Gerasimos Stavrou

Teddy Boy My Love

The son of a merchant is trying to convince his father to sell his shop so he can buy the car he wants. But he will find his master in the face of a girl who has decided to help his father live a better life.

The Roundup

One of filmmaker and expatriate writer Adonis Kyrou's best-known quotes translates roughly as "I urge you: Learn to look at 'bad' films, they are so often sublime." The same could be said of Kyrou's own directorial work in Greece before the advent of the 1967 dictatorship forced him to flee to Paris. This confused mess, the first cinematic attempt at portraying the Greek resistance in WWII, caused quite a stink upon release, as much for its surprising style (recalling that of Bertolt Brecht) as for its subject matter. Reaction to its screening as part of the 1966 Cannes Film Festival's International Critic's Week was heated and divisive, proving Kyrou's later statement by rising above its own inherent silliness to achieve a sort of rarefied critical status. It's bad drama that nonetheless succeeds by dint of audacity more than quality (a comment which could apply equally to the work of many exploitation directors like Jean Rollin whom Kyrou later so lovingly profiled).

The Orgies Villa

A parliamentary candidate and his mistress will spend the night at the police station. After all, no one is above the law, no matter what his credentials or social status may appear to be.