UCLA filmmaker goes to roots for thesis film, wins Spotlight Award
By Teddy Phuong
June 24, 2007 10:27 p.m.
Filmmaker Thouly Dosios has taken an improbable path from Athens to Los Angeles and back again to Greece. Her thesis film, however, has taken a ride straight to the top of the awards circuit.
“House of the Olive Trees” (To Spiti me tis elies), a 29-minute short film by the recent UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television graduate, was one of seven recipients of the 2007 UCLA Directors Spotlight Award. The film is also a national finalist for the Student Academy Awards in the narrative film category.
The film follows the story of Anna, a 30-year-old woman who lives a solitary life, free of emotional attachment. She is comfortable with the life, despite its pain, until she meets Markos, who threatens her firm sense of independence.
Dosios shot the film entirely on location in her native country of Greece, a part of the process that was very important to her.
“I wanted to try out for the first time expressing myself in my own language ““ in Greek ““ both in terms of the language but also in terms of the cinematic landscape,” said Dosios.
Dosios’ film career first ignited when she turned 18. Inspired by her older sister, Dosios applied to schools in the United States and moved here in 1992, enrolling at Harvard University, where she studied documentary film under the guidance of visiting professor and narrative filmmaker Dusan Makavejev.
“It was real exciting for me, because it was the first time I was doing something I was passionate about in a more serious environment, where I had to answer and discuss the work,” Dosios said.
In 1996, Dosios enrolled in UCLA’s film school, where she completed all of her course work except for her final thesis film. Deciding to take some time off, she spent the next six years working for the UCLA Center for International Emergency Medicine while toiling over “House of the Olive Trees.”
Dosios had been working on the film while still in school in the ’90s, but the story went through many false starts and multiple rewrites.
All the hard work and the often tedious process of production paid off: The film has now won top prizes at film festivals across the nation, including the UCLA Directors Spotlight Award.
“To be a part of the Spotlight is a big deal. It’s probably the biggest honor we have,” said Nancy Richardson, a professor at the UCLA School of TFT and faculty chair of the festival. “It’s a night where the Spotlight winners have their films screened at the Directors Guild of America and generally we hope they get industry attention. They often do.”
The Spotlight Award is a student festival in which volunteers screen student films for two whole days. The students then have to whittle the 77 films ““ each varying in length from two to 30 minutes ““ down to three and a half hours of programming.
From there, the films are reviewed by the Industry Blue Ribbon panel, which this year was led by UCLA alumnus Geoff Gilmore, the director of the Sundance Film Festival. Other panelists included Oscar-nominated director of “Paradise Now” Hany Abu-Assad and documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick.
“This year, (the panel) was quite prestigious, and a lot of them said these films were so good. They had a really tough time narrowing it down from 3.5 hours to 2.5 hours. It meant some really good films were not included,” Richardson said. “Some of the films were so impressive that some of the industry panelists wanted to track the filmmakers.”
Even during production of the film in Greece, her connection to UCLA remained strong. Four collaborators from her time in film school made the trip, including cowriter Maeve McQuillan and cinematographer John Solomon.
“The most important people from here came, they met my childhood friends, my family and they all learned to communicate with each other,” Dosios said.
Above all the accolades, Dosios prizes the collaborative production process most.
“It was a true international endeavor. Before making the film, my two lives ““ my home in Greece and my home here ““ existed completely separately,” Dosios said. “And we all made something together. I’m still amazed by it.”
