same time, and tantalizingly suggestive  –  pure Tsarouchis in every way from the butterfly wings to the stances, the facial expressions, and the nature of the ambiguous offering itself:

 

1965: The Offering of Two Winged Men

 

1966: Spirit Mourning

 

When the military dictatorship took over in 1967, Tsarouchis moved to Paris and continued to live there until 1975, painting and designing sets for La Scala and Covent Garden.

 

1969: The Four Seasons

While in France, he established an art academy for French and Greek students, giving them the opportunity to paint with live models, perhaps in memory of his own start at the Art Asylum.

 

 

1975: Set Design: a Delphic landscape for Euripedes’ ‘Ion’

After 1975, he divided his time between France and Greece until 1983 when he moved to Greece permanently.

 

1980: Portrait of a Young Woman with a Coral Necklace

In 1981 he had already established his own Tsarouchis Foundation at his home in Maroussi, to show his work and to encourage the study of the body of his work.

 

               The museum is at 28 Ploutarchou Street in Maroussi. Telephone 21 0806 2636

 

 

His Death

In 1989, while preparing the sets and costumes for a production of Euripedes’ Orestes he died suddenly at the age of 80. What a life! Tsarouchis must have known at least 90, percent of the cultural elite of Athens  (maybe more) and, in that interaction, everyone gained. His analysis of their work was as perceptive as it was fascinating. And he loved to dance. Greek people who perhaps knew nothing  about  his art,  knew that.

 

Dancing the Zebeikiko in 1955

 

 

Tsarouchis in costume as an archbishop a few days before his death

 His own words make a fitting epitaph:

I am an explorer, trying to find within my true faith, and in my work, the style that will be most in accord with my own self.

                                                                    It is a family Grave

Section 12, Number 445

 

 

The Map

 

Footnotes

 

(1)  the Tsarouchis foundation web page.

(2)  Rodin’s Thinker

 

 

 

(3) In 1949 Tetsis along with Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Yannis Moralis, Nikos Nikolaou, Nikos Engonopoulos and Yiannis Tsarouchis, established the “Armos” art group.

(4) In blog research one thing leads to another. Why are sailors especially associated with homosexuality?  Apparently it is an old trope referring to all those men cooped up on ships during long voyages. It has had a long run...

 

(5) Lovely White Flowers

He went inside the cafe where they used to sit together.
It was here, three months ago, that his friend told him:
'We're completely broke - so hard up, the two of us,
that we're stuck with the cheapest places.
I can't go around with you any more - it's no use hiding the fact.
I've got to tell you, somebody else is after me.'
The 'somebody else' had promised him two suits, some silk handkerchiefs.
He himself, to get his friend back,
went through hell rounding up twenty pounds.
His friend came back to him for the twenty pounds-
but along with that, for their old intimacy,
their old love, for the deep feeling between them.
The 'somebody else' was a liar, a real bum:
he'd ordered only one suit for his friend,
and that under pressure, after much begging.
But now he doesn't want the suits any longer,
he doesn't want the silk handkerchiefs at all,
or twenty pounds, or twenty piastres even.
Sunday they buried him, at ten in the morning.
Sunday they buried him, almost a week ago.
He laid flowers on his cheap coffin,
lovely white flowers, very much in keeping
with his beauty, his twenty-two years.
When he went to the cafe that evening
he happened to have some vital business there
to that same cafe where they used to go together,
it was a knife in his heart,
that dead cafe where they used to go together.

 

Sources

Here the English speaker is spoiled for choice, even on the internet. Tsarouchis was a prolific painter and art critic. A short entry like this one can only scratch the surface and hopefully create interest. A good place to start would be the website of his foundation: https://tsarouchis.gr/en/