MOTHERLAND, I SEE YOU

MOTHERLAND, I SEE YOU – THE 20th CENTURY OF GREEK CINEMA 

How did Greek cinema converse with the Greek history, politics, and society of the 20th century? How did it mediate great changes? How did it portray political, social and class conflicts? How did it become a means of promotion of particular images of Greece, and how did it define our perception of it? What was its perspective of the future?
Through a selection of important and surprising films from the first decades of Greek cinema to the year 2000, Motherland, I See You revisits the Greek movies of an important period not to find answers but to rethink the questions.
It is a mobile festival, which will tour 21 cities across Greece and abroad, and at the same time a systematic effort to rescue, restore and digitise old material. In the images, sounds, and narratives of the films included in the programme one  doesn’t see a single story about who and how we were and are. However, one does find passion, desire, moments of candour and scenes of devastation, personal and collective dreams, places of remembrance and spaces that got lost, changed or remained unaltered, at times iconic.
Motherland, I See You is a journey of self-awareness that escapes the narrow constraints of a standard history of Greek cinema and attempts to showcase new connections and material, whose significance in recent years has been re-evaluated with the help of a new critical and cinephilic language, but also thanks to the emerging, internationally acclaimed trends of Greek cinema. Our goal is to look at Greek cinema “differently”, “obliquely”, with a gaze that aims at the future while being turned upon the past.
Desires, heroic deeds, disasters, divisions, families and generations, old and new geographies, animals, people and cities featured in this programme ask questions, define, subvert, confirm, imbue, and inspire – with an explosive power but also with the innocence of a child shortly before it wakes up in a new century.

Afroditi Nikolaidou, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Elina Psykou, Syllas Tzoumerkas

Curators Elina Psykou, Syllas Tzoumerkas
Co-curators – Publication and educational material editors Afroditi Nikolaidou, Dimitris Papanikolaou
Project coordinator Phaedra Vokali
Film digitisation and restoration Yannis Veslemes
Production manager Ioanna Rampaouni
Assistant production manager Vaios Galanis
Graphic design Nikos Pastras, TALC

An initiative of the Hellenic Film Academy • under the auspices of “Greece 2021” Committee • Main sponsor: National Centre of Audiovisual Media and Communication (EKOME) • Sponsors: Greek Film Centre, Athens Epidaurus Festival, Thessaloniki International Film Festival • in collaboration with Greek Film Archive and Finos Film 

Films

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