At the beginning of March the organisers of the Thessalonika International Film Festival (TIFF) announced they were postponing the event, but would maintain certain activities online, such as Agora.
In a bid to keep its cultural activity alive the TIFF commissioned eight Greek directors to make short films from their homes. The “Species of Spaces” project, inspired by Georges Perec’s book, invited the film-makers to reflect the new reality in which we all live. The constraints: shooting a film at home, with a maximum length of three minutes and using only the environment, the people or animals present in that space. The first eight projects have been posted online on the Youtube channel of the festival.
TIFF also invited international film-makers to take part in a separate project called Spaces # 2. Since April 22nd the first batch of Spaces # 2 has been available on Youtube. There are several short films by Mediterranean directors, including one by the Turkish Tarik Aktas, the American-Israeli Rachel Leah Jons and the Romanian Radu Jude.
