Kokkinos, Ana

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biography of Kokkinos, An

Anastasia Kokkinos
3 August 1958, Melbourne, Australia
Ana Kokkinos graduated from Melbourne's Monash University law school in 1982 and worked for nine years as an industrial lawyer. In 1991 she applied to film school and was accepted in the graduate film and TV programme at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. Her graduation short film, Antamasi (1992), won several awards and played at a number of international film festivals.
Gary Couzens

- "Sex is part of what we do. To not explore it as a filmmaker is denying a whole part of ourselves."

- "The choices that are made about how sex is cinematically represented is very much a choice that is really to be determined between the filmmaker and the actors themselves. From my point of view as a filmmaker, as long as there is no abuse or exploitation in that, then essentially the filmmaker and actors have the right to explore the representation of those scenes in a truthful way."

- "On the one hand, we seem to be frightened of sex. And yet there's no questioning of the rampant violence that is depicted on screen."

- "I received a lot of offers to go to America after Head On. But I didn't become a filmmaker to go to Hollywood. I'm passionate about film and the possibility of telling stories important to me. I think Hollywood would be shocking. They have a completely different idea of what films are about."

- "Cinema still has the power to provoke a visceral response and it is the role of the artist to provoke and question. I want to go to the heart of the contemporary complacency. It's OK if it creates a fuss."

- "Urban Cinefile" (Australia), 1999, Vol. na, Iss. na, pg. na, by: Andrew L. Urban, "KOKKINOS, ANA: Head On"

- "Cinema" (Greece), November 1998, Iss. 93, pg. 39, by: Manolis Kranakis, "Kata metopo"