Zeta, Floretta, Niki

How did Greek Cinema capture times past – and are they really past? How did it foretell a time of change – and are things really changing? How have Greek filmmakers negotiated the concepts and terms that are precipitating dynamic change in the public sphere, and redefining long-entrenched attitudes? “Open Cinema” – a series of events jointly organized by the Hellenic Film Academy and Onassis Stegi – is back for a second year, this time presenting the five-day tribute program “Zeta, Floretta, Niki”.

The tribute takes its title from the first names of three actors who starred in the “Amok” – Zeta Apostolou, Floretta Zanna, and Niki Triantafillidi. Three women who, at the time of the film’s release and for many decades afterwards, faced what today is considered reprehensible criticism and defamation for appearing in the feature. This gesture – of naming the tribute after them – is an act of love and the least that can be done as a form of public redress, marking a clean break from slut shaming in all its forms, many decades on.

Films that enter into discourse with gender issues, and capture instances of a violence that has been condemned and brought firmly out of the shadows by the #MeToo movement; films that encounter various forms of Patriarchy, but also Matriarchy; films that are strange and painful, fierce and, in some cases, funny; films that not only enquire into Cancel Culture but also shed light on the 50/50 gender parity pledge – that is, the underrepresentation of women in cinema. These screenings connect what once was with what now is, sparking discussion about vital and pressing issues of our times.

The multiple personalities of a woman a little before her death appear in Antoinetta Angelidi’s “Topos” (1985). Average, everyday men and women are trapped in Pavlos Tasios’ “Request for a Song” (1980). An individual is subjected to the violence of money, family, and social class in Tonia Marketaki’s “The Price of Love” (1984). Love, death, and dark humor reign supreme in “Singapore Sling” (1990), Nikos Nikolaidis’ ultimate film scandal. Dimitris Stavrakas’ “Betty” (1979) gives us the portrait of a trans woman some 40 years before the legal recognition of gender identity. A family flounders, cheerful and absurd, overturning prevailing stereotypical and moralizing attitudes, then validating them, then overturning them once more in Dinos Dimopoulos’ “A Crazy… Crazy Family” (1965). Love comes as a reaction to a world grown intractable in Alexis Damianos’ “Evdokia” (1971). A father who sees himself as master of his children sets them deadly traps in Yiorgos Stamboulopoulos’ “Caution, Danger!” (1983). A lower-middle class Greek family is set to burst into flames in Yannis Economides’ “Matchbox” (2003). Giorgos Katakouzinos’ “Absences” (1987) depicts gender and the roles within a bourgeois family with an uncommonly high level of tension. Two sisters face up to their passions and loneliness in “Love Wanders in the Night” (1981) by Frieda Liappa, one of the most important directors of the 80s, who would see her entire career devastated by savage and sensationalist tabloid television journalism. An agent flouts the rules in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s “The Slow Business of Going” (2000). Theo Angelopoulos’ “The Beekeeper” (1986) offers us a relationship open to multiple interpretations, and a chronicle of the 1980s that enters into powerful discourse with the present day. Last but not least, terror, sexual violence, and fierce leads – both male and female – are examined under the hot sun in Dinos Dimopoulos’ “Amok” (1963).

The films are to be introduced by their creators, and by filmmakers, film critics, and journalists. In addition to these screenings, audiences will also have the chance to enjoy excerpts from films honored at the Hellenic Iris Awards since 2009, on screens set inside the Onassis Stegi foyer: shots, scenes, and fragments of dialogue and imagery created by contemporary exponents of Greek cinema that mirror, supplement, or upend the films and themes of the tribute program to be presented on the Onassis Stegi Upper Stage, entering into lively discourse with the featured works or else directly inspired by them.