Thessaloniki to celebrate 100 years of Greek cinema
- Marking its 55th anniversary, Greece’s major film gathering calls on viewers to populate the celebratory list for the country’s cinematic centennial
Greek cinema’s 100-year anniversary will be a major theme at this year’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival, which will be holding its 55th edition from 31 October to 9 November.
A celebratory retrospective, showcasing the country’s finest and most influential cinematic moments, will be spread throughout the festival’s programme, but it’s not just up to the programmers to put it together: TIFF is calling on film lovers and festival-goers alike to participate in selecting the films to be featured, via its online poll that opens on 4 September at www.filmfestival.gr.
Starting with Kostas Bahatoris’ 1914 feature Golfo, the longlist, comprising 200 films, includes such highlights as Yorgos Tzavellas’ 1948 film Marinos Kontaras, which was the country’s first international festival entry, as well as Greg Tallas’ The Barefoot Battalion, which in 1954 became the first Greek film to receive a festival award abroad.
The Travelling Players, with which Theo Angelopoulos triumphed at Cannes, winning the FIPRESCI Prize, is also on the list, as are his Palme d’ Or winner Eternity and a Day, Silver Lion winner Landscape in the Mist and Golden Bear contender The Weeping Meadow.
Recent festival favourites like Yorgos Lanthimos’ Cannes UCR winner Dogtooth [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile], Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Venice-awarded Attenberg [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Athina Rachel Tsangari
film profile] and Alexandros Avranas’ Silver Lion winner Miss Violence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alexandros Avranas
film profile] also feature on the list, which follows Greek cinema’s evolution up to Yannis Economides’ Berlinale entry Stratos [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Yannis Economides
film profile].
However, festival fare is not all the list consists of: classic blockbusters and arthouse crowd-pleasers like Nicos Perakis’ Loaf and Camouflage and Nikos Panayotopoulos’ The Idlers of the Fertile Valley are also present, as are subversive filmmakers like Nikos Nikolaidis (The Thrushes Are Still Singing) and Renos Charalambides (No Budget Story).
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