when someone died they just asked:
was he passionate?"
wrote the poet Herberto Helder in one of the poems in A Faca não Corta o Fogo.
Michel Demopoulos had an enormous passion for cinema. As a young man, he worked as a critic for various publications, was editor-in-chief and director of the prestigious film magazine Synchronos Kinimatografos, made the medium-length documentary I alli Skini / The Other Stage during the shooting of the film by Theo Angelopoulos, with whom he was also friends, O Thiasos / The Journey of the Comedians (1974-75). In 1995, he curated the largest retrospective of Greek cinema ever held abroad, at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and published the book Le Cinéma grec.
From 1991 to 2005, he was the director of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. During this period, he edited several books on filmmakers such as Robert Bresson, Luis Buñuel, Wong Kar Wai, Jerzy Skolimowski, among others. He organised several retrospectives and film weeks in Italy, Spain, France, Holland, Poland, Mexico, etc.
He was part of the Board of the Media Programme "Europa Cinemas", was Executive Consultant for the fictions and co-productions of the Greek public television channel ERT, and a member of the European Parliament's Lux Prize Committee. He participated as a jury member in various film festivals around the world and worked as a producer for Steficon, based in Athens.
From 2014 to 2022 he was part of the LEFFEST selection committee. His contribution, whether writing texts, presenting films or taking part in talks, was always dedicated and passionate, combining a great knowledge of classic and modern cinema with an enormous enthusiasm for discovering new directors.
LEFFEST is organising a tribute to Michel Demopoulos, with the presence of his wife, the writer Ersi Sotiropoulos, who was part of the festival's jury in 2017, and several of his friends, and the screening of his I alli Skini / The Other Stage, and Angelopoulos' O Thiasos / The Journey of the Comedians.