STAVROS  TORNES


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Balamos

Direction: Stavros Tornes

Production: Stavros Tornes, Greek Film Centre

© 1982

16mm, 80 min, color

 

Cast


Stavros Tomes

Salil Salil

Kyriakos Vilanakis

Enzo Attingenti

Christos Karagoutas

Helen Maniati
Mitsos Angelakopoulos

Constantine Pangalos

Direction
Stavros Tornes

Script
Stavros Tornes

Cinematography
Stamatis Yannoulis

Editing
Dimos Theos

Set
Dimitris Kakoulidis

Sound
Manolis Logiadis

Production
Stavros Tornes
Greek Film Centre

© 1982

16mm, 80 min, color

Kiriakos VilanakisStavros TornesStavros Tornes

I wanted to buy a horse that would take me to places not easily reached by men.
I got in touch with the horse-dealers' world, and I didn't buy a horse.
I began the film with that longing for the horse still alive in me.
Kyriakos the horse-dealer is the man who led me to places where the camera cannot easily reach.
And so the character of Balamos came into being; as his name denotes, he is a man who flies into ecstasies, who is always on the move. Balamos doesn't seem to have any specific purpose in mind; he walks around in a dream and gets involved in situations as they come along, without any reservations. Every now and then he comes upon Kyriakos, who appears under several disguises: now as a Magus, now as the Big Boss, now as a Cattle-Dealer or as a Chaldean High Priest; whatever the disguise, Kyriakos exerts an irresistible attraction on Balamos.
This kind of progress makes time cease to be a limit. Balamos emerges as a defendant in a medieval court of justice, a slave in the early Christian era; he comes upon the female Yeti, hears the oracle of the Pythoness by the river, kisses the hand of the Prophet who has witnessed the crucifixion of Christ, and finally, on Mount Olympus, changes into a Dracula figure that drinks the blood of horses.
He is stripped of the gift he had been endowed with: the ability to continue. He travels by taxi, like everybody else. Balamos is a film.

Stavros Tornes

The film participated at Thessaloniki film festival 1982

Awards

The Greek Film Critics Association Prize

 

Film Reviews

Always an incredible simplicity, the economy of means of a Luc Moullet. A Moullet who would film in colour a black- and-white screenplay of Mizoguchi's... There is a spirit of warm encounters, of fraternity, something which truly cannot be expressed with words. There is a lost masterpiece in the Film Market. Discovered quite by chance. And waiting. LIBERATION This is almost a one-man job, written, produced, directed and acted by Stavros Tornes. It is an off-trail work, a skillful poetical film... Balamos is a wandering man living in a fantastic world. He wishes to buy a horse and travel on it. He meets many obstacles to find one and goes through strange adventures and situations which lead him to overcome the limits of time and place. Balamos lives between reality and his imagination... Stavros Tornes' direction is remarkable. The same goes for his acting. The rest of the cast is good as were all other technical credits. 

Variety

 

manifesto

filmography

biography

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a Louis Skorecki text

coatti

balamos

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danilo treles

a heron for germany

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