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Director Fokion Bogris was in his early 20s when he first met legendary Greek character actor Kostas Stefanakis. Through their unlikely friendship, the budding director got to dive headfirst into — and fall in love with — the then-dying underground scene of Greek B-movies. Following Stefanakis’ death, Bogris set out to tell the little-known story of his life and career to weave a love letter to Greek B-movies with “The Golden Grip.”
The film, which had its world premiere at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, kicks off in the 1960s as Kostas leaves his village in Crete to pursue his dreams of becoming a star. The five decades that follow see the actor struggle both in his personal life and with a career that never quite saw him break away from the tough guy stereotype, with Bogris weaving in a wealth of talking heads to chronicle Stefanakis’s glories and sorrows as Greek cinema evolved alongside the star.
Speaking with Variety ahead of the premiere, Bogris recalls how his first reaction to his friend’s death was to go through the piles and piles of archive he had of his career. Soon enough, the idea for “The Golden Grip” was formed, with the director deepening his research in the months that followed. “Doing something creative was my way of dealing with my friend’s loss,” he says.
Although the project started out sporadically, it became increasingly complex as Bogris needed to secure the copyright for dozens of Stefanakis’s films. “It was a nightmare,” he recalls. “I realized he was in so many different films, and I felt the need to put all the titles in linear order and examine them from his point of view.”
The research was right up the director’s alley, however, with Bogris having nurtured a self-described “obsession” with Greek Exploitation Cinema from a young age. He recalls working alongside mentor Nicholas Triandafyllidis at the famous Greek Cult Film Festival. “Ι built a huge collection of titles on VHS, read books on those films and used to hang out with the people who made them. Most of the old horses were still alive at that time. Nowadays, there are very few of them left.”
“Watching Greek films from the 70s and the 80s made me think about how different the world is today,” the director goes on, adding that the research process revitalized his desire to keep up with whatever is new in his national cinema. “I am always keeping an eye out for Greek films. I like to watch as many as possible.”
On the subject of an evolving idea of Greek cinema, Bogris emphasizes that he no longer sees the stereotype of the “tough Greek guy” as a reality today. “It does not exist, because Greece does not produce B-movies anymore,” he says. “Our country doesn’t carry a tradition in genre filmmaking, like Italy, for example. I believe Kostas could have become an international B-movie star if he were Italian instead of Greek. He was cool with playing variations of the same role in many different films. Lots of actors did that in the 70s and, as a result, they ended up being typecast.”
Bogris adds that, with fewer films being produced in Greece today than back in the 70s and 80s, there are fewer windows for the solidification of character actors like Kostas. “There’s a great range in Kostas’ filmography. He began acting when Greek commercial cinema was already declining, but still got roles in a handful of different films: from the exploitation cinema of Gousgounis and Liambos to the arthouse cinema of Angelopoulos, it’s all there. Today, actors get fewer opportunities.”
The director says he is “thrilled” about being at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival for the first time with “The Golden Grip,” six years after his fiction feature film “Amercement” — Stefanakis’s final screen role — played at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He hopes to have a few more screenings across the country and that audiences will “develop an interest” in the films brought up in the doc.
“I [also] believe [‘The Golden Grip’] could attract foreign viewers who have a taste for B-movies,” he adds. “Actors similar to Kostas have also existed in many other parts of the world.”
As for what’s next, Bogris is set to tackle another niche of Greek art with “Public Figure”: the country’s little-explored rap scene. The director is currently in pre-production, with shooting scheduled to begin in May.
“The Golden Grip” is produced by Chase the Cut, in co-production with the Hellenic Film and Audiovisual Center. Chase the Cut handles world sales.
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