Renos Haralambidis's 'No Budget Story': Cinema and manhood as radical Carnival

Renos Haralambidis represents a new generation of young Greek filmmakers wh o are beginning to make playful contemporary films which blur the boundarie s between real life and fiction and which are made, as the title of his 199 7 award-winning hit film No Budget Story suggests, for almost no money at a ll. This film avoids the pretentiousness of those films that appeal to an a ncient past and confuse allusions to classical myths and sources with a dep th of storytelling. No Budget Story is a refreshingly contemporary "take" o n Athenian culture at the end of the century, combining everything from sub way scenes to music by Tom Waits and playful winks to Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver (1976). Along the way, in such a carnivalesque approach to cinema, Haralambidis also captures a refreshingly original depiction of "masculinit y" that contrasts strongly with both Hollywood images of manhood and tradit ional Greek male roles both in society and on the screen. Neither "macho" n or a "Karagkiozis" fool, Haralambidis emerges as a young man combining an i nnocence and quiet energy that succeed in defying cultural stereotypes.