Christos Vakalopoulos

37 Years Old

Christos Vakalopoulos (Athens, 17 January 1956 - 29 January 1993) was a Greek writer, director and radio producer. He was born in Athens and was the son of Georgios Vakalopoulos, general director of IKA. He grew up in the Kypseli district, which he mentions extensively in his works, and completed his general studies at Leonteio Patision. In 1973 he was admitted to the Higher School of Economics and Commercial Sciences (ASOEE), while at the same time he wrote articles for the magazine Synkhronos Kinematografos and - after the fall of the junta - for the newspaper I Avgi. In 1980 he published his first book, A Best-Selling Case, and left for Paris for the next two years, where he studied film with his teacher Eric Rohmer. In 1982 he returned to Greece and collaborated for consecutive years with the political magazine Anti and the radio station of the Second Program of ERT. In 1984 he wrote and directed the short film Verantes, while publishing his second book, The Graduates. Then, in 1986, he directed the short film Theatre, while collaborating on the scripts of the films About Vasilis by Stavros Tsiolis and The Woman Who Saw Dreams by Nikos Panagiotopoulos. In 1989, he published the short story collection New Athenian Stories and directed his first feature film, Olga Robards, which won the Cinematography Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. In 1990, he collected many of his unpublished essays on cinema in a volume, entitled Second Screening, and a year later he published perhaps his best-known book, The Horizon Line. In 1992, he wrote and directed, together with Stavros Tsiolis, the film Please, Women, Don't Cry, which won the Screenplay and Direction Awards at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, as well as the Best Film Award from the Film Critics Association. On January 29, 1993, at the age of 37, he died of lung cancer and was buried at the Zografou Cemetery. In the same year, his friend Kostis Papagiorgis wrote the book Hello, Asimakis in his memory, while in 2005, under the editorship of Kostis Livieratos, the collection of articles and essays by Christos Vakalopoulos entitled The Dreamy Texture of Reality was published by Estia Publications. As part of the 46th Thessaloniki Film Festival, a special screening of the film Olga Robards was held in his honor.