Private Project

In Ithaca

  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Feature, Web / New Media, Other
  • Genres:
    Experimental, romantic comedy, adventure, scifi, docu- drama, mockumentary, psychological thriller
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 1, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Greece
  • Country of Filming:
    Greece
  • Language:
    English, Modern Greek (1453-)
  • Shooting Format:
    digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography

Hristina Noland Hrisohou aka Christina Vavelidou holds a Master's of Arts in theatre with a focus acting by the highly ranked acting school Rose Bruford College, London.
A daughter of Academics, she spent her first years in Heidelberg, Germany and later grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece.
As a young adult, she won the first prize in a play writing national competition held by the Hellenic Ministry of Civilization.
These last years, she has been experimenting with directing and screenwriting, filming and being involved in all the aspects of her own few indie, low budget short films. They were filmed in true guerrilla filmmaking fashion with various inexpensive cameras and her iPhone in repetition, with small to non existent crews. Periodically, she screened these experimental films to her friends and colleagues, while striving to develop her own artistic voice.
Furthermore, she has started pursuing more mainstream avenues, applying for funding with a what she calls her blockbuster to be screenplay Promethea. Moreover, she is looking for to fund her sarcastic, again quite improvised creation, destined for a mini series called Nadja, the Vampiress Romanian Queen and her friends in Athens. For that, she already paired with fellow actors to film a few scenes on the streets of Athens on her phone, for a base sample and experiment for the actual tv series to come.
She is a native in English & Hellenic, plus speaks French and German and has lived and worked on and off in London, L.A, Paris and Athens. She is also a qualified greek solicitor with an LLM in entertainment law.
Her main profession is that of an actor. She featured in widely acclaimed & award winning festival films - for example Costa Gavras Adults in the room in Venice Film Festival. She also was the lead in indie all genre feature and short films of avant- garde filmmakers and a few well received Hellenic Tv series, which can be found on major streaming platforms, like Amazon, in Europe and the USA. In theatre, she acted in and with the Actors' Gang in L.A, directed by academy award winner Tim Robbins. This winter she was one of the lead actors, portraying an Albanian sex worker in the historical theatre Broadway in Athens, in a sold out ensemble of a best seller greek book and received warm critics reviews.
Furthermore, she works as an actors' tutor holding private online sessions, teaching her own acting method called British Acting Technique to acting students and professional actors who wish to extend their knowledge and further their career in the entertainment industry.
While in London, she worked in casting international mainstream TV series. Then, as a casting director for indies and in the public relations department of the Thessaloniki Film Festival.
Since 2015, she has been the executive director of the non profit educational organization International Casting Directors in Athens and a filmmaker in affiliation with NolandFilm. ICDA guest lecturers as yet has been an eclectic group of casting directors - i.e Manuel Puro of Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy, talent managers, screenwriters and producers.

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Director Statement

At this point in my professional career in the entertainment industry, I have decided to make the transition behind the camera, as a film director, as I strongly believe that it is important to have more of the female perspective, as well as the female initiative at this profession worldwide. In my opinion, this is a good moment in history, for more storytelling by a female filmmaker and it is even more imperative for a story related to ancient hellenic - greek mythology, where modern civilization stems from to be presented and represented by a female storyteller. Furthermore, drawing from my experience as a female actor, I have some what grew more confident to take viewers on this specific cinematic journey of a female protagonist touching upon as a bases and referencing the hellenic myth of Ulysees. This is a post - modern take and re evaluation of the Ulysees myth and its philosophical explorations and various elements.
In ithaca, in my director’s view blends and crosses the lines among genres, such as a documentary alike and feel real romantic comedy, yet also a psychological thriller and a sci-fi film. Furthermore, In Ithaca draws inspiration from the classics, like Casablanca and the English Patient, but much more from contemporary films, which challenge the narrative forms, wishing to break their limits like Jean Luc Godard's Feminine / Masculine, Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Tarkofski's Nostalgia, Kislovski's Three Colors, Kwan's & Sneinert's Everything, Everywhere all at Once, Sorrentino's La grande Bellezza, Linklater's Before Sunset, Budreu's Stockholm to name a few.
This is a fim, that presented various technical difficulties in all stages, so  it has been edited and re- edited over time with the help of few loving individuals, but seems to always have room for improvement and further renegotiation of its form and end result.
At the same time, every time a person, a technician or a friend watched it so far, they interacted with it in a way that they brought their own view and experience to it, making me think it can reflect and touch people's heart and open up very different conversations on what it is about or what happens in it.
That in my opinion makes it a unique - feels like  can be a life long project. Nevertheless, I have decided this is the time for more people to glance at it and form their own opinion, so there can be a broader dialogue on it.
The fragile and eccentric actress and filmmaker Christina couples with the medicated filmmaker yuppie Odyseas and embark on a cross over journey to film an experimental film called in ithaca.  Odyseas mysterious disappearance interrupts the seemingly functioning affair. Soon enough, life imitates film and vice versa. Through the eyes of Christina, with a camera lense a single iphone, her thoughts and memories accompanying her journey in every single moment, the film visits all the stop stations and what unravels in her own Ithaca. 
The story telling vessel is an avatar of my real living self as a young woman fighting for self knowledge and psychological advancement. The making of the film and the film itself strives to be an improvised instinctive constant mystery unravelling. This is a film about life. This is a film about life as close as possible to my real life experience of events.
This is an experimental film, where the natural sunlight, natural elements and phenomena, raw moments recorded by the low budget tool of an iphone show a journey of great happiness intertwined with sheer loneliness felt throughout life by the protagonist, when moving forward, as in my real life experience. The unavoidable struggle with an ideal, unrequited love, mirrors the inevitable remorph that always takes place in life, in Ithaca. Time in the film mirrors the human real life experience and is presented in a way, where the internal and external world of the female lead character - the past, the present and the future -are all registering inside her in every single passing moment in her own Ithaca. Moments mix together, thoughts echoing in the constant voice over along with image flashbacks, conscious and unconscious, blend together.  The film within the film stretches to meet the experience of life itself, chaotic and mysterious as it always comes. The goal in the making of this film is a creation, a personal diary, an ode to love and the life journey itself, how it feels to be in Ithaca. It hopefully takes the viewer along as a companion to the creator's struggle - which in my view is common in all humans - to understand life in all its magnificence towards an unexpected form of catharsis. Still a metamorphosis and catharsis, which comes through experiencing love and life and living to tell about it, in -our - Ithaca.