Cinema’s comeback in a bereft Athens suburb
The credits rolled for the last time at Cine Alexandros in the southern Athens suburb of Kallithea in April. It was the last indoor movie theater in one of the capital’s oldest municipalities and one renowned for its film-loving patrons. Having boasted 36 theaters over the years, Kallithea has now been reduced to just two open-air cinemas, the Flery and Cine Dionysia.
With the opening of a new cinema to replace the Alexandros seeming almost impossible, Spyros Kerkyras, a Kallithean and a film buff, decided that he had to do something to galvanize the community. That something was the Kallithea Film Club, which he decided to establish “so as to make up for the void, in whatever way possible.” He got in touch with Vangelio Bebi, also a resident of the area but one with significant experience from the Federation of Greek Film Clubs, and the idea started to take shape. A couple of months later, the club is still small, but its members include journalists, photographers and filmmakers who live in the suburb.
The idea is to serve as a meeting place for Kallithean film aficionados and to start a regular program of screenings once the summer is over and residents get back into their usual routines. The only venue that seems to be a likely prospect right now is the Kalypso, a former municipal cinema that is used to host all sorts of different cultural events.
‘One way to go is to complain that all the cinemas are gone. The other is to do everything in your power in response. We chose the latter’
“It’s a shame for those of us who have lived here longest, and who used to gorge on the neighborhood’s cinema scene, not to do something,” says Kerkyras, who aspires to turn the club into something more than a small group of people holding screenings every once in awhile, perhaps even expanding to mini-festivals and other cultural events.
Having the knowledge of experience, Bebi is somewhat more restrained and believes that “such an initiative needs to look at what the area needs and what the prevailing conditions are.”
That said, Bebi, who started a film club in the seaside village of Itea in Fokida, has seen that the cinema community is usually eager to support such initiatives. If filmmakers and others in the community are ready to appear at events in distant Itea, then why not Kallithea? “It’s an area with a lot of potential,” she says. “It is close to the city center and there’s certainly a momentum for such a club and for the further development of cinema.”
While Bebi advises against “running headlong into any venture,” the Kallithea Film Club has moved ahead with a proposal for a few screenings to take place at the Municipal Culture and Youth Center on the corner of Mantzagriotaki and Esperidon streets. In fact, it has already shown Pericles Hoursoglou’s latest film, “Evolution,” and Alexis Alexiou’s “Wednesday 04:45” there. The screenings were an unexpected success and were even attended by the filmmakers and other figures of the local cinema community, including renowned director Pantelis Voulgaris.
“One of the most important things a film club can do is to bring together the artists and the public. You can watch a film and get something more in such circumstances,” says Bebi, adding that having directors, actors and other such personalities at screenings also helps widen the club’s appeal outside of the circle of film aficionados.
“One way to go is to complain that all the cinemas are gone. The other is to do everything in your power in response. We chose the latter,” adds Bebi.
