Vasilis Rafailidis

Vasilis Raphaelides (Greek: Βασίλης Ραφαηλίδης, January 14, 1934 – September 8, 2000) was a Greek journalist, writer, essayist and film critic.

He was born on January 14, 1934 in Servia, Kozani prefecture, and died on September 8, 2000 in Athens. His father's origin was from Constantinople, which he himself recognized as his homeland (mainly because he liked it as a city). Moreover, he had other "homelands". Most notably, Kastoria, where he spent his adolescence, due to his parents' transfer. It is worth noting that his parents were both educators - his father (Apostolos) was a philologist, his mother (Eleni) was a teacher. His mother came from Velvento, Kozani.

He studied cinema in 1959 at the Stavrakos School in Athens and after graduating he worked as an assistant to Nikos Koundouros and Roveros Manthoulis, while in 1962 he himself made two short documentary films, The Byzantine Memorial and The Furriers of Kastoria and Their Art. His first film, shot with poor and outdated equipment, was extremely ambitious, but he immediately rejected it as aesthetically unacceptable and from then on he was completely indifferent to its fate, although it was later awarded an international festival.