Christina Kallas

Christina Kallas is a Greek-American film director, screenwriter, and producer whose films include 42 Seconds of Happiness, The Rainbow Experiment, and Paris is in Harlem.^[1]

Kallas was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. She received a B.A., M.A, and PhD in Communication and Media Studies from Free University of Berlin.^[2] She began her career in Germany, as a co-producer on the feature films White King, Red Queen (1993), directed by Sergei Bodrov and ID (1995), directed by Phil Davis; and as a producer on Love Lies (1997) and The Commissioner (1998). She co-wrote the latter film, which was directed by George Sluizer and starred John Hurt. This led to further work as a screenwriter. Kallas wrote on several series for German television, including Edel & Starck (2001-2003) and Danni Lowinski (2010-2013). She produced the feature film Mothers (2010), written and directed by Milcho Manchevski.^[1]

During this time, Kallas spent eight years as president of the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe (FSE).^[3] In 2007, under her aegis, the FSE released the European Screenwriters Manifesto, which asserted that “The screenwriter is an author of the film, a primary creator of the audiovisual work; the indiscriminate use of the possessory credit is unacceptable; and the moral rights of the screenwriter, especially the right to maintain the integrity of a work and to protect it from any distortion or misuse, should be inalienable and should be fully honored in practice.” As Kallas told the Los Angeles Times, “What we tried to do by naming it the ‘manifesto’ is to challenge the international film community and to start a discussion about what has gone wrong and how we could set it right.”^[4]

Relocating to New York City, Kallas began teaching at a number of universities and colleges, including Barnard College, Columbia University, The New School,^[2] and Brooklyn College.^[5] During this time, she also wrote two books: Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure, published by Red Globe Press in 2010;^[6] and Inside The Writers' Room: Conversations with American TV Writers, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013,.^[2]

Kallas made her directorial debut with the feature film 42 Seconds of Happiness (2016). Writing in Eye For Film, critic Jennie Kermode called it “a film possessed of a rare emotional intelligence. It doesn't wrap everything up neatly but finds hope in the acceptance of loose ends. It's a brave piece of work, skilfully crafted and brimming over with talent, a fantastic calling card for all involved.”^[7]

Her next feature was The Rainbow Experiment (2018), about the chain of events after a teenager dies in a high school chemistry experiment gone awry. The film premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival.^[8] Wrote Bill Arcineau in Film Threat, “The number of storylines conveyed and then ultimately converge is quite impressive to witness, with a weight that would crush any unprepared filmmaker. Director Christina Kallas is completely capable of guiding with a strong editorial hand, the improv-heavy cast to its emotionally resonant and truly tense moments. Editing and transitions are also something to behold, splitting the screen and testing our collective attention spans to complicate perspective importance and even time itself … Kallas is someone to watch. She ought to be on everyone’s radar.”

In 2022, Kallas released Paris is in Harlem, set on the day in 2017 when the notorious New York City Cabaret Law was finally repealed. As Lisa Nystrom wrote in FilmInk, “Kallas weaves together a captivating narrative using a complex spiderweb of different viewpoints, the camera seamlessly switching focus as background characters become protagonists, stepping forward when the time comes for their story to be told … The film brings together a diverse cacophony of voices touched by racism, sexism, and oppression, finding a harmony through shared experience.”^[9]

All of Kallas' feature films to date have been developed through a specific method, not unlike the one used by UK director Mike Leigh. Kallas wrote in Filmmaker in 2017 that her approach “aims at merging the character with the actor … I workshop a screenplay as one would a play for the theater — only I walk the actors through the characters’ past, future and possible lives in weekly rehearsals. This allows me to shoot in fewer days and with smaller budgets, while at the same time delivering the emotional authenticity that people mention in relation to my films. In these 15 months I orchestrate the experience of each character in such a way that the tension rises constantly and continuously. When the characters are about to explode, I start shooting.”^[10]

Film

Television

• Christina Kallas at IMDb