Les abysses papatakis interview
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A year ago I was researching on the early days of Ethiopian cinema hoping to produce a story for a paper that I was freelancing then. In the course of working on it, there was a name that kept emerging: Michel Papatakis.
His was a success story in pioneering the Ethiopian cinema by realizing the potential of the film medium to both entertain and inform society. Not only did he run his own production company, he also wrote, directed, filmed, and edited his own films. The major one was Guma (Blood Money) that he produced around but he has also many documentaries to his credit.
What is it about Michel that has made him a pioneering force in Ethiopian cinema, yet never appropriately acknowledged in his own land?
Probably it is because of his quiet, self-effacing nature and the simple life he has been leading for almost two decades. He avoids film premiers and any conferences. But if you had a chance to talk to him, you would see a friendly man and a pleasant one to deal with.
When I headed to his place a month ago, I didn’t have his phone number and I had no ways of telling him that I was coming. I was prepared to be turned away. I knocked on the door. I waited and raised my hand to knock again, when suddenly the door swung open. The man who answered, with his head held high,
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Nikos Papatakis () was an Ethiopian-born Greek filmmaker, renowned for his subversive and provocative works. Startling, subversive, and explosively controversial, the films of iconoclast Nico Papatakis have long been frustratingly hard to see, but they constitute one of the most radical and neglected bodies of work in all of European cinema. His film, The Sheperds of Calamity, is renowned director Yorgos Lanthimos&#; all-time favorite film,
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 19, , to a Greek father and an Ethiopean mother, Papatakis spent his early years between Ethiopia and Greece. At 17, he joined Haile Selassie’s army to resist the fascist Italian invasion of Ethiopia. After After the defeat by Benito Mussolini&#;s forces, he was driven into exile, first in Libya and then Greece, before finally settling in Paris in
In Paris, Papatakis initially worked as an extra in films and eventually owned the famous nightclub La Rose Rouge, a hub for intellectuals and artists. Performers like Juliette Gréco made their debuts there, while luminaries such as André Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Boris Vian were regular patrons. During this time, Papatakis befriended Jean Genet, who dedicated his poem &#;La Galère&#; to him, “Nico, the Greco-Ethiopian God.” Their friendship was tum