AVATON, a film by Twin Automat
“AVATON” by Twin Automat (Sandrine Cheyrol, Irini Karayannopoulou) is a film about Mount Athos and the prohibition of any female presence there. After the premiere of the film at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and after screenings at international events such as the Moldocs Festival, “AVATON” comes to Athens. KET is hosting the first Athenian screening of the film – and the fact that it was set for March 8 is not entirely coincidental. A discussion with Irini Karayannopoulou will follow the screening.
The autonomous monastic community of Northern Greece is the largest area on earth where access is reserved to men alone. A place of meditation and worship, a place of history and spirituality where all women are excluded except for Virgin Mary. The two female directors of Avaton invent their own, unorthodox ways to reconstruct Mount Athos. This experimental, creative documentary negotiates the inclusion of women in the transcendent via a linear narration and a fusion of hand drawn animations. Avaton is a word that describes the forbidden, the out of reach. This film negotiates the strict ban of every female presence in the peninsula of Mount Athos. The narration of the film is based on interviews with women only, and in addition, every single person who has contributed in the making of Avaton is female. This multi-dimensional project ignites a previously unthinkable discussion. Why are women banned from Mount Athos?
Twin Automat is a female duo working with moving image. Artist Irini Karayannopoulou and editor Sandrine Cheyrol have been collaborating since 2006, creating art films, hand-drawn animations and video/audio installations. Twin Automat’s approach is rooted in concerns over structure, form and meaning, exploring tensions and possibilities between sound, image and text.
Editor Sandrine Cheyrol was born in Paris. She graduated from the University of Sorbonne and holds a master’s degree in cinema, with a master’s thesis in ethnographic documentaries. She went on to study film and television at New York University and UCLA. She has participated in numerous productions in the United States, Greece and France. In Athens, she worked with Dimitris Papaioannou’s creative team for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games, and collaborated with Athena Rachel Tsagari, editing the film “Attenberg”. Returning to Paris, she edited Severine Lathuilliere’s documentaries “Out of Eden”, “Le Conflit intérieur”, “La Trace”. She participated in the ARTE cultural show Tracks. She worked for the Tiger Lillies’ video clips. Recently, she worked on the editing of the films “Cambodia Pulse”, “Et maintenant?” and a documentary series for Naia Productions. Sandrine Cheyrol lives and works between Athens and Paris.
Born in Thessaloniki, Irini Karayannopoulou studied at the Saint-Étienne School of Fine Arts and Design and continued her artistic research at the Karlsruhe School of Fine Arts. Her work (moving image, painting, collage, publications) has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Her books are published by Kyvos art publications and Lendroit éditions. She recently presented the solo exhibitions JANUS II (Blackbird Rook, London), Life on Venus (Polana Institute, Warsaw), Hotberg (Angeliki Antonopoulou, Athens), Elixsir, Una boccata d’arte (Galeria Continua, Fondazione Elpis, Polcenigo, Italy), Mode International (Rare Books Paris). She, Classicita (Warsaw University Museum), Sheltered Gardens (PCAI, Diomedes Botanical Garden, Athens), Paint, also known as blood (Warsaw Museum of Contemporary Art), Overview Effect. O. – b.c. = after Olympics – before crisis) at State of Concept, Playing Ground, in the hall of Automatic Transmission (Athens), The Right To Breathe (Undercurrent, New York), etc. Besides being the editor of Janus Femzine, she is a founding member of the collective Extra-Conjugale. She lives in Athens.
* The film is screened in Greek with English subtitles.