Dimitris Voyatzis born Dimitrios Voyatzis, was a Greek film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

, actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

, producer

Film producer

A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

, editor

Film editing

Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...

, a screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 and a folk musician

Greek folk music

Greek folk music includes a variety of Greek styles played by ethnic Greeks in Greece, Cyprus, Australia, the United States and elsewhere. Apart from the common music found all-around Greece, there are distinct types of folk music, sometimes related to the history or simply the taste of the...

.

His films

His films include: Hobby mou... o Viasmos (My hobbies include... Rape), O Skyllas (The Dog-man), I Lires tou Antarti (The Guerrilla's bullions) (Italics indicate a romanization of the Greek title, while parentheses indicate a literal translation into English).

They were shot with very low production values

B-movie

A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....

, somewhat ineptly and were intended for public screening in cafés

Coffeehouse

A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on...

 of cities and towns of northern Greece

Central Macedonia

Central Macedonia is one of the thirteen regions of Greece, consisting of the central part of the region of Macedonia. With a population of over 1.8 million, it is the second most populous in Greece after Attica.- Administration :...

 that belonged to friends of his. His films' leads were always characters characteristically flawed, marginalized, criminals

Crime

Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...

, ostracised by the law, yet striving for ideals such as atonemenent, redemption, or love. Or, predators, monsters bent on revenge on Hoi polloi

Hoi polloi

Hoi polloi , an expression meaning "the many", or in the strictest sense, "the majority" in Greek, is used in English to denote "the masses" or "the people", usually in a derogatory sense. Synonyms for "hoi polloi" include ".....

, out to satisfy their most base desires. People who lived in the worst of conditions, in sleaze and decaying urban hubs, under suspicion and distrust, who faced horrible, powerful villain

Villain

A villain is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters...

s, the threat of the often corrupt police

Police corruption

Police corruption is a specific form of police misconduct designed to obtain financial benefits, other personal gain, or career advancement for a police officer or officers in exchange for not pursuing, or selectively pursuing, an investigation or arrest....

. Ex convict

Convict

A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison", sometimes referred to in slang as simply a "con". Convicts are often called prisoners or inmates. Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences often are not termed...

s, rapists

Rape

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

, smugglers

Smuggling

Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...

, they were very close to the definition of an anti-hero

Anti-hero

In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis in which the character is generally useless at being a hero or heroine when they're...

, offbeat heroes covered in filth with whom the viewer easily sympathized, facing abhorrent enemies, or worse, themselves; it can be argued that, perhaps unintentionally, his plots, motifs and characters bear a strong resemblance to those found in works of transgressive fiction

Transgressional fiction

Transgressive fiction is a genre of literature that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways. Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society, protagonists of transgressional...

.

In two out of his three (O Skyllas & Hobby mou...) directed feature films, he co-starred with the Greek cult actor Kostas Stefanakis.

His life

According to his close associate Tasos Aggelopoulos, he wasn't working; his income and funds for his films came from his wealthy family. As a folk musician, he played with bands in fair

Fair

A fair or fayre is a gathering of people to display or trade produce or other goods, to parade or display animals and often to enjoy associated carnival or funfair entertainment. It is normally of the essence of a fair that it is temporary; some last only an afternoon while others may ten weeks. ...

s around Greece. He never married

Bachelor

A bachelor is a man above the age of majority who has never been married . Unlike his female counterpart, the spinster, a bachelor may have had children...

, nor had children.

Lary-Skot productions

With Mr. Aggelopoulos, they founded the film company

Production company

A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...

 Lary-Skot productions (aka: Larry Scott video production, a reference to the American bodybuilder Larry Scott) and through it produced and "released" his films. Other productions of Lary-Skot productions include the film O Fotografos kai ta manoulia tou (The photographer and his babes) and O Videoclubas (The Video rental Guy). Lary-Skot productions was located in Pagrati, in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, Greece. After his death, the company passed to Mr. Aggelopoulos, a wedding videographer

Wedding videography

Wedding videography is a video production that documents a wedding on video. The final product of the videographer's documentation is commonly called a wedding video it is also being referred to as a wedding movie or a wedding film.-History:...

 at the time of the film productions and currently an electrician

Electrician

An electrician is a tradesman specializing in electrical wiring of buildings, stationary machines and related equipment. Electricians may be employed in the installation of new electrical components or the maintenance and repair of existing electrical infrastructure. Electricians may also...

, who worked with Mr. Voyatzis as a cinematographer

Cinematographer

A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...

, a co-director, a gaffer and a boom operator

Boom operator (media)

A Boom operator is an assistant of the production sound mixer. The principal responsibility of the boom operator is microphone placement, sometimes using a "fishpole" with a microphone attached to the end and sometimes, when the situation permits, using a "boom" which is a more intricate and...

. Mr. Aggelopoulos considers Voyatzis's films garbage and admits that he has lost any negatives

Film stock

Film stock is photographic film on which filmmaking of motion pictures are shot and reproduced. The equivalent in television production is video tape.-1889–1899:...

 and film copies

Videotape

A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...

 of the Lary-Skot films.

A Dimitris Voyatzis renaissance

While it has been several years since Mr. Voyatzis's death, due to screenings in Greek cult film festivals, his films started reaching new audiences and have become more popular than ever.

Current availability of his films

Since his films were not released for the video market

Direct-to-video

Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...

, they have always been difficult to track. Currently, his films can be found through the Greek video label Onar films .

External links

• incorrect profile at Cine.gr