The Audience premieres in the 61st Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Mariano Pensotti, one of Latin America’s greatest theater talents and one of the most distinguished experimental directors currently active on the world stage, presents a film, commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi, in which every generation of the Greek theater scene appears.
Become "the Audience".
Watch the film online on Monday November 9, 2020 at 10:00 am. The film will be available for 24 hours. Book your seats here.
Roads we’ve walked, record stores we’ve browsed, unmistakable market day on Kallidromiou Street, a theater performance, and an audience who also play the lead roles – all in “The Audience”. “The Audience” is a film about a theater audience, and the city they live in. It is also about a theater piece that we only get to know through narrations describing it. The audience that goes to see a play in a venue. The audience leaving the venue right after the show ends. The camera follows eleven audience members, and their stories as they unfold, to create eleven short-form films.
What are the stories of the people who go to see a theater piece? How much their lives are transformed by that experience? To which extent what they saw is modified by their memories? How it is to become a character in your own city? Which effect transforms an audience into protagonists?
“The Audience” was shot in Athens, Greece, commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi, Athens and is part of an ongoing project by Mariano Pensotti / Grupo Marea comprising of films about audiences, and their relationship with theater. Sometimes it is just a film, while in other cases it also includes a specific staging as well.
Scenes from the Audience
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Photo: Georges Salameh
“The Audience” is a film about a theater audience and the city they live in. It is also about a theater piece that we only get to know through narrations describing it. The film starts with an audience that goes to see a play in a venue. We will follow the stories of 11 people during the 24 hours after they attended the theater piece, to see to what extent that play affected their lives. Each story is a short film. The personal stories from the audience are remarkably diverse, but at some point all of them feature someone talking with another person about the theater piece they saw, and we did not. By following their stories and listening to their storytelling about the piece we – as real audience – can reconstruct the play that the fictional audience saw.
What are the stories of the people who go to see a theater piece? How much their lives are transformed by that experience? Which effect transforms an audience into protagonists?
Exploring the neighborhood’s multiple facets, Pensotti created eleven short films that weave a collective portrait of Exarchia, combining little stories about disparate people as they interact within the city. Residents, restaurant and open-air cinema owners, immigrants, tourists, regulars and passers-by all take on lead roles in a single, communal story that at times follows a clear narrative, and at others has more of a documentary feel.
This is not the first time the Argentine director has presented a work in Athens. Five years ago, in November 2014, Pensotti brought The Past Is a Grotesque Animal to the Onassis Stegi Main Stage as part of Transitions 2 America, a festival dedicated to the contemporary independent Latin American scene under the artistic direction of Katia Arfara.Embedded media
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Author, Director & Screenwriter: Mariano Pensotti
Project Curator: Katia Arfara
Producers: Dimitra Dernikou, Vassilis Panagiotakopoulos
With: Periklis Moustakis, Anna Κalaitzidou, Mary Mina, Kariofylia Karabeti, Panagiotis Exarcheas, Ioanna Kolliopoulou, Dimitris Xanthopoulos, Lefteris Giakoumakis, Stergios Ioannou, Ilektra Nikolouzou, Kimon Kouris, Alexia Kaltsiki, Zeynab Mehrzad, Zalvazany Zarifah, Ektoras Liatsos, Yiannis Mpakalis, Pinelopi Riga, Iro Bezou, Αιneias Tsamatis, Aris Mpalis, Kostas Berikopoulos, Tomohiro Watanabe
Researcher/Dramaturg/Casting director: Theodora Kapralou
Production Designer: Mariana Tirantte
Music Composer: Diego Vainer
Director of Photography: Soledad Rodríguez
Editor: Agustin Rolandell
Αrt director: Lucas Economopoulos
Costume designer: Lita Kokkonari
Make up Artist: Ioanna Symeonidi
Sound recordist: Dinos Kittou
Production Manager: George Tsitsas
1st Assistant director: Agustín Gagliardi
Production Coordinator: Florencia Wasser
Commissioned and Produced by Onassis Stegi