"The Audience" by Mariano Pensotti premieres at Onassis Channel on 9th January, 2022 at 21:00 (UTC+2)
Online premiere: 09.01.2022 at 21.00
Become “The Audience”. 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. The film will be available to stream until January 16 at 21:00.
Photo: Georges Salameh
Athens, 2019. The core of the city – the Exarchia neighborhood – as seen through the eyes of the renowned Argentinian director Mariano Pensotti. 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.
Neos Kosmos (the “New World”), 2022. Film and theater will be popping onto our computer screens with the live YouTube premiere of The Audience on January 9 at 21:00, presented by the Onassis Channel on YouTube. 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”. Α 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.
What are the stories of the people who go to see a theater piece? Which effect transforms an audience into protagonists?
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Still from The Audience
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Photo: Georges Salameh
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Still from The Audience
Author, Director: Mariano Pensotti
Project Curator: Katia Arfara
Producers: Dimitra Dernikou, Vassilis Panagiotakopoulos
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
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, Αineias Tsamatis, Aris Mpalis, Kostas Berikopoulos, Tomohiro Watanabe, Thimios Koukios, Marina Symeou
Commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi
Onassis Stegi commissioned in 2019 the Argentine writer and director Mariano Pensotti to create a site-specific work – his own portrait sketch of Athens. Following trips he made to Greek capital, research he conducted in the city center lasting many months, and a series of interviews with local inhabitants, Mariano Pensotti picked out the Exarchia area as the most fitting neighborhood in which to narrate the history and relate the atmosphere of Athens in cinematic terms.
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.
In October 2020, the film had its world premiere at DeSingel in Antwerp, Belgium as part of a theater festival. It first screened at an international film festival in November 2020, appearing online as part of the Open Horizons section at the 61st Thessaloniki International Film Festival. It went on to screen at the New York Greek Film Expo 2021, and at the Directors Guild of America Theater in New York in October 2021.
Following on from his Athenian version, Pensotti directed a corresponding film for the city of Buenos Aires titled El Publico, a collaboration between his Grupo Marea company and the Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires (FIBA). This was followed by a third film in 2021 titled Le public / Het publiek, shot in Brussels at Théâtre des Martyrs, and commissioned by Kunstenfestivaldesarts.
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.
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