The story
Philippides a day runner, ran the 40 km (25 mi) from the battlefield near Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) with the word νικῶμεν (nikomen "We win!"), as stated by Lucian "chairete, nikomen ("hail, we are the winners")". But before he run to Athens bearing the message of victory the Runner went to Sparta, a distance of 220km from Athens to ask for help.
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The animated short is based on Herodotus account, that the Athenian messenger runner met the god Pan as he run to Sparta.
"On the occasion of which I speak - when Philippides, that is, was sent on his mission by the Athenian commanders and said that he saw Pan - he reached Sparta the day after he left Athens and delivered his message to the Spartan government. "Men of Sparta" (the message ran), "the Athenians ask you to help them, and not to stand by while the most ancient city of Greece is crushed and subdued by a foreign invader; for even now Eretria has been enslaved, and Greece is the weaker by the loss of one fine city." The Spartans, though moved by the appeal, and willing to send help to Athens, were unable to send it promptly because they did not wish to break their law. It was the ninth day of the month, and they said they could not take the field until the moon was full. So they waited for the full moon, and the Persians sailed to Marathon."
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Before they left the city, the Athenian generals sent off a message to Sparta. The messenger was an Athenian named Pheidippides, a professional long-distance runner. According to the account he gave the Athenians on his return, Philippides met the god Pan on Mount Parthenium, above Tegea. Pan, he said, called him by name and told him to ask the Athenians why they paid him no attention, in spite of his friendliness towards them and the fact that he had often been useful to them in the past, and would be so again in the future. The Athenians believed Philippides's story, and when their affairs were once more in a prosperous state, they built a shrine to Pan under the Acropolis, and from the time his message was received they held an annual ceremony, with a torch-race and sacrifices, to court his protection.
Animation
The Runner is 2D hand drawn animated short. The animation of the short began in 2012 and continued until 2016. The artwork is pencil on plain paper, scanned, cleand and modified in Photoshop and finally edited on Premiere. After a long pre production period with story writing and storyboards, tentative production began on May of 2015. The production came to a halt for three months as the financial situation in Greece entered a dark tunnel.
It was like running along the Runner, trying to fulfill the task.
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The Runner is a 6 minute B/W animated short with 140 individual shots and 170 backgrounds and foreground elements.
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Trailer
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Zachos Samoladas
Zachos Samoladas was born in Thessaloniki on August 26, 1967. He began his career early on in his life as a film enthusiast and a moviegoer at his early teens. In 1983 an S8 film camera led to the creation of his first animated short. At age 14 his animated shorts aired on Greek State television ET1 The animated creations will lead to the acceptance at California Institute of the Arts where he studies Experimental Animation with legendary animator Jules Engel as his mentor. His studies also include a degree in film direction from the Eugenia Hatzikou film school in Athens. His animated short titled "GENESIS" is the first Greek animated short over 20 minutes.
Zachos Samoladas works since 1988 for the Municipal Television of Thessaloniki as director and currently as Head of Programming and Productions of the network.
Zachos Samoladas is an active member of the Greek Directors Guild.
