A tribute to Greek cinema takes center stage this Tuesday, March 26, as fifty-five cinemas all over the country will display Greek shorts and feature films produced from 2020 to 2023. Each screening will be priced at 3€.
A total of 148 films have been carefully selected, with twenty-eight cities around the country participating in the event, aimed at promoting Greek cinema at a time when Greek filmmakers are gaining increasing international recognition.
Markos Holevas, director and President of the Board of Directors of the GFC, emphasized during a press conference held at the 26th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, “Greek cinema travels across Europe and often to the other side of the Atlantic, not only through film retrospectives but also in cinemas. Many times, films that have succeeded abroad fail to attract more than 1,000 viewers in Greece.” One of the event’s goals is to alter Greek audiences’ perception of national cinema.
Another reason for this celebration is to support local cinema halls and encourage social participation in film screenings. “Thanks to technology, films now reach our homes, our living rooms, through screening processes that simulate cinema halls. But for us, Europeans, the cinema hall is the essence of cinema. In any case, in Europe, cinematography was defined the day the first public screening took place.”
The “Greek Cinema Day” Program
Studio New Star Art Cinema will project some films with English subtitles or English audio:
17:00 ”There was Once” awarded short film animation by Sofia Papachristou
There was once a donkey that no one needed anymore, a dog that was the disgrace of his master, a cat who had no hope for the future and a rooster that lost everything. They met, joined forces and took their lives into their own hands.
19:00 “Mauthausen” Documentary by Panagiotis Kountouras, Aristarchos Papadaniel (With English Subtitles)
A poetic documentary and unique musical about “Mauthausen Cantata”, a cycle of four arias with lyrics based on poems written by Greek poet Iakovos Kambanellis, a Mauthausen concentration camp survivor, and music composed by Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis.
Lefka Hristougenna 1948 (White Christmas 1948), a short film by Antonios Vallindras
In December 1948, an unofficial Christmas truce allows soldiers from opposing sides of the Greek Civil War to share a moving moment before returning to the barbaric reality.
22:45 “Queen of the Deuce” Documentary by Valerie Kontakos (English subtitles)
The unbelievable true story of Chelly Wilson, who escaped the Holocaust and built a porn cinema empire in New York City in the 1970s. Chelly was a Greek-born, Christmas-celebrating, Jewish grandma, who married men but was openly gay. This documentary charts her unlikely rise to wealth as a shrewd businesswoman on “The Deuce,” aka New York’s infamous 42nd Street
To Read Them Poems, short film by Alexis Chatzigiannis
A road trip with a truck driver and a poet leads them to a grotesque and risky poetry slam. But it’s Christmas so miracles happen.
