Tzeli Hadjidimitriou

Biography

Tzeli Hatzidimitriou was born and raised in Lesbos. She is an award-winning filmmaker, visual photographer and writer. Her photographs have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Australia, China, Italy, Turkey and Greece and have been published in numerous albums ("The Holy Water: Thermal Springs of Lesvos", 1996; "39 Cafes and a Barber Shop" ", 1997; "Conversing with the spirits of the stone", 2009 etc.). She fell in love with cinema, through seminars she attended with Michelangelo Antonioni, while continuing her studies in photography in Rome. From 1990 he started filming, photographing and writing about the lives of the people of Lesvos. Her book, “A Girl's Guide to Lesbos” (2012), is the first guide to the island that talks about the history of the lesbian community in the village of Eresos and its connection with the ancient poetess Sappho. She is a founding member of the Athens-based AMKE "Anemos Nairatis", which is oriented towards the creation of projects that support gender, sexuality and cultural diversity through a multitude of media: films, documentaries, photo exhibitions, visual arts, symposia, etc. a. Her short films have been shown around the world and have won many awards. In her short documentary "Looking for Orpheus" (2018), she meets local fishermen who tell stories about their lives and the place, intertwined with the myth of Orpheus. Her most recent short films focus on gender, such as Sappho's Granddaughters (2018), where the older women of Lesvos tell their story, Dimitrakis and Dimitroula (2019), about story of a gender dysphoric person in Sykamia, Lesbos who tragically died after being unjustly detained in a mental institution, as well as the film “Sappho Singing” (2020), an ode to Sappho, who “visits” modern Lesvos again. The film "Lesvia" is her first feature-length documentary.