Heavy metal i glas Marie Callas progone stanovnike:
punk-mjuzikl u kojem se queer buntovnici pretvaraju u serijske ubojice.
stream
therebellionofredmaria.blogspot.com/
In a city - with heavy metal music haunting the heroes and the voice of Maria Callas being heard, an aged man, ex-terrorist, who dresses like a woman, the “red Maria”, lives without any law and is hiding in the social shadows as a prostitute and performer, dancing in the streets, old and out-dated dances, for the passersby who give him money. In the street he meets a young boy, who lives there as a street urchin, at deaths door after a neo-fascists attack. The boy, alcohol addicted, hears the voice of Maria Callas, speaks with the dead diva, with the mother he misses. In overdose he dreams of the perfect world. “Red Maria” saves the boy and teaches him the “job”. In order to survive they invade cafes, giving performances that talk for a new, political God, for the political mistake of God, for the end of the ideology. Their world is magical, poetical. And wild. “Red Maria” teaches the boy how to survive. Together they become the magician of the tribe, the holy fool, the rebel. They live a magical personal revolution. But a number of murders will change “Red Maria” and the boy from ideologists, into serial killers.
Just in time for the upcoming convergence of catastrophes and eventual capitulation of Europa – especially the severely stagnating and decaying Mediterranean, otherwise known as old Europe – decidedly decadent and deliriously debauched Greek auteur Costas Zapas (Uncut Family, The Last Porn Movie) – one of the last truly uncompromising auteur filmmakers in the world – released his politically-charged and quasi-pornographic work I antarsia tis kokkinis Marias (2010) aka The Rebellion of Red Maria in apocalyptic anti-tribute to the death of revolutionary leftism in the Occident. Putridly ‘punk rock’ and passively pornographic in persuasion, The Rebellion of Red Maria was released only two years following the economic crisis in Greece and clearly wallows in such an uncertain world on the verge of absolute chaos as the height of ‘freedom’ and personal liberty, where one can rape and murder without consequence. Centering around a strikingly degenerate fellow who calls himself “Red Maria” – a middle-aged ex-commie terrorist turned tranny prostitute – who takes on a young protégé he finds beaten to a pulp in the street and revives by molesting his genitals and subsequently trains to become a nihilistic serial killer, The Rebellion of Red Maria is the disillusioned expression of a filmmaker who has lost faith in leftwing politics and the revolution itself and has thus developed a more extreme and erratic Weltanschauung where personal gratification, at any cost, is the foremost ideology. Indeed, a withered and uniquely ugly ‘queen’ of the seedy semen-drenched streets, Red Maria looks like he became the cracker plaything of a gang of Negroes in prison as a result of his terrorist activities, thus he has accepted his newfound ‘femininity’ after losing the revolution and his anal virginity, and he is a literal whore of capitalism who peddles his man-cunt for mere shekels. It is only when he finds a young man, the victim of so-called ‘neo-fascist’ brutality, that he finds his calling for a carnal campaign of cock-sucking and coldblooded killing and decides to get back in tune with his loony leftist roots, albeit with a more patently pessimistic and pernicious game plan. Featuring random references to Greek diva opera singer Maria Callas – a ‘spiritual mother’ of sorts for Red Maria – and with a discordant death metal soundtrack,The Rebellion of Red Maria, aside from being a work of abberosexual ‘anti-pornography,’ is also an ‘anti-musical’ of sorts that incriminatingly celebrates moral, cultural, aesthetic, spiritual, and political degeneracy in a manner like never before, as if seemingly deranged director Costas Zapas had been released from an LGBT neo-Trotskyite mental institution before directing the film, thus also making it one of the most truly genuine leftwing revolutionary, and consequently philosophically and artistically despicable, works ever made.
“The Revolution died…It always died,” or so says Marxist terrorist turned (foul)flesh-peddling tranny Red Maria – a merry maniac of a mensch who long ago lost faith in everything, especially ‘revolutionary change,’ aside from sucking cock and boning twinks. One fine cloudy day, Red Maria finds an unconscious young man who is wearing nothing but baggy shorts, which allow his pecker to hangout freely. Being a good Samaritan, Red Maria revives the gentleman by molesting him via humble handjob, which ultimately awakes the jaded gentleboy from his slumber, thus ushering in the ill-begotten romantic relationship in what is very possibly the most completely and utterly repulsive gay odd couple to ungracefully grace the silverscreen. As Red Maria learns and will never forget, his new butt ugly boy toy was beaten to a bloody pulp by a street gang of nefarious neo-fascists who do not take kindly to wiggers whose wieners pop out of their shorts randomly. A virtual modern primitive of a post-industrial wasteland, Maria’s homo homeboy grunts like a hip hop toddler with Down syndrome, thus it is up to the sardonic shemale to ‘make a man’ out of his perturbed protégé. The first thing Maria asks if he can sucks the lad’s cock, which inspires the young man to finger his buttocks and masturbate. Not one to do things halfway, or to literally or figuratively masturbate with his life, Red Maria teaches his sodomite student how to get buggered in the brown eye, the gospel of apocalyptic post-Marxist revolutionary politics 101, and how to slowly and brutally butcher and murder neo-fascists in the comfort of one's own bathroom. Ironically, Red Maria is a rare Greek man whose ancestors may have not been raped by Turks as s/he has blond hair and blue eyes yet the neo-fascist street warriors are superlatively swarthy as if they just landed on Greece on a raft from Iran. With no chance of a real Marxist revolution happening and with leftwingers now having ‘rightwing souls,’ Red Maria redefines ‘permanent revolution’ via hedonistic homicide and haphazard homo sex. Red Maria also manages to transform his poof protégé from being a mere savage sod who compulsively strokes his meat on the commode into a political radical in red pleather who rather enjoys being reamed in the rectum by an old Bolshevik of buggery. If there ever was a celluloid romance that was radically rancid and repellant to both the eyes and ears, as well as the soul,The Rebellion of Red Maria makes for an inordinately odious and rotten romance gone retarded with a hysterical heart and soul that only a half Negro/half Hebrew hermaphrodite from Athens could appreciate.
Indubitably, if I learned anything by watching The Rebellion of Red Maria, it is that not all love is beautiful and that leftwing politics are quite effective in emasculating men. Undoubtedly, if German New Cinema dandy auteur Werner Schroeter was a punk rock pornographer who trashed the voice of Maria Callas for mundane metal and intricate tableaux for minimalistic ‘realism’ of the radically raunchy sort, it might resemble The Rebellion of Red Maria – a trying tragicomedy that is about as aesthetically appealing as a brown baby in a blender. With the incessant repeating of the same offscreen poetry lines, quite like Argila (1969) and Eika Katappa (1969), as will as its anti-authoritarian sociopolitical subtext, The Rebellion of Red Mariais indubitably a work inspired by the films of Werner Schroeter, so it is quite interesting to note that Mediterranean auteur Costas Zapas ripped off a kraut auteur who ripped off Mediterranean filmmakers, sort of like George Lucas borrowed the cinematic conventions for his Star War films from a Jap named Akira Kurosawa who borrowed his samurai film from John “Western” Ford. Of course, where Schroeter only saw death and dystopia in his sad cinematic swansong This Night (2008) aka Nuit de chien, zany Zapas only sees lurid love and carnal celebration in The Rebellion of Red Maria – a fiercely farcical depiction of a forsaken future without a historical future where man, be he a tormented tranny or sadistic skinhead, sees his fellow man as meat to be fucked and killed and where biological women have no place. Undoubtedly, in director Costas Zapas' mind, the world is a prison planet ruled by a pernicious plutocracy, thus The Rebellion of Red Maria makes for a wanton whimper in the face of globalization, technocratic terror, international bankers, and homogenization by way of Americanization and Hollywoodization, albeit a vaguely witty one. While I can respect some of Zapas' aesthetic antagonism and blatant anti-Hollywoodism, I found The Rebellion of Red Maria about as philosophically and aesthetically inspiring as the latest Robert Rodriguez film, but at least the Greek auteur realizes the revolution, as well as the cheap Che Guevara 'romance' that oftentimes inspires would-be-revolutionaries to waste their lives for the good of the cause, is about as realistic as a black ruled planet, which is certainly something one cannot say of any other leftist filmmaker. -Soiled Sinema
'The Rebellion of Red Maria': A Punk Musical, in which Queer Rebels Turn into Serial Killers
In a city, with heavy metal music haunting the heroes and the voice of Maria Callas being heard, an aged man, ex-terrorist, who dresses like a woman, the “red Maria”, lives without any law and is hiding in the social shadows as a prostitute and performer. He is dancing in the streets, old and out-dated dances, for the passersby who give him money. In the street he meets a young boy, a street urchin at deaths door after a neo-fascists attack. The boy, alcohol addicted, hears the voice of Maria Callas, speaks with the dead diva, with the mother he misses. In overdose he dreams of the perfect world.
“Red Maria” saves the boy and teaches him the “job”. In order to survive they invade cafes, giving performances that talk for a new, political God, for the political mistake of God, for the end of the ideology. Their world is magical, poetical. And wild. “Red Maria” teaches the boy how to survive. Together they become the magician of the tribe, the holy fool, the rebel. They live a magical personal revolution. But a number of murders will change “Red Maria” and the boy from ideologists into serial killers.
The Rebellion of Red Maria is Costas Zapas’ fourth feature film. Previously he made ‘the family trilogy’, which consisted ofUncut Family (2004), The Last Porn Movie (2006) and Minor Freedoms (2008). The latter was financed and co-produced by Zentropa productions, Lars von Trier’s and Peter Aalbæk Jensen’s production company. The films attracted international interest. The Guardian has characterized him ‘as one of the main protagonists of the burgeoning Greek New Wave and Cineuropa ‘as one of the most outstanding directors of the auteur cinema’.
PopMatters: The last years there is a sense of a new Wave in the Greek Cinema, for example your previous family trilogy, the films of Eva Stefani, last year we had Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, which was very popular. Do you think that the financial crisis (which in Greece takes place for the last three years and is not something that occurred in April as many tend to think) was beneficial for the rejuvenation of Greek Cinema? What I mean is, do you feel that this new cinema reflects a self-criticism on the part of the Greek society?
Costas Zapa: In my opinion the film festivals globally want to justify themselves as Art festivals, because they are funded by the taxpayers. There are fashions that come and go. Now Greek Cinema is a fashion within the festivals, a few years ago it was Danish Cinema that was fashionable, then it was Argentinean and Romanian. My cinema, according to the critics, cannot be classified as national cinema.
Now as far as the second part is concerned, we the Greeks are still unable to engage into self-criticism. It’s going to take quite a few years. When it comes to film production, there are only a few filmmakers in this country that have something to say, but they are very isolated and they certainly do not have a good time.
PM: I know what you mean about the festivals creating fashions. Yet despite that, the festivals have helped to promote some good European filmmakers.
CZ: In my opinion the last auteur, in what I define as art cinema, is Lars von Trier. And this is the reason why the popular press condemns his films. We see that filmmakers such as Darren Aronofsky and Iñárritu started making radical movies and then they succumbed to the trend, making works that follow the Hollywood aesthetics.
PM: Could you briefly discuss your new film, The Rebellion of Red Maria? How would you describe it to a non-expert?
CZ: The Rebellion of Red Maria is an anarchist film. It is a story of love and anarchy.
The film is about an ex-terrorist, a man who dresses as a woman and meets with a boy that has been beaten by a group of neo-Nazis. He teaches the boy the ‘job’, which is entering bars and cafes to perform their happenings to make money either thanks to the peoples’ generosity or by stealing. In their happenings they talk about a ‘new political God’, the end of ideology, and the political mistakes of God. They live a magic revolution. It is a film about the limits of freedom, because freedom is the most important thing in life, but to the point that it does not violate the others’ right to freedom. Briefly Red Maria refers to the passage from the ideological person to the ‘superman of the instincts’.
PM: Yet despite being rebels and free they are slaves of money, too. Is there a contradiction in the sense that Red Maria and the Boy are rebels, but their revolution reproduces the exchange-value ethos?
CZ: Well that is exactly what happened in all the revolutions that took place in this world so far. We saw that Communist Ideology turned out to be a Stalinist monstrosity. The same happened in Cuba. Che, who was a visionary rebel, did not stay in the country, and the person who replaced him was an authoritarian figure.
PM: So Red Maria and the Boy start with the best intentions and end up becoming serial killers.
CZ: Red Maria says at one point ‘The Revolution is dead and it has been dead for ever’. Aeschylus says something similar in Prometheus, when the main character asserts that everything is pre-determined, nobody is free -and please do not take that as ‘fatalism’, but as a political thesis.
I am very suspicious of individuals with the best intentions. Take as an example our every-day life. You see that people go on strike and when they get 20 euros pay rise they are the first to oppose other peoples’ right to go on industrial action. The problem for me lies in the fact that even nowadays the human instincts prevail over our efforts to build a civilized society.
PM: Are Red Maria and the Boy slaves to their instincts?
CZ: Red Maria is a former ideologist who saw his dreams turning into monstrosity. This made him a terrorist, and in the end the uncertainty that pervades our globalised environment turns him into a serial killer. The Boy, on the other hand, is not politically conscious and is ready to accept and follow anything. And this can be seen in light of the de-politicization that characterizes young people nowadays.
PM: Another important thing is your treatment of gender issues in the film. Red Maria is queer, but we do not have the stereotypical queer portrayal according to which the character is passive and the victim of society. On the contrary he/she is very dynamic.
CZ: As far as I am concerned there are no homosexuals or heterosexuals, there are people that know how to transgress boundaries and enjoy life and their bodies and others that are stiff and unimaginative irrespective of gender. And Red Maria as a character is a very revolutionary cinematic figure in the sense that he/she transcends all the gender clichés and conventions propagated by the film industry.
PM: Of particular interest in the film is the employment of music. You have a combination of heavy metal with Maria Callas and other contemporary material.
CZ: The music is not just embellishing the film. It does not simply reflect feelings but participates in the diegesis, like an actor. When you watch the film it is like reading a musical notation. We did a screen test and some people characterized the film as a political musical. Music reflects the characters’ environment and it is also the flow of the story, so you cannot dissociate it from the film’s form and content.
PM: So it sounds like a political musical, as you said. Talking about the political in cinema. There is a tendency in Film Theory, which considers that the political implications of a film have to do more with its form rather than the content. Emblematic is Jean-Luc Godard’s dictum ‘I do not make political films—I make films politically’. Where would you classify yourself?
CZ: I do not believe in form. I believe in meanings, because that is what makes a film alive. The definition of political cinema is very problematic, because everything has to start from the beginning.
We live in a universal state of decadence and this does not solely concern Greece or just the global economy, but global politics, human communication and culture, too. We need to redefine the term political cinema and mainly because people nowadays do not care about politics. This isRed Maria’s experiment, because the film is about young people and intends to stimulate thinking about a whole range of issues that are political.
PM: You told me that recently you had a screening test with young people of various backgrounds that had no relation with Art Cinema whatsoever, but their responses were very positive.
CZ: One young girl asked me whether I am planning to make a sequel of the film, because she wanted to know what will happen to the characters. It was really funny! Of course such a film cannot have a second part. But still, I think that the film works better with an audience that does not have a background in art cinema. It is a free film in form and content and it is about young peoples’ fears and desires. Music helps a lot as well, we use loads of heavy metal and other contemporary stuff, too.
PM: To go back to politics, Bertolt Brecht is considered to be the father of political art and his thought has influenced political cinema, too. There is a theoretical tendency which is named post-Brechtian. According to this tendency, Brecht’s art of exhibiting the contradictions is still valid but his suggestions for resolutions of these contradictions are not. In other words, the artist is not in the ‘know’ position, but he gives his audience material for thought asking for a more productive participation.
CZ: Of course my films are not didactic. How can you offer a solution when things are subject to constant change? The end of the film is open-ended and one cannot tell whether it is a happy end or a tragic one. I come from a country like Greece that we have suffered a lot from people that want to ‘teach a lesson’. Offering a single-minded solution is something like political fascism. Yet on the other hand, we need to offer food for thought to the audience. That’s how I see Red Maria’s statement—that the revolution is dead.
PM: When is Red Maria’s official screening?
CZ: We are in discussions with many International Film Festivals in Europe and North America that have expressed interest in screening it.
PM: For your previous trilogy you had a distribution contract with Zentropa, Lars von Trier’s and Peter Aalbæk Jensen’s company. In a way we could see that your films go beyond the Greek national borders and refer to an International audience.
CZ: I have never made money in Greece. My films have been recognized abroad but never in my own country. I am glad that all my works are produced independently and I did not have to make any compromises to get government funding. On the other hand, my film The Last Porn Movie (2006) is incorporated in the curriculum of the Cinema Department at the University of Montreal.
PM: Could we call Red Maria a punk musical?
CZ: Yes to an extent yes. I am very interested in punk and the great thing about it is that it started from the margins of society from the poor parts of London. Its power lied in its authenticity; that is, it reflected something true and raw that had to be expressed publicly. The same applies with everyone involved in arts. What matters is if your films or your music has something to say about this world and not whether you have graduated from a Film or Music department of a prestigious University.
Pagina/12 Friday 28.10.2011
From Greece, with madness
From Diego Trerotola
Without any doubt, one of the key figures of the recent economic crisis was the chronicle of the preannouncement of the bankruptcy of Greece, because of a government policy that counterfeits the debt items, the need for external borrowing that could not be repaid, and other desperate situations, which triggered a series of social conflicts for al least some justice from a hypocritical state that for years was fed on by bad practices.
It is common knowledge that people in times of deep crisis, rediscover and redefine themselves. This is precisely the case of Costas Zapas, an Athenian who started the new millennium as a writer, publishing his first novel in 2001, and continued his career as a filmmaker, managing not only to travel his films at major film festivals, but also engaging in the production of the third film of his "Trilogy of family" in 2008, the production company of Lars von Trier.
Following the logic of the redefinition, the fourth film of Zapas, filmed two years after the crisis in Greece, becomes a kind of punk protest - in an expansive microcosm -for the country's political situation.
"The rebellion of the Red Maria" is the most explosive vein of the brilliant new wave of Greek cinema, a vein that breaks in order to recover some of the destabilizing political force that had the Queer movement, which was born during the AIDS crisis in the United States during the Reagan period.
All the love and the fury of the filmmakers who had arise to film the B-side of the non-dominant sexuality in the early '90s, it seems, in a paradoxical way, to revive in “The rebellion of Red Maria", as the film has all the characteristics of an improvisational delirium, like a recording of an unconventional progression of the physical ecstasy of the two central heroes.
The “Red Maria” of the title, a travesty in the manner of Copi [ the Argentinian cartoonist] with pearls and wide-brimmed hat, which stirs up the Boy, an anonymous pariah, lumpen and exhibitionist, one of these unsociable types who permanently spit and play with their genitals making a phallocentric gesture with the theatricality of the street. This duo- the only protagonists -a kind of a criminal duo performing some abnormal eroticism rituals, like a serialized revenge against any oppressive ideology, something very close to the post-porn of the last Bruce LaBruce with zombies, and even splatter, cinema.
For example, the duo load stabs to a paramilitary guy who has a swastika tattooed on his ankle and who has hit the Boy, and on the other hand the duo robs the customers of a typical gay bar, voyeurs, emotionless witnesses of the strange performance, observing with a loathsome distance to emphasize their non-participation.
In a bankrupt Greece, the film is a journey to places uninhabited and less picturesque of today's Athens: a huge container port, filthy subways, anonymous hooters, supposedly modern underground bars lined with papier masche.
All that is pierced by the violence of despair of the protagonists, who are looking for their daily survival, who are displaced by the economy, by that of the official LGBT institutions but also by any art of refuge of any form of civilization in the neoliberal system of the Eurozone.There is a lot of the primordial incessant cry, underlined by the nerve of a portable camera that does not look for the centre for its fuzzy frames.There is a poster of Lenin on the wall of small apartment of Red Maria, where suddenly the flag of the Russian leader is identified with the colour of spilled blood.
The film has scenes of uncontrolled, brute sex, in the manner of amateur pornography, where, although the film seems to capture the agony of a wandering primitivism aimlessly, it also highlights the desperate cry to belong to that tradition of radical queer cinema, which should include the orgiastic symposium of Jack Smith, the brute eroticism of Russ Meyer, the comic and racial eschatology of the early John Waters, the unconventional performances of Andy Warhol’s superstars, the adventurous fringe of Gregg Araki, especially in his work The Living End (1991), which shares the subversive spirit, politically disturbed by the mistreatment of violence and sex.
"The Rebellion of the Red Maria" maybe does not share all the variations of this list of anarchist queer cinema, but as a drop of a New Wave, it has the power to result in a tsunami.
THE REBELLION OF RED MARIA
by Alexis Dermentzoglou, film critic
At least awake!
This current first presentation of “The rebellion of Red Maria” asserts to formulate certain initial thoughts, before the film is released officially and his distribution is announced.
At the mature age of 41 years, film director Costas Zapas has already received admiring reviews from abroad for his previous films "Uncut family", "The last porn movie", and "Minor freedoms". He has been considered by foreign film critics as the “Greek exception”. And I have mentioned him several times in the course of a route change of the New Greek cinema. I now positively believe that Costas Zapas, together with George Lanthimos and Athena Tsangaris, is claiming a leader position for many changes in our cinematic landscape.
I've already mentioned the tough themes of his films, the treatment of the family as a disease factor, his different concept on the direction of the actors and on what is Greek.National cinema seeks to be linked with the memoirs of world cinema, but also to operate autonomous of the neuroses and distortions inside the international filmic universe.
If we already had mentioned Denmark for Lars von Trier and Dogma, now in Greece there is another trend, a tide, a wave. Zapas demonstrates that he aspires to be an "absolute author director". Script and direction comes from him, while many high structural values in "The rebellion of Read Maria" are carrying his signature. I have to notice the excellent "fallen", depressed and very efficient photography. The integrated in the film’s world set decorations. And the choices of locations are definitely very pointed.
The meanings of camera
"The rebellion of Red Maria” is clearly a political film through its social concerns. The ideology, integrated in existential anxiety, considers its emptiness as a function of modern despair and loss. "The revolution died, it was always dying”, monologues constantly Red Maria and by that she gives to the film pattern a code for better understanding and participation. Furthermore, “The rebellion of Red Maria" is an anarchist movie but also full of anger for all the things that oppress and enslaves us. I want to notice the special importance of musical insertions and selections, but also the peculiar movements of the camera, that give a special significance. These filmic- throws (by the camera) offer a different technique for viewing films. Costas Zapas continues his attempt from where he left it in his previous film, provoking, but not for demagogic reasons. He continues to explore the means of cinema, gazing the past, the present and the future of both socio-ideological movements and cinema memoirs. Pasolini and Fassbinder are the most recognizable influences I see, with the filming distinctively escaping from the realistic and take off to the signified.
The two heroes
While the film is perfectly understandable in its plot and progress, with all the techniques of its procedure it is creating references, reports and critical attitudes. The way the actors express themselves and act creates a new perception about reality and the cinema itself. Through the two characters (the old man and the boy) an intense dynamic is developing, that avoids rhetoric and ends in conception.
With a parabolic look I agree that this is exactly how the modern society is, as it is presented in "The rebellion of Red Maria”. There are no typical realistic references, but the intelligent viewers immediately feel, understand and perceive.
With a parabolic look I agree that this is exactly how the modern society is, as it is presented in "The rebellion of Red Maria”. There are no typical realistic references, but the intelligent viewers immediately feel, understand and perceive.
Radical filmmaker
The characteristics of this society are its violence and fear in front of the “other” that is recognized as dangerous. As for the general, surrounding political climate, there is expressed a clear fluidity, a confusion, the vagueness and "darkness" that is representing it. If politics is dead, then what happened with the ideology? It is in a coma, in a permanent trance.
So, I think “The rebellion of Red Maria" is one more attempt of Costas Zapas to awaken us with his cinematic weapons. I acknowledge him continuity and consistency, which for me are the highest virtues for a film author director, for an intellectual. What precisely is the modern ethic (especially) as the financial crisis that overflows the country? Just the last symptom of an internal sepsis and decay that to face we have not been awakened in time. Costas Zapas beyond his aesthetic innovations, is a radical filmmaker, and continues unflinchingly.
THE REBELLION OF RED MARIA, by Alexis Dermentzoglou
(published in : Makedonia, 24/10/2010)
The story of a beautiful teenager girl whose life is turned around when her ex-porn star dad is made (by his producers) to cast her as the lead in his latest x-rated film. A devastating testimony of the rise and fall of Greek family values, an existentialist journey where habit and cruelty are only separated by life and death.
see also: http://thelastpornmovie.wordpress.com/
« Family, I hate you! » André Gide
"..a shabby atmosphere reigns within this vampiric family, who devours and rejects everything, even their own children. Everything is cold in this perfect measured story; in this script constructed with a precision of a watch mechanism. The Last Porn Movie asks the question of the relation between family and pornography, between pornography and vulgarity, and criminality, and finally, tragedy." (M. Levieux)
"37-year old Zapas, who British newspaper The Guardian called the "star of the contemporary Greek film scene", directs another modern tragedy, daring to break through taboos and look beyond traditional values, with a hard- edged camera that does not aim to please." (Athens International Film Festival)
see also: http://thelastpornmovie.wordpress.com/
« Family, I hate you! » André Gide
"..a shabby atmosphere reigns within this vampiric family, who devours and rejects everything, even their own children. Everything is cold in this perfect measured story; in this script constructed with a precision of a watch mechanism. The Last Porn Movie asks the question of the relation between family and pornography, between pornography and vulgarity, and criminality, and finally, tragedy." (M. Levieux)
"37-year old Zapas, who British newspaper The Guardian called the "star of the contemporary Greek film scene", directs another modern tragedy, daring to break through taboos and look beyond traditional values, with a hard- edged camera that does not aim to please." (Athens International Film Festival)
“… an unconventional film-essay on the implementation of power.” Athinorama 
“The last porn movie” stands kilometers away from anything we have so far been accustomed to see in Greek cinema, and this in itself is a remarkable achievement… it pushes the limits of conventional cinema towards unexplored territory.” Cine Art magazine 
“..a shabby atmosphere reigns within this vampiric family, who devours and rejects everything, even their own children. Everything is cold in this perfect measured story; in this script constructed with a precision of a watch mechanism. The Last Porn Movie asks the question of the relation between family and pornography, between pornography and vulgarity, and criminality, and finally, tragedy.”
MICHELE LEVIEUX, french film critic in Paris daily l’Humanité and FIPRESCImember
The void of existence is reflected through the fearful gazes of the heroes and the horror in the coexistence of the five central characters.
Kathimerini
C. Zapas continues on his solitary course for a raw, ‘unrefined’ cinema. Athens Voice 
The illiberality of the human being in a castrating and suffocating environment, where the rain never stops falling, is presented in the movie of Costas Zapas “The last porn movie” which is characterized by a peculiar hardness and disarming realism. Violence, taboo issues, symbolism, paranoia, family consummation with mephistophelic references are presented when the lead young female hero of the movie is being forced by her own father to play the role of his partner in the last porn movie he is going to shoot. National Broadcasting Television– ΝΕΤ 
“The most unconventional Greek movie of the year comes direct from the Montreal World Film Festival with provocative intentions. Costas Zapas, director of “Uncut Family” and “one of the protagonists of the contemporary Greek film scene” according to British newspaper The Guardian, is proposing us his new feature The Last Porn Movie overthrowing established norms and ethics. A direct cinematography, almost painful…a modern dark drama, a dive in to the existential agony and the break down of the family – but not only – values, that is supported by an equal explosive cast.” CINEMA magazine 
“37-year old Zapas, who British newspaper The Guardian called the “star of the contemporary Greek film scene”, directs another modern tragedy, daring to break through taboos and look beyond traditional values, with a hard- edged camera that does not aim to please. A devastating testimony of the rise and fall of Greek family values, an existentialist journey where habit and cruelty are only separated by life and death.” Athens International Film Festival
Costas Zapas was born 1969 in Athens, Greece.
Guardian named him as one of the main protagonists of the burgeoning Greek new cinema wave. “The last porn movie” (2006) is his second feature and had its world premiere at the 30th Montreal World Film Festival (Focus on World Cinema-section) and it is also selected to participate the Panorama section of 12th Athens International Film Festival , the “festival of festivals” section of the 36th Kiev International Film Festival , the 47th Thessaloniki International Film Festival and the 4th Chennai International Film Festival.
“Uncut Family” (2004), his first feature film, participated officially the 45th International Thessaloniki Film Festival in a creditable special out-of-competition screening section together with the last Theo Angelopoulos Film “The weeping meadow” and received critics: “a modern tragedy, with an in-depth look at the modern family and its taboo issues” Kathimerini, “examines the sexual constraints associated with family ties”, Herald Tribune.
His novel “Blue Heart” was published 2001 in Athens by “Kedros Publ.” is now under development for a feature film from Minus Pictures. 2001 he attended the “Arista Story Editing Workshop” due to a grand of the Media II Program.
Guardian named him as one of the main protagonists of the burgeoning Greek new cinema wave. “The last porn movie” (2006) is his second feature and had its world premiere at the 30th Montreal World Film Festival (Focus on World Cinema-section) and it is also selected to participate the Panorama section of 12th Athens International Film Festival , the “festival of festivals” section of the 36th Kiev International Film Festival , the 47th Thessaloniki International Film Festival and the 4th Chennai International Film Festival.
“Uncut Family” (2004), his first feature film, participated officially the 45th International Thessaloniki Film Festival in a creditable special out-of-competition screening section together with the last Theo Angelopoulos Film “The weeping meadow” and received critics: “a modern tragedy, with an in-depth look at the modern family and its taboo issues” Kathimerini, “examines the sexual constraints associated with family ties”, Herald Tribune.
His novel “Blue Heart” was published 2001 in Athens by “Kedros Publ.” is now under development for a feature film from Minus Pictures. 2001 he attended the “Arista Story Editing Workshop” due to a grand of the Media II Program.
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