Bio
Athena Scotes has lived in many countries. Born to a Greek mother and a Greek-American father who was a diplomat, she grew up in Iraq, Washington DC, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen and Greece. She studied film at New York University, received a B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology from Mills College in Oakland California, and also received a Masters in Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Insititue in Carpinteria, California. She moved to Montreal, Canada in 2009 where she worked at EyeSteelFilm. At EyeSteelFilm she provided research for Daniel Cross and Mila Aung Thwin’s documentary, Atanasoff: Father of the Computer, In 2010 she traveled with her folk poet grandmother, Vasiliki Scotes, to Greece, where they remained for a year in order to shoot, Last Song to Xenitia. She now resides with her teen children in Montreal, Canada.
Although Athena has traveled and lived in many countries, her love for Greece and its culture has always been strong and provided her with a sense of home. She grew up listening to her grandmother tell stories and sing old songs from her far away mountain village- it is for this reason that she was inspired to make her first documentary about her grandmother's last journey to Greece at the age of 103. Last Song to Xenitia was completed in June, 2017.
Athena is now in the process of shooting her second feature documentary in NYC about a childhood friend she met while living in Sana’a, Yemen for three and a half years 1975-1978. This friend, who for now will remain anonymous, has had three books written about his life...he is a New Yorker, an artist, a civil rights lawyer, a day trader, a man who spent most of his adult life in prisons in NY state for a murder he committed in self-defense, a man whose friends included the NYC artistic establishment of the 1980’s. An extraordinary human being who was and is able to maintain his humanity no matter the multiple trauma he sustained since childhood, the six months in solitary confinement, the dehumanizing treatment in prison for 32 years. Now he is free and now it’s his turn to tell his story with the aspiration that his story will give voice to thousands in the prison industry who are there, alone and without a friend to help them. A portion of the films proceeds will be donated to a non-profit my friend is in the process of establishing to reform prison conditions, to assist individuals upon their release from prison with free legal aid, employment opportunities, psychological/emotional services. My friend, the protagonist in this documentary, embodies all that makes us human when faced with the evils of this world and the unforeseen slings and arrows life may throw upon any of us . In short, he was and is able to be in this world, but not of this world.