George Solomos
Encyclopedia
George Paul Solomos also known as Themistocles Hoetis from 1948 to 1958, was an American publisher, poet
, filmmaker and novelist.
The Solomos family were descendants of tobacco tycoon Count Nicolas Solomonee from Venice
. They were olive oil producers who settled in Greece, before the end of the Greek War of Independence
(1821–1829).
They were relatives of the Greek poet Dionysios Solomos
who had lived on the Greek island Zante (Zakynthos
) most of his adult life; his most famous poem Hymn to Liberty is the Greek National Anthem.
His father had left Sparta because of a family tragedy when he was still a teenager. Having been educated in the English language he decided to make his way to the USA.
His mother - also from Sparta - was taken to the States by her two older brothers for similar tragic reasons as his father.
His parents were introduced on landing in New York about 1910, and decided to marry and stay in the USA for a while.
George Solomos published and wrote under the name Themistocles Hoetis, the surname of his mother's family, from 1948–1958, after being advised by some relatives that his views could attract trouble for his family.
Prior to Motown, jazz had moved from up from the clubs of Chicago to Detroit in the 1920s, and George spent much of his teenage years in jazz clubs. His father ran a large Mediterranean delicatessen and general food store on Vermont and Henry Street, right near to Michigan Avenue.
George Solomos joined the USAF at the age of 17 after changing his birth certificate with his father's permission. After a short period of training, he was almost immediately shipped to Britain, where he became a radio operator in an American B-17 Flying Fortress bomber based in an airfield in East Anglia. After his plane was shot down on his eleventh bombing mission to Germany; the crew bailed out of the burning bomber and George ended up landing tangled in the branches of an apple tree in North East France, near to the Belgian / Dutch border. He was rescued by a French grand-mother and her grand-daughter. After a night in the farmhouse he was passed to the French Resistance
.
He was taken on a journey of over 200 miles to a little village north of Paris called Evereux. He stayed in the village with the caretaker of Château de Beaufresne, which had belonged to the famous impressionist painter, Mary Cassatt
. The chateau was being used as a residence for German officers. At this point he was given a new - fake - ID card with a swastika stamp. George Solomos was then passed to other members of the Resistance who helped the young airman cross Occupied France and eventually enter Spain, from where he was sent to Gibraltar, and then back to his airbase near Ipswich.
, followed by a short story by Richard Wright
. Among the prominent writers featured in the magazine were Samuel Beckett, Paul Bowles, Christopher Isherwood, Kenneth Patchen, and Thomas Mann's eldest son, Klaus Mann. Zero Press from 1956 also published novels and a collection of stories by Gore Vidal
. The magazine Zero ran from 1949 to 1956. Its first two issues were published in Paris in 1949, the rest in Tangiers, Mexico City and in New York.
A first anthology of Zero was published in 1956, another without his involvement in 1974 by the New York Times.
An additional number was issued in Philadelphia in 1980. It reported on the very violent action taken by the Philadelphia Police Department
against the black revolutionary commune MOVE
.
He married Gidske Anderson
in London in 1952. She had been with the wartime resistance in Norway. She met Solomos in Paris after the War. They both shared a love of jazz and, as a neighbour, she had asked to loan some of his records. She was then working for the Norwegian newspaper Arbeiderbladet and later became deputy chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
. She died in 1993.
Having published his novel The Man Who Went Away in 1952, George received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation
in 1953 to live and write in Mexico City, where he completed his still unpublished book Thermopylae, a novel about war and the ideals of ancient Sparta.
In 1958 at Detroit Town Hall George legally changed the name he had used for the last ten years whilst publishing ZERO - Themistocles Hoetis - back to his birth name of George Paul Solomos.
From 1958 to 1960, George was asked by Dr. Bascilius (Head of Humanities) at Wayne State University
, where he had completed a one year course after the war ended in 1945 - which was his entitlement as a US Veteran - to propose and edit work for publication by the Wayne State University Press
(WSU Press). The first book he designed for the WSU Press was The Poems of William Blake
which won the award of Best Poetry Anthology of the year 1958 from the Poetry Society of America
. The next year, 1959, he had prepared a version of the anti-nuclear tract by Bertrand Russell
, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare which the WSU Press had already proofed and printed. It was withdrawn under threat from large industrial sponsors who threatened to withhold funding. Solomos left the USA soon after this and returned to Europe.
The first that he made was a 20 minute film called Echo in the Village, which was shot on two 35mm cameras over 5 days in a small village called Cappadocia (Italy)
. It is in black and white and stars the town's inhabitants. It is based on his original story about a grandfather helping a boy learn English so that he can leave the village and go to America.
George Solomos was re-united with many of the people who had featured in the film, including the boy who had played the young shepherd, when he returned to Cappadocia in 2002, on the fortieth anniversary of the film.
A public screening was arranged in the village and a programme about the event was broadcast on the State TV channel.
The second film is called Natika, and stars John Drew Barrymore
, who was at the time living in Rome
; and a young Welsh woman called Maureen Gavin for whom this was to be her only major film appearance. It was made on a larger budget than Echo in the Village, and was written and directed by George Solomos, as well as using the same personnel as his previous film.
The film concerns a destructive romance between a young harpist studying in Rome, and a louche playboy and heir to Europe's wealthy corporate and governing class, played by J D Barrymore.
The film was largely financed by a rich young American, Gray Frederickson http://theoscarsite.com/whoswho5/frederickson_g.htm, who was based in Tehran
tending his Oklahoma father's oil wells but was attracted to Rome to break into the movie business. After taking the film to be re-edited before its completion, Fredrikson presented it at various film festivals as his production debut and went on to become a major Hollywood producer (e.g. Apocalypse Now
).
George was also a mentor to the young George Moorse :de:George Moorse, who was one of the directors of radical German cinema in the 1960s. Moorse's first film 'In Side Out' (1964) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163510/fullcredits#cast - with playwright Tom Stoppard
in the cast - was made with Gérard Vandenberg http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005914/, the cinematographer who worked on George Solomos' two films.
George was a regular visitor to Morocco
, where his friends Paul Bowles
and Jane Bowles
had lived for many years.
He had first gone there in 1950 with Irving Thalberg, Jr., the son of the famous film producer of the same name, who later became a professor of philosophy.
An article in the fashion magazine Flair which was aimed at the New York literati, published with a transparent cover by the Condé Nast Publications
heiress Fleur Cowles
described George as;
- which was based on testimony of Gore Vidal who had met him on a visit to Morocco
.
After George returned to Madrid, he took the first Orient Express train to run through Greece to Istanbul since the end of WWII. He then went from Salonika to Athens and on to Sparta to visit his family home, through a country ravaged by war.
London
George Solomos then moved to what is now known as Swinging London
in the 1960s, and was soon involved in its bohemian underground
. He published David Chapman, a young poet who was briefly incarcerated in an Insane asylum because of his heroin addiction, and wrote a powerful poem about his experiences which was called Withdrawal. A book, which also contained pictures by Chapman, was published by George Solomos in 1964 with help from philanthropist and wealthy heir, Jonathan Bryan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne - a Conservative Party (UK)
MP at the time - who paid for a full page advert in the Conservative Monday Club
publication, along with a voucher entitling members to a reduced-price copy. Guinness had the reputation of someone whose political instincts would now be recognised as Libertarian conservatism
.
A reading by David Chapman was held that year in the Institute of Contemporary Arts
(ICA) in London. George also commissioned a soundtrack from the experimental jazz combo Spontaneous Music Ensemble
.
George Solomos brought a print of his short film Echo in the Village to the UK in the early 1960s and was invited onto the show Late Night Line Up (BBC, 1964–72) on the BBC, where he was interviewed by Joan Bakewell. His appearance followed Bakewell's interview that same evening with American theatre and film director Joseph Losey
.
His next major publishing venture was in 1968, when he produced a film magazine called FIBA, which won the prize for the Best Film Publication at the Venice Film Festival
(La Biennale di Venezia)http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/ that year.
It was financed largely by the young Japanese Fluxus
artist Yoko Ono
. She later introduced him to her partner, John Lennon
of The Beatles
, and they asked him to arrange US showings of some films they had made, including Smile and Bottoms. George Solomos arranged for them to be premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival
in 1970, and took the movies on a series of screenings around the USA.
Éire
From 1970 to 1972 George was the Film Correspondent for the Irish Times; but was asked to leave Éire
by the Irish Government after commenting unfavourably on the influence of the Roman Catholic Church
on Irish culture. George had also infuriated the Irish Government for arranging the free distribution of The Little Red Schoolbook
, which was being given away free in England at the time by the National Union of School Students
.
He was seen onto a ferry to Britain by Charles Haughey
, who later wrote to him and offered to let him return.
He returned to London, where he managed to sell a film outline to Ringo Starr
that would be a potential vehicle for mutual friend (and star of Shadows (1959 film) directed by John Cassavetes
), actor Ben Carruthers
. This financed a trip to Sparta (municipality) in Greece, the homeland of the Solomos family, where he visited his family's village.
USA
In 1974 George Solomos moved to Philadelphia and lived in a house opposite the MOVE
commune when it was notoriously bombed from a police helicopter, a tragedy which killed six adult residents and five children. George Solomos published one last copy of ZERO in the early 1980s, which was dedicated to John Africa
and the members of MOVE, many of whom are still in prison in the USA in 2009.
After moving to the first apartment block in the USA built with its own Community studio and Cable TV facility George Solomos started a reality TV series featuring some of the block's residents - which was later credited with being the inspiration for the NBC
series The Golden Girls
.
He also arranged for a filmed interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal
on death row
in Philadelphia - the last instance of such an interview, since the law was changed afterwards to prevent any similar media attention. The resulting film is on YouTube
in three parts http://www.youtube.com/fibafilmbank#p/u/4/iwxPezovwFc.
Europe
In 1986 George returned to France to find the villagers who had helped him escape from the Nazis in Occupied France. The International Herald Tribune
managed to track down the son of the grand-daughter who had initially rescued him from the apple tree and hidden him in the cellar.
Since 1999 George has been publishing the on-line version of his film and culture magazine fiba http://www.fiba-filmbank.org/
In 1999 he was a guest at the Havana Film Festival
, where he showed the Mumia Abu-Jamal documentary and a short film featuring Alice Walker
, as well as being interviewed by Cuban Television.
Death
George Solomos died at Forest Hills home in London
on November 8, 2010.
His second book is currently being translated into Spanish for publication in the next year. It is called Villa Alba, and is a novel based on some time he spent in Franco's Spain in the 1950s.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, filmmaker and novelist.
Family background
G. P. Solomos was born in Detroit in 1925, the youngest of 5 children of Greek-born parents.The Solomos family were descendants of tobacco tycoon Count Nicolas Solomonee from Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. They were olive oil producers who settled in Greece, before the end of the Greek War of Independence
Greek War of Independence
The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...
(1821–1829).
They were relatives of the Greek poet Dionysios Solomos
Dionysios Solomos
Dionysios Solomos was a Greek poet from Zakynthos. He is best known for writing the Hymn to Liberty , of which the first two stanzas, set to music by Nikolaos Mantzaros, became the Greek national anthem in 1865...
who had lived on the Greek island Zante (Zakynthos
Zakynthos
Zakynthos , also Zante, the other form often used in English and in Italian , is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the third largest of the Ionian Islands. It is also a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. It covers an area of ...
) most of his adult life; his most famous poem Hymn to Liberty is the Greek National Anthem.
His father had left Sparta because of a family tragedy when he was still a teenager. Having been educated in the English language he decided to make his way to the USA.
His mother - also from Sparta - was taken to the States by her two older brothers for similar tragic reasons as his father.
His parents were introduced on landing in New York about 1910, and decided to marry and stay in the USA for a while.
George Solomos published and wrote under the name Themistocles Hoetis, the surname of his mother's family, from 1948–1958, after being advised by some relatives that his views could attract trouble for his family.
Early life
George was born and raised in Detroit; a French - American city which became known as Motor City - the centre of the US car industry - as well as a wellspring of much great popular music; from soul to heavy metal and techno.Prior to Motown, jazz had moved from up from the clubs of Chicago to Detroit in the 1920s, and George spent much of his teenage years in jazz clubs. His father ran a large Mediterranean delicatessen and general food store on Vermont and Henry Street, right near to Michigan Avenue.
George Solomos joined the USAF at the age of 17 after changing his birth certificate with his father's permission. After a short period of training, he was almost immediately shipped to Britain, where he became a radio operator in an American B-17 Flying Fortress bomber based in an airfield in East Anglia. After his plane was shot down on his eleventh bombing mission to Germany; the crew bailed out of the burning bomber and George ended up landing tangled in the branches of an apple tree in North East France, near to the Belgian / Dutch border. He was rescued by a French grand-mother and her grand-daughter. After a night in the farmhouse he was passed to the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
.
He was taken on a journey of over 200 miles to a little village north of Paris called Evereux. He stayed in the village with the caretaker of Château de Beaufresne, which had belonged to the famous impressionist painter, Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...
. The chateau was being used as a residence for German officers. At this point he was given a new - fake - ID card with a swastika stamp. George Solomos was then passed to other members of the Resistance who helped the young airman cross Occupied France and eventually enter Spain, from where he was sent to Gibraltar, and then back to his airbase near Ipswich.
Later life
From 1948 to 1958 George Solomos used the pen-name Themistocles Hoetis. A relative had warned him that he could bring shame to the family with his outspoken political views, which had developed in response to both the war and the de-programming that he received back in the USA - a standard 'treatment' for all servicemen who had been in close contact with Communists. Under this name he and Albert Beneviste published and edited a magazine called ZERO; A Review of Literature and Art. The first issue contained the famous attack on Richard Wright by James BaldwinJames Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
, followed by a short story by Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
. Among the prominent writers featured in the magazine were Samuel Beckett, Paul Bowles, Christopher Isherwood, Kenneth Patchen, and Thomas Mann's eldest son, Klaus Mann. Zero Press from 1956 also published novels and a collection of stories by Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
. The magazine Zero ran from 1949 to 1956. Its first two issues were published in Paris in 1949, the rest in Tangiers, Mexico City and in New York.
A first anthology of Zero was published in 1956, another without his involvement in 1974 by the New York Times.
An additional number was issued in Philadelphia in 1980. It reported on the very violent action taken by the Philadelphia Police Department
Philadelphia Police Department
The Philadelphia Police Department is the police agency responsible for law enforcement and investigations within the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
against the black revolutionary commune MOVE
MOVE
MOVE or the MOVE Organization is a Philadelphia-based black liberation group founded by John Africa. MOVE was described by CNN as "a loose-knit, mostly black group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a "back-to-nature" lifestyle and preached against technology." The group...
.
He married Gidske Anderson
Gidske Anderson
Gidske Anderson was a Norwegian journalist and a member of the Labour Party. She worked for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and then the newspaper Arbeiderbladet in Paris. from 1964 to 1967 she was a freelance journalist in the United States...
in London in 1952. She had been with the wartime resistance in Norway. She met Solomos in Paris after the War. They both shared a love of jazz and, as a neighbour, she had asked to loan some of his records. She was then working for the Norwegian newspaper Arbeiderbladet and later became deputy chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
Norwegian Nobel Committee
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Nobel Peace Prize each year.Its five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament and roughly represent the political makeup of that body.-History:...
. She died in 1993.
Having published his novel The Man Who Went Away in 1952, George received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
in 1953 to live and write in Mexico City, where he completed his still unpublished book Thermopylae, a novel about war and the ideals of ancient Sparta.
In 1958 at Detroit Town Hall George legally changed the name he had used for the last ten years whilst publishing ZERO - Themistocles Hoetis - back to his birth name of George Paul Solomos.
From 1958 to 1960, George was asked by Dr. Bascilius (Head of Humanities) at Wayne State University
Wayne State University
Wayne State University is a public research university located in Detroit, Michigan, United States, in the city's Midtown Cultural Center Historic District. Founded in 1868, WSU consists of 13 schools and colleges offering more than 400 major subject areas to over 32,000 graduate and...
, where he had completed a one year course after the war ended in 1945 - which was his entitlement as a US Veteran - to propose and edit work for publication by the Wayne State University Press
Wayne State University Press
Wayne State University Press , founded in 1941, is a university press that is part of Wayne State University. It publishes under its own name and also the imprints Painted Turtle and Great Lakes Books....
(WSU Press). The first book he designed for the WSU Press was The Poems of William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
which won the award of Best Poetry Anthology of the year 1958 from the Poetry Society of America
Poetry Society of America
The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists including Witter Bynner. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the have included such renowned writers as Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent...
. The next year, 1959, he had prepared a version of the anti-nuclear tract by Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare which the WSU Press had already proofed and printed. It was withdrawn under threat from large industrial sponsors who threatened to withhold funding. Solomos left the USA soon after this and returned to Europe.
Films
George made two films in Italy (1961-3).The first that he made was a 20 minute film called Echo in the Village, which was shot on two 35mm cameras over 5 days in a small village called Cappadocia (Italy)
Cappadocia (Italy)
Cappadocia is a comune and town in the province of L'Aquila in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. It is part of the Marsica....
. It is in black and white and stars the town's inhabitants. It is based on his original story about a grandfather helping a boy learn English so that he can leave the village and go to America.
George Solomos was re-united with many of the people who had featured in the film, including the boy who had played the young shepherd, when he returned to Cappadocia in 2002, on the fortieth anniversary of the film.
A public screening was arranged in the village and a programme about the event was broadcast on the State TV channel.
The second film is called Natika, and stars John Drew Barrymore
John Drew Barrymore
John Drew Barrymore was a member of the Barrymore family of actors, which included his father, John Barrymore, and his father's siblings, Lionel and Ethel...
, who was at the time living in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
; and a young Welsh woman called Maureen Gavin for whom this was to be her only major film appearance. It was made on a larger budget than Echo in the Village, and was written and directed by George Solomos, as well as using the same personnel as his previous film.
The film concerns a destructive romance between a young harpist studying in Rome, and a louche playboy and heir to Europe's wealthy corporate and governing class, played by J D Barrymore.
The film was largely financed by a rich young American, Gray Frederickson http://theoscarsite.com/whoswho5/frederickson_g.htm, who was based in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
tending his Oklahoma father's oil wells but was attracted to Rome to break into the movie business. After taking the film to be re-edited before its completion, Fredrikson presented it at various film festivals as his production debut and went on to become a major Hollywood producer (e.g. Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
).
George was also a mentor to the young George Moorse :de:George Moorse, who was one of the directors of radical German cinema in the 1960s. Moorse's first film 'In Side Out' (1964) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163510/fullcredits#cast - with playwright Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
in the cast - was made with Gérard Vandenberg http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005914/, the cinematographer who worked on George Solomos' two films.
Travels and further projects
Tangier and MoroccoGeorge was a regular visitor to Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, where his friends Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
and Jane Bowles
Jane Bowles
Jane Bowles, born Jane Sydney Auer , was an American writer and playwright.-Early life:Born into a Jewish family in New York, Jane Bowles spent her childhood in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. She developed tuberculous arthritis of the knee as a teenager and her mother took her to Switzerland...
had lived for many years.
He had first gone there in 1950 with Irving Thalberg, Jr., the son of the famous film producer of the same name, who later became a professor of philosophy.
An article in the fashion magazine Flair which was aimed at the New York literati, published with a transparent cover by the Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
heiress Fleur Cowles
Fleur Cowles
Fleur Fenton Cowles was an American writer, editor and artist best known as the creative force behind the short-lived Flair magazine.-Personal:...
described George as;
an apprentice Yankee Balzac - and a be-bop hipster perched on a cliff outside Tangier celebrating the virtues of hashish...
- which was based on testimony of Gore Vidal who had met him on a visit to Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
.
After George returned to Madrid, he took the first Orient Express train to run through Greece to Istanbul since the end of WWII. He then went from Salonika to Athens and on to Sparta to visit his family home, through a country ravaged by war.
London
George Solomos then moved to what is now known as Swinging London
Swinging London
Swinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London, in the 1960s.It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasised the new and modern. It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution. One catalyst was the recovery of the...
in the 1960s, and was soon involved in its bohemian underground
UK underground
The Underground was a countercultural movement in the United Kingdom linked to the underground culture in the United States and associated with the hippie phenomenon. Its primary focus was around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill in London...
. He published David Chapman, a young poet who was briefly incarcerated in an Insane asylum because of his heroin addiction, and wrote a powerful poem about his experiences which was called Withdrawal. A book, which also contained pictures by Chapman, was published by George Solomos in 1964 with help from philanthropist and wealthy heir, Jonathan Bryan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne - a Conservative Party (UK)
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
MP at the time - who paid for a full page advert in the Conservative Monday Club
Conservative Monday Club
The Conservative Monday Club is a British pressure group "on the right-wing" of the Conservative Party.-Overview:...
publication, along with a voucher entitling members to a reduced-price copy. Guinness had the reputation of someone whose political instincts would now be recognised as Libertarian conservatism
Libertarian conservatism
Libertarian conservatism, also known as conservative libertarianism , includes political ideologies which meld libertarianism and conservatism...
.
A reading by David Chapman was held that year in the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
(ICA) in London. George also commissioned a soundtrack from the experimental jazz combo Spontaneous Music Ensemble
Spontaneous Music Ensemble
The Spontaneous Music Ensemble was a loose collection of free improvising musicians convened beginning in the mid-1960s by the late South London-based jazz drummer/trumpeter John Stevens and alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts...
.
George Solomos brought a print of his short film Echo in the Village to the UK in the early 1960s and was invited onto the show Late Night Line Up (BBC, 1964–72) on the BBC, where he was interviewed by Joan Bakewell. His appearance followed Bakewell's interview that same evening with American theatre and film director Joseph Losey
Joseph Losey
Joseph Walton Losey was an American theater and film director. After studying in Germany with Bertolt Brecht, Losey returned to the United States, eventually making his way to Hollywood...
.
His next major publishing venture was in 1968, when he produced a film magazine called FIBA, which won the prize for the Best Film Publication at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
(La Biennale di Venezia)http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/ that year.
It was financed largely by the young Japanese Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
artist Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
. She later introduced him to her partner, John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, and they asked him to arrange US showings of some films they had made, including Smile and Bottoms. George Solomos arranged for them to be premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival
Chicago International Film Festival
The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America....
in 1970, and took the movies on a series of screenings around the USA.
Éire
From 1970 to 1972 George was the Film Correspondent for the Irish Times; but was asked to leave Éire
Éire
is the Irish name for the island of Ireland and the sovereign state of the same name.- Etymology :The modern Irish Éire evolved from the Old Irish word Ériu, which was the name of a Gaelic goddess. Ériu is generally believed to have been the matron goddess of Ireland, a goddess of sovereignty, or...
by the Irish Government after commenting unfavourably on the influence of the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
on Irish culture. George had also infuriated the Irish Government for arranging the free distribution of The Little Red Schoolbook
The Little Red Schoolbook
The Little Red Schoolbook is a book written by two Danish schoolteachers, Søren Hansen and Jesper Jensen in 1969, which was controversial upon its publication. The book was translated into many languages in the early 1970s.- Synopsis :...
, which was being given away free in England at the time by the National Union of School Students
National Union of School Students
The National Union of School Students was a short lived organisation founded in 1972. It campaigned primarily against compulsory school uniform and the use of corporal punishment in schools. With a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation the union published the magazine Blot which featured...
.
He was seen onto a ferry to Britain by Charles Haughey
Charles Haughey
Charles James "Charlie" Haughey was Taoiseach of Ireland, serving three terms in office . He was also the fourth leader of Fianna Fáil...
, who later wrote to him and offered to let him return.
He returned to London, where he managed to sell a film outline to Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
that would be a potential vehicle for mutual friend (and star of Shadows (1959 film) directed by John Cassavetes
John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...
), actor Ben Carruthers
Ben Carruthers
Benito "Ben" F. Carruthers was an American film actor, most notable for his role in John Cassavetes' debut feature film Shadows . He later appeared in Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen as Glenn Gilpin...
. This financed a trip to Sparta (municipality) in Greece, the homeland of the Solomos family, where he visited his family's village.
USA
In 1974 George Solomos moved to Philadelphia and lived in a house opposite the MOVE
MOVE
MOVE or the MOVE Organization is a Philadelphia-based black liberation group founded by John Africa. MOVE was described by CNN as "a loose-knit, mostly black group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a "back-to-nature" lifestyle and preached against technology." The group...
commune when it was notoriously bombed from a police helicopter, a tragedy which killed six adult residents and five children. George Solomos published one last copy of ZERO in the early 1980s, which was dedicated to John Africa
John Africa
John Africa , was a founder of MOVE, a Philadelphia-based black liberation group prominent in the United States in the early 1970s...
and the members of MOVE, many of whom are still in prison in the USA in 2009.
After moving to the first apartment block in the USA built with its own Community studio and Cable TV facility George Solomos started a reality TV series featuring some of the block's residents - which was later credited with being the inspiration for the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
series The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls is an American sitcom created by Susan Harris, which originally aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992. Starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, the show centers on four older women sharing a home in Miami, Florida...
.
He also arranged for a filmed interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death. He has been described as "perhaps the world's best known death-row inmate", and his sentence is one of the most debated today...
on death row
Death row
Death row signifies the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution , even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.After individuals are found...
in Philadelphia - the last instance of such an interview, since the law was changed afterwards to prevent any similar media attention. The resulting film is on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
in three parts http://www.youtube.com/fibafilmbank#p/u/4/iwxPezovwFc.
Europe
In 1986 George returned to France to find the villagers who had helped him escape from the Nazis in Occupied France. The International Herald Tribune
International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...
managed to track down the son of the grand-daughter who had initially rescued him from the apple tree and hidden him in the cellar.
Since 1999 George has been publishing the on-line version of his film and culture magazine fiba http://www.fiba-filmbank.org/
In 1999 he was a guest at the Havana Film Festival
Havana Film Festival
The Havana Film Festival is a Cuban festival that focuses on the promotion of Spanish-language filmmakers. It is also known in Spanish as Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana, and in English as Festival of New Latinamerican Cinema of La Havana.The festival takes place...
, where he showed the Mumia Abu-Jamal documentary and a short film featuring Alice Walker
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...
, as well as being interviewed by Cuban Television.
Death
George Solomos died at Forest Hills home in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
on November 8, 2010.
His second book is currently being translated into Spanish for publication in the next year. It is called Villa Alba, and is a novel based on some time he spent in Franco's Spain in the 1950s.