New DVD announcement! The Greek Fantastique!

Dimitris Panayiotatos is the only Greek film maker to have specialised in film noir, fantasy and sci-fi. He has produced and directed documentaries, TV series and feature films and has created a consistent and compelling body of work over more than thirty years.

This DVD brings together his 1990 feature film Lovers Beyond Time, as well as an episode of the “Twilight Zone” style TV series Tales of Love and Terror. The disc also includes his 2009 feature length documentary on the history of Greek genre cinema and an interview with the director where he discusses his own career and the difficulties of working in genre cinema in Greece, a country where such productions have always been marginalized.

The disc includes:

LOVERS BEYOND TIME – 1990; Feature film, 80 minutes
Sylvia and Angelos have an intense relationship. Too intense for Sylvia, who breaks it off. Three years later, with Angelos dead, Sylvia lives with a doctor and works for a record company. Her new life is suddenly invaded by a succession of bizarre events: strange deaths occur around her and she experiences a series of involuntary orgasms, as though a man she can feel but not see is making love to her - in the street, at work, in her car. All of this seems connected in some way with a mysterious musician she is trying to track down, a man who constantly evades her; until one night her phone rings.... With influences ranging from early Cronenberg to Italian erotic thrillers of the 1970s, the film is a journey into the dangerous world of the irrational, where time contracts and expands and where people are at the mercy of natural laws that change suddenly, violently and without warning.

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND – 2009; documentary, 90 minutes
This ground-breaking and important documentary reveals the hitherto untold story of Greek genre cinema over the last 50 years, dealing with Film Noir, Thrillers, Fantasy films and Sci-Fi. It includes a wealth of interviews with directors, writers and critics and clips from more than 50 films. Very little of the information included here has been available before outside Greece and it will be essential viewing to anyone interested in the wider world of genre cinema.

THE EROTIC, THE FANTASTIC – 2017; interview, 25 minutes
An interview with director Dimitris Panayiotatos where he talks about his own career, studying film in Paris in the 1970s, writing and publishing books and magazines on sci-fi and fantasy cinema and the difficulties of working in the fantastic genres in a country where comedy is king.

THE LAST MEAL – 1988 – TV episode, 25 minutes
An episode from a Greek Twilight Zone style TV series called Tales of Love and Terror.



Coming this winter to DVD only! (Sorry, no blu for this one.)