Dimitris Gaziadis
Dimitrios Gaziadis (1897-1961), born in Athens, was one of the first directors/cinematographers in the history of Greek Cinema. He studied photography in Germany and worked as a teacher in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He has been an apprentice and assistant director to great filmmakers of the time (Dupont, Lubitsch, Pabst, Lang) and the first camera operator in films made by Ernst Lubitsch. In Germany, he shot documentaries, newsreels and film shorts starring famous actors, such as Eva Richter, Albert Paulig, and many more.
He founded “Dolik Film”, a film company, in Berlin where he worked as an army camera operator. During the First World War, Dimitrios Gaziadis, who initially served as a military officer, became Head of German Army’s Film Department. In 1919 the Greek government commissioned him to cover military operations in Asia Minor. He arrived in Asia Minor carrying film projectors and equipment for troop recreation. At first, he shot battlefield scenes. Among others, he filmed the Battle of Sakarya. A year later (1920), he completed his first film, The Greek Miracle (To Ellinikon Thavma), where he included scenes from the Campaign in Asia Minor and from the Battle of Sakarya.
Feeling nostalgic, he began researching, together with his brother Kostas, the state of Greek film production. They both realized that Greek cinema lacked in technical expertise. In collaboration with his third sibling, Michalis, a representative of the film companies Fox, Gaumont and Ufa in Athens, he set off bringing Hollywood studio system to Greece.
In 1923, they bought equipment and set up a movie studio based on a capital of approximately three million drachmas. The Dag Film Co. – Gaziadis Bros, they established, was the first film production company founded in Greece. At some point, Dag Film Co. turned into an Anonymous Company (SA) focusing on feature film production. In 1927, they shot Love and Waves (Eros ke Kymata – January 1928). This comedy, which offered spatial readings of Athenian landscape, made an impression on Greek audience who spoke favorably of it. Most important, the film raised the Greek audience’s hope. They felt that they would soon watch more films shot in their home-country and feel happy about.
Gaziadis brothers – Kostas, Head of Production and Sales; Michalis, Camera Operator and Technical Director; and Alexandros, Head of Lab and electrician – equipped their labs with high-end technology and employed young writers, decorators, painters and actors with a passion for film. Pavlos Nirvanas, a journalist and one of the period’s best chronicle writers, was one of Gaziadis’ collaborators and advisers of the time. Gaziadis’ films helped in raising the status of Greek film production, which prevailed in the local market and made gross profit in domestic box office (25,000 tickets were sold during Love and Waves’ first screening week, while Astero sold 80,000 tickets, 40,000 of which were sold on the opening night).
Dag Film produced the first Greek films of the so-called “silent era,” until the 1930s. The emergence of sound cinema (also known as the “talkies”) and the competition with international films were the reasons leading to DAG Film’s downfall and final dissolution.
