Greek film
For Greek film includes all Greek-speaking or in Greece resulting film productions . He has become internationally known primarily through great filmmakers such as Theo Angelopoulos , Michael Cacoyannis , Costa-Gavras or Jules Dassin and famous actresses such as Melina Mercouri and Irene Papas . There are currently just over 4,000 Greek films, the majority of which were produced exclusively for domestic audiences.
history
Beginnings
The first public film screenings took place in Athens in November 1896 . Were shown cinematographic works of the Lumiere brothers . The first recordings in what is now Greece were made in 1897 and are attributed to Frederic Villiers . In the years that followed, the Manakis brothers , who were considered film pioneers in the Balkans , documented current events and the everyday life of the population. After a few short films by the comedian Spyridion Dimitrakopoulos in 1911, the first verifiable Greek feature film, Golfo by Konstantinos Bachatoris , was released in 1914, and at the same time the first from the Fustanella film genre typical for Greece . In the early 1930s, Daphnis and Chloe (1931) by Orestis Laskos, the first film with nude scenes , followed by The Lover of the Shepherd Girl (1932) by Dimitris Tsakiris, one of the first Greek sound films, and Social Decay (1932) by Stelios Tatasopoulos, the first politically engaged film. In the period that followed, Greek cinema fell into a crisis for technical and financial reasons, some of which were related to the breakthrough of talkies. Production has now moved to Egypt in the better equipped studios in Cairo and Alexandria .
post war period
After a phase of standstill during the Second World War , Greek film took off in the following decades, thanks in part to the large film studio Finos Film and the filmmakers Giorgos Tzavellas and Alekos Sakellarios . The number of films produced increased significantly, especially the melodrama celebrated great success. On the other hand, new emerging issues ( poverty , social inequality , caused by the rise of a new rich elite, etc.), economic constraints (poorly equipped and impoverished film studios) led to shooting in front of natural backdrops , as well as those restricted by politics Freedom of expression to a neorealist cinema based on the Italian , but also French and British models . This era was dominated by Stella (1955) by Michael Cacoyannis , who skillfully mixed the cultures of ancient and modern Greece and ushered in a new era of Greek film. In 1956, another film called The Shepherd Girl's Lover (by Ilias Paraskevas ) went down in history as the first color film .
1960s
In the 1960s, Greek film reached its peak in 1968, with more than 100 films made each year and up to 137 million visitors. It was also the "golden age" of Greek comedy films . However, the films had little originality , were produced on an assembly line for commercial reasons, and were only intended for entertainment . At the same time, there were some new directors who followed in the footsteps of Cacoyannis and created a real Greek-intellectual cinema.
New Greek cinema
The Greek military dictatorship was a time of upheaval. The film shoot now concentrated more on the television market and made way for the big Hollywood productions in the cinemas . At the same time the restricted censor the auteur one, but succeeded in the last years of the regime to circumvent the prohibitions enacted. This was the hour of birth of the New Greek Cinema , which led to a confrontation between the old and the new, which was particularly evident at the Thessaloniki Festival . The New Greek Cinema received tremendous applause from critics and won many awards at international film festivals.
1980s until today
In the early 1980s, the film fell into a financial crisis due to the decline in audience numbers. He could only be saved by the Greek Film Center , reformed by the Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri , which from then on secured permanent funding. Critics quickly saw it as a renewed state intervention in the country's film production, which caused renewed unrest at the Thessaloniki Festival. From the mid-1980s to the beginning of 2000, with the exception of the success of Theo Angelopoulos , Greek film experienced a downturn that has been replaced by a resurgence in recent years. Young filmmakers such as Giorgos Lanthimos , Athina Rachel Tsangari or Panos H. Koutras succeeded in finding alternative ways to government funding and the associated requirements and again winning prizes at international film festivals.
literature
- Elene Psoma: Filmland Greece - Terra incognita. Dissertation, Logos, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3832516182 .
Web links
- Greek film archive (Greek, English and French)
- Greek Short Films (Greek)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Vrasidas Karalis: A History of Greek Cinema. Continuum, New York and London 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-9447-3 , pp. Ix-x.
- ↑ Vrasidas Karalis: A History of Greek Cinema. Continuum, New York and London 2012, p. 140.