Daniel Cross and a “big, goofy Greek Elvis” in China
Professor-filmmaker Daniel Cross follows his subject, George Sapounidis, on his travels through China.
It’s not every day you meet a Greek-Canadian troubadour who speaks fluent Mandarin. While working in China, Concordia professor and filmmaker Daniel Cross had a serendipitous encounter with one.
The result is his latest documentary, Chairman George.
For eight months of the year, George Sapounidis is a federal government statistician who lives with his parents in Ottawa.
The other four, he travels throughout China performing traditional Greek and Chinese songs in Mandarin, which he started to learn while dating a Chinese woman.
Cross and Sapounidis met in a restaurant. Cross saw a Canadian flag on George’s guitar case, heard him speak Mandarin, and asked him to help him order his food. George happily obliged, then took out his guitar and burst into song.
“When he started singing, everyone stood up, everyone came out of the kitchen, off of the street, away from their tables, and circled around him,” Cross said. That was the moment he knew he had to travel with George.
“It was like an Elvis concert, where the women are making googly eyes at him, swaying around, wanting to touch him. That is what it was like with George, like being with Elvis: A big goofy Greek Elvis, but Elvis nonetheless.”
Cross found the hook for his documentary when George found the perfect opportunity to honour the two cultures he bridges with his music: the closing ceremonies at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where the torch would be handed to Beijing.
Chairman George closed the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal film festival, where Cross said the audience went wild for it: “At the end they were screaming and cheering and whistling. It was like a party.”
Cross and his colleagues at his production company, EyeSteelFilm, are now shopping it to film festivals worldwide. Cross flew back to China last week to screen it the city of Guangzhou’s first-ever documentary film festival on Dec. 8.
Known for his documentaries about life on Montreal’s streets, such as Squeegee Punks In Traffic (S.P.I.T.), released in 2001, and The Street (1996), Cross said some people – including himself – started to wonder if he had sold out.
“They were expecting some serious street film about saving the world, so sometimes I would feel a bit self-conscious, but I don’t consider myself a homogenous filmmaker.” Cross has also made documentaries about African-American hockey players, Inuit teens and a Jewish Elvis impersonator called Shmelvis.
In fact, Cross remains connected to Montreal’s street community. He is the driving force behind Homeless Nation, an online project that allows homeless people to post a profile and video clip on the Internet to keep in touch.
Cross has two other projects in the works with a Chinese connection. He met George while filming Bone with the Beijing Modern Dance Company.
Currently in production is Up the Yangtse, about the impact of tourism and the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam on the world’s third-longest river.