Zeta, Floretta, Niki. Digital Screenings at the Onassis Channel 04 − 06.03.2022

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? This year, “Open Cinema” – a series of events jointly organized by the Hellenic Film Academy and Onassis Stegi – presented the five-day tribute program “Zeta, Floretta, Niki”. The tribute featured 14 landmark films drawn from Greek cinema’s rich back-catalog of works, all screened on the Onassis Stegi Upper Stage.

The tribute now continues on the Onassis Channel on YouTube with four iconic films that connect what once was with what now is, sparking discussion about vital and pressing issues of our times. “John the Violent” (1973), Tonia Marketaki’s monumental debut film, definitively dissects the morals of 1960s Greek society in a stifling portrayal of the mentally frayed societal fabric as it seeks redemption. In “The Idlers of the Fertile Valley” (1978), Nikos Panayotopoulos presents a world of indolent males mentally old before their time, in which the only woman around tries to spur them into action through the positive energy of motion and resolve. In “Mania” (1985), Giorgos Panousopoulos conjures up a portrait of the lead female character, a being like an unbridled, immemorial goddess, free of society’s chains, who embodies the age-old struggle between the metaphysical and the earthly, between instinct and reason. And in “Anna’s Engagement” (1972), Pantelis Voulgaris examines class dynamics, relationships founded on economic dependence, and the role of women in a time when Athens was emerging as people’s only way out, a place where the new Greek dream was born and died, where the courses lives would take were decided with a simple nod of the head.