Camera Zizanio

Dear friends and colleagues,

After the last screenings of the awarded films of Camera Zizanio and Olympia Film Festival at Cine Philip in Athens, on Wednesday, December 17, the events of the 11th International Film Festival for Children and Young People and the 8th Camera Zizanio came to an end.

From my side, I would like to warmly thank those who contributed to the great success of this year’s festival. A festival that surpassed the previous ones in entries, young liveliness and enthusiasm.

First of all I would like to thank those who had traveled from distant countries so that they could be with us at this feast and gave us the chance to create, even for only a week, our own community and to experience its merits. Our friends from Spain, Ireland, England, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Belgium, Serbia, Hungary, Ukraine, Lithuania, Jordan.

Also a thanks to those who couldn’t be with us, but with sending their films, making Camera Zizanio the most significant European meeting of young people’s audiovisual creation.

I would like especially to thank our friends from Hungary, Serbia and Holland for running workshops and setting off the creative aspect of the Festival. And also our good collaborators from Greece, Niko Staboulopoulo, Spyro Siaka, Niko Repoulio, Yiorgo Kourmouza, Kosta Katraki, Tasso Zerva, Panagioti Katsiahnia. Because – for yet again another year- they voluntarily passed their knowledge and experience to the children that participated at the workshops, creating all together more than 20 short films

And of course I should thank all those children that participated in the workshops, the Juries and a special thanks to “my children” – the team of Zizanio Live and the Daily news – that carried out a really difficult project.

Unfortunately, before the lights of the festival went out, another event came under the spotlight. As Sophia, a friend and collaborator of the Festival, wrote to her blog, “while our 12-year-old and 15-year-old kids were shooting with their cameras, the same time, others were shooting with a gun a kid of the same age”.

Young people from Greece and other countries are gathering for a rally to protest the murder by policemen of 15-year-old Alexis, on the 6th of December. We stand in solidarity with all the young people who are struggling for a different world, free of violence and with equal opportunities for all.

I wish that the feast days that earmark the end of the calendar year will be happy for all of you. And that the New Year will be the start of a different path to a world more human and creative… in a planet green and peaceful.

Nikos Theodosiou

Artistic director of Camera Zizanio.