A great loss for the field of Letters and Arts, the death of the great creator Rovers Manthoulis, who died this morning in a hospital in Paris, as he had contracted coronavirus.
A director, writer and poet, he was one of the most prolific and innovative artists and a wonderful man. His immense work had international stature. His documentary landmark is «Greece, the castaways of history».
He brought changes to radio, theatre and of course cinema, as he was the creator of iconic films.
«My identity is political»
He was born in Komotini, grew up in Athens. He participated in the circles of the Children's Diaspora and in the ranks of the Young People's EAM and then the EPON, as an enlightener. From the end of 1943 until the Liberation, he was the «funnel» of Exarchia and Neapolis, who in the evenings, from a rooftop on the hill of Strefi, brought the resistance messages in front of the open windows of the residents.
For that period he had stated in 2019 in an interview with the «Journal of the Editors» the following: «I've been through a lot and seen even more. I saw my people around me disappear, my friends murdered, strangely enough, although I was very active, I was not killed. I survived. The funnel was very careful. But the event that I don't forget - and as I speak to you I still have it in my mind - is what happened in the Civil War. We were in the underground, I remember at that time I hid two young boys, comrades from Sofades Karditsa, in the house. Although my parents were not leftists, they helped me to hide them...“.
On the occasion of the release of the book «37 poems» (Gavriilides ed.) he told us in it «You will find how my personality was formed. How I was constructed. Around poetry, Greek intellectualism, in Loumidis’ loft. The time we came out of the Civil War in '49 and it would last until my return from America. My own identity is political, in the ancient sense of taking a stand on things.
»That's what I've been doing since I was thirteen years old. That's what I've been doing since I've been doing it since I was a kid. But at the same time I always read a lot of books. I remember going to the library of Titus [Patricio] who was a friend of mine and Xenopoulos would tell me what to read - all the lending libraries that existed I had read them all. That's how the poet and the intellectual began to take shape.».
An incredible course
He studied Political Science at Panteion University, then Film and Theatre at Syracuse University in New York. In the mid-1950s he collaborated with the EIR in translating and adapting works of American drama for the «Wednesday Theatre». From 1956 and for about a decade he was a professor and Director of Studies at the Ioannidis and Stavrakos Film Schools. In 1957 he was recruited to the Ministry of Press to organise a Documentary Department.
In 1958, on his own initiative, he founded, together with Hercules Papadakis, Rousso Koundouros, Fotis Mesthenaeus and Yannis Bakoyannopoulos, the Group of 5, a movement of creative documentary filmmaking in Greece. In the same year he staged William Saroyan's play "My heart up there on high" at the Athens Theatre and at the Lefkada Festival.
He collaborated with the magazine «Cinema - Theatre», directed by Yannis Bakogiannopoulos. He was active in the development of cinema clubs in Greece. As Director General of Programmes of Hellenic Television, he undertook the transformation of the Greek Television into ERT (1975) and of YENED into ERT2 (1982). He has directed the award-winning films «Face to Face», «Hands Up», «Hitler», «Blues with Clenched Teeth», «The Greek Civil War» and the Greek-French co-production «Lilly's Story» (Venice Festival).
His first collaboration with French Television was as director and principal director of the documentary series entitled: «On the Poster of the World», which in 1969 was awarded by the Association of French Critics as «The Best Show on French Television».
For European Television, he has made 90 sociological documentaries, feature films, musicals and the TV adaptation of Stratis Chirka's "Ungoverned States", which was broadcast 50 times by French Television.
He was president of the Hellenic Community in Paris (1991-2001) and has been awarded the Medal of the City of Paris for all his work in France. He has translated into French Euripides« »Cyclops« and Iakovos Campanelli's »He and his trousers« and »Ulysses came home" for the Greek Trilogy.
He directed and presented «The Trilogy» at the La Main d'Or Theatre in Paris. He also translated into French (with the assistance of the actress Evelyne Guimara) and directed for the Avignon Festival George Maniotis’ «Common Sense».
A year ago, a rich tribute to his work for the big screen was held, while the publications Pyxisida of the City and the Chania Film Festival had republished two important books of his, two volumes of the book «Cosmos to me’ which is a chronicle of his memories.
