Κώστας Βρεττάκος

Kostas Vrettakos (1938–2018), son of Nikiforos Vrettakos, was born in Athens, and studied film in Greece and Italy. Alongside his work in cinema, he was also a copy editor, a producer of promotional films, and occasionally a journalist. During the dictatorship, he worked as a translator of folk novels and as a photographer for encyclopedias. His early literary collaborations with the Epitheorisi Technis [Art Review] magazine were followed by two poetry collections, published in 1971 and 1977 titled Anarithma [Innumerable]. In parallel with his work in photography, he started writing scripts and directing his own films, of which the following stood out; the documentary Layer of Destruction (1980), and the sole feature-length film he made throughout his entire career, The Children of the Swallow (1987). At the same time, he also founded the publishing house Ta Tria Fylla. In 1989, he began getting involved in the policy management of Greek cinema, initially as the Ministry of Culture’s Special Film Consultant (1989), later on as the President of the Hellenic Film Academy, (1991–1998), and finally as the representative of Greece at Eurimages, in the Council of Europe (1991–2006). In 2009, he published the novel Perastikos apo to Reikiavik [A Passerby in Reykjavik] (Potamos Publishers), and in 2016 the work of fiction Askiseis periergeias [Exercises in Curiosity] (Potamos Publishers), which was honored with the Petros Charis Foundation Award by the Academy of Athens. In 2018, he published a poetry collection, comprised of his early poems and titled Prostithemeni axia [Added Value] (Polis Publishers). He passed away in Athens, on November 6, 2018, at the age of 80 years old.