Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens | Film screenings

“Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens” – a film by Tassos Langis and Yiannis Gaitanidis – is returning to its home city, to Athens. Following its premiere in official competition at the Athens International Film Festival – Opening Nights in September 2021 and its nomination at the Hellenic Film Academy Awards, these “builders and housewives” of Athens crossed the Atlantic in August 2022 to win Best Film at the Cinema Urbana – Architecture Film Festival Brasília in Brazil.

“This film by Tassos Langis and Yiannis Gaitanidis traces the ‘machine’ at the heart of the modern city. The stories of builders and housewives in post-war Athens are used to document a bottom-up societal mechanism for survival and urban development that, despite institutional obstacles, found expression and was crystallized through the rebuilding of modernist Athens. The internal migrants and lay people of the ‘antiparochí’ system developed their own housing and architectural craft, and – fueled by, and drawing their raw materials from their desire for development and urbanization – knocked down the old and built with what means they had to hand, creating not just better living conditions for their communities but also a more democratic city for all. In this way, they transformed not only their lives but also their environment – forging what today we call modern Athens. That which Doxiadis’ research survey approached on the macro-scale of the masses – that is what this film explores on the micro-scale of the individual. At the end of the day, is it the pursuit of happiness that ‘builds’ our cities? And what happens when data extraction and accumulation mechanisms are used not to improve life in the city but for its datafication? If the city we live in is built out of cement and human micro-histories of individualistic collectivism, what will a city built on data and informational exclusion mechanisms look like?”

Who ‘demolished’ the neoclassical buildings and why did they fill the Attica Basin with apartment buildings? How did they learn and develop their craft, where did they come from, what techniques and knowledge did they carry with them? How did they reinvent their tools to satisfy emerging needs? How did they communicate and negotiate with the ‘educated’ architects? What were their wives asking for? In other words, what was the story of their encounter with the ‘project of modernity’?

As long as these ‘co-authors’ remain invisible, the history of modern Athens is still incomplete, if not also deeply deceptive.

This documentary is based on the same-titled book by Ioanna Theocharopoulou, revised and published in 2022 by the Onassis Foundation.