Captain Kemal, a Comrade

Captain Kemal, a Comrade / Fotos Lamprinos

The portrait of Mihri Belli, a Turk born in 1915, who, after the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) was a devout nationalist and fanatic enemy of the Greeks, but decided, in 1947, to travel illegally to the mountains in Thrace to fight in the Greek Civil War on the side of the Greek communist guerrillas. Today, at the age of 92, he makes a journey back to Greece where he fought to visit the battle fields and hopefully meet again with his comrades.

Director: Fotos Lamprinos
Script: Fotos Lamprinos
Photographer: Simos Sakertzis
Montage: Alexis Pezas
Sound: Dimitris Athanassopoulos
Music: Yorgos Papadakis
Producer: Costas Lambropoulos
Production: CL Productions, Greek Film Centre, ERT SA Hellenic Broadcasting Corp., & Asi Film
Narration: Manos Zakharias. Texts: Mihri Belli
Type: BetacamSP Color-B&W
Production Country: Greece, Turkey
Duration: 72
Production Year: 2008
World Sales: CL Productions, Greece Zoe Lisgara T. +30 210 6412700 zoelisgara@clproductions.gr www.clproductions.gr

Fotos Lamprinos Filmography

1963-1964 100 Hours in May (short)
1969 Visit Greece (short)
1975 Ermoupolis – 9th Century
1976-1977 A Musical Travelogue with Domna Samiou (8-doc. series)
1977-1980 45 docs (TV series: Images from Northern Greece,
From the Pindus to Evros, ERT in Northern Greece, Research, Backstage)
1980 Yannis Tsarouchis’ Piraeus (short)
1980 Medieval Villages on Chios
1980 Nea Moni, Chios (TV series: This is Where Europe was Born)
1981 Aris Velouchiotis – The Dilemma
1981-1987 Panorama of the Century (33-doc. TV series)
1984 Panorama of the Century 1st episode (1895-1900) (short)
1987 Doxobus (fiction)
1988 Athens University – 50 Years
1989 Struggle at Sea
1989 Crete’s Unification with Greece (TV)
1989 Ancient Rhodes
1989-1990 A 70-year-old October (5-doc. TV series)
The Greeks of Russia (6-doc. TV series)
Political Refugees (TV)
Sergei Paradjanov (short) (TV)
Georgian Painters (TV)
1991 Emmanouil Roidis - Ermoupolis (TV series “The Words of the City”)
1991 Moscow – November 1990. Return to the Future (5 short doc. TV series)
1991 Beauty Will Save the World (7-doc. TV series)
1995 Birthday Celebration or a Silent Balkan Story
1995-1997 In Search of Berenice (3-doc. TV series)
2005 My Power Lies in the Love of the Lens
2008 Captain Kemal, a Comrade

Fotos Lamprinos Biography

He studied Film in Moscow (1965-1970). From 1970 to 1973 he thoroughly researched twenty-two governmental and private film archives in Europe and the United States in search of newsreel material referring to Greece between 1911-1971. In 1973 he collaborated withTheo Angelopoulos on the scenario for Angelopoulos’ film The Traveling Players. From 1975 to 1997 he directed over 50 documentaries for the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT), including Panorama of the Century–thirty-three 30-minute episodes narrating the news in Greece and the world from 1895 to 1940, based exclusively on newsreel material; a series of twenty documentaries on the disintegration of the Soviet Union (1989- 1990); and a seven-episode documentary, Beauty Will Save the World (1991), which chronicled the parallel journey of the Russian State and the Russian Orthodox Church from the 10th century to our time. In 1981 Lamprinos filmed a feature-length documentary for the screen entitled Aris Velouchiotis –The Dilemma about the Resistance during the German occupation. His fiction film Doxobus (1987) referred to the 14th-century Byzantine province by the same name and the civil war of that period. In 1995 he produced and directed Birthday Celebration or a Silent Balkan Story, a documentary dedicated to the centenary of cinema and made up of footage from Balkan silent movies (1895-1930). His films have received awards in Greece and abroad. Lamprinos created the first Greek user-friendly archive of old newsreels (1997-2000), which is housed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1993 to 2003 he taught “The Relationship between History and Cinema” at various universities in Greece.

Source:Thessaloniki Documentary Festival