|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
CineMythology
| Article
# : |
10158 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1993 |
2,145 Words |
| Author
: |
Elliott Stein
Elliott Stein is a film historian, critic, and writer
currently living in New York. |
The most comprehensive exhibition of Greek cinema ever held in America reveals a remarkable and passionate body of work. For serious film buffs, the revelation of the season has not been any of the violent and numbingly vacuous new blockbusters from Hollywood, but an extraordinary series of classic Greek films. Under the title CineMythology, the exhibition played to full houses at New York's Museum of Modern Art for seven weeks earlier this year and is currently touring museums and film archives across the country.
Compared with the motion picture industries in other European countries, Greek cinema was a late starter (talking pictures didn't come in until 1932), but from its earliest beginnings it demonstrated unique qualities--an attraction to the modern achievements of Western civilization combined with an attachment to Eastern traditions, to folk customs, songs and dances, and idealized recollections of antiquity. It wasn't until 1931, however, that a Greek film was produced inspired by purely artistic aspirations, accompanied by an accomplished personal form of expression--Orestes Laskos' exquisite adaptation of the pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe (Laskos' work is one of several recently restored films from the silent era that have never been seen outside Greece until the organization of this series).
During the 1930s conditions seemed inauspicious for film-making in Greece, which lacked a studio system equipped to produce sound pictures. Things changed in 1939 with the arrival on the scene of a cameraman turned producer named Filopimin Finos, who became a major force in the industry. Finos set up a small studio in Athens that continued to produce films during the rigors of the German occupation. The public was starved for entertainment, so Finos Films thrived. During the postwar period, American aid gave a much-needed lift to the expanding industry. Most Greek filmmakers of this era, like the neorealists in Italy, made a virtue of necessity--the dearth of funds--and shot their pictures on real locations.
Fertile Period
The 1950s was a particularly fertile period. With the confirmation of the talents of two gifted young directors, Michael Cacoyannis (Stella, 1955) and Nikos Kondouros (The Ogre of Athens, 1956), Greek films began to appear with increasing frequency in competition at Cannes and other international festivals.
Nineteen seventy marked the feature film debut of Theo Angelopoulos and the birth of the movement that
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
