Renos Haralambidis's No Budget Story: Cinema and Manhood as Radical Carnival

Renos Haralambidis represents a new generation of young Greek filmmakers who are beginning to make playful contemporary films which blur the boundaries between real life and fiction and which are made, as the title of his 1997 award-winning hit film No Budget Story suggests, for almost no money at all. This film avoids the pretentiousness of those films that appeal to an ancient past and confuse allusions to classical myths and sources with a depth of storytelling. No Budget Story is a refreshingly contemporary "take" on Athenian culture at the end of the century, combining everything from subway 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 "masculinity" that contrasts strongly with both Hollywood images of manhood and traditional Greek male roles both in society and on the screen. Neither "macho" nor a "Karagkiozis" fool, Haralambidis emerges as a young man combining an innocence and quiet energy that succeed in defying cultural stereotypes.