“Sometimes it’s confusion,” Professor Vrasidas Karalis tells Neos Kosmos with a bellowing laugh, on how Greek Australians – and the wider Australian community – are perceiving Greek film at the moment.
“Sometimes it’s a sort of bewilderment – especially with the weird wave films.”
He thinks back to a presentation at Sydney’s Greek Film Festival on prolific director Theo Angelopoulos. He remembers someone from the audience asking ‘why don’t we show more comedies?’.
“Amongst the older generation there is still a resistance to see the new voices, the new representations that we have of the country, so it’s mixed reactions,” he says of Australia’s involvement with Greek film. But there is a significant change going on, an acceptance not only by audiences, but the global international community toward Greek film. Last year, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ drama Alps won the Sydney Film Festival’s official competition, making Greece as a country a force to be reckoned with in film.
Professor Karalis acknowledges events such as the Greek Film Festival are incredibly important in showcasing and discovering Greece, adding it’s “a connection to Greece”.
“They show that despite the crisis, Greeks are still very creative and extremely productive, which is important for all of us,” he says.
“Here in Australia – and especially after the ’80s – cinema was one of the most important expressions of social questioning, social dialogue, of social conflict, so it shows how relevant Greece is – and has been for so long – because it shows similar problems, parallel situations, and parallel dilemmas,” he says.
He says that despite so many problems, it’s important to always note that the Greek film industry is thriving. In a sense, the crisis has made members of the Greek filmmaking industry more entrepreneurial and creative in their approach.
“The Greek crisis meant that the Greek state doesn’t have any money anymore to invest in the industry and showed that Greeks can go outside the country and ask for money and be awarded this amount of money to produce some very important films,” he says.
“The crisis presented an opportunity for most of these people and it didn’t deter them from being more experimental and entrepreneurial and suddenly abandoning the introspection we had until then, and trying to find something new that was happening in Greece.”
Greek cinema, the professor believes, is not dictated by politics but rather is permeated with what he has coined ‘oppositional aesthetics’. Since Greek film’s very inception, it has always been opposed to the Greek state. Even if the filmmaker was quite conservative and had a good relationship with the state, like (Michael) Cacoyiannis. When they produced their films they always faced censorship and intervention by the state.
Professor Karalis reminds us all that in the ’60s and ’70s, police presence was common in theatres. They were checking the entrance of all cinemas – who was going in, seeing what movie. They were conducting a social profile on your ideas and political ideologies based on what sorts of films you were watching. If you watched a Russian film, you were sympathetic towards or – put simply – a Communist. The situation between the filmmaker and state was tense, and he says this was the way since Greek cinema was first developed in 1914.
During the ’80s, the Socialist government of the time tried to control the cinema and the production of films and Greek cinema almost disappeared.
“We went from 70 films produced in 1980 – down to 12, and down to five at a certain stage. We didn’t have production for films – or good films, let’s say. And that shows that Greek cinematic production was always independent, autonomous, and was always trying to find ways of bypassing these interventions by the state,” the professor says.
Then in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Greek cinema, he says, went through a period of introspection for many reasons, such as the bureaucratisation of production and internal issues of the industry. But, the great internalisation of Greek cinema starts with Angelopoulos, as he was the first to take Greek films and make them global cinema films.
“[Angelopoulos’ films] belong to the global cinema in the sense that they have influenced cinematographers in China, Japan, South America, Canada and the US.”
The process for this phenomenon was accelerated with – what Karalis describes as one of the best films ever made in Europe in the ’90s – Angelopoulos’ Ulysses Gaze.
“A Greek cinematographer abandons Greece and dives into the mysteries of the Balkan neighbours, as we knew nothing about them back then because it was after the collapse of Communism, and it was like an exotic, wild country and suddenly Angelopoulos made it in front of us under the spectacle of Homeric proportions.
“It showed immediately that something was happening in Greek cinema and then immediately after Angelopoulos other directors followed like (Pantelis) Voulgaris, like (Constantine) Giannaris and more recently (Yorgos) Lanthimos and (Athina Rachel) Tsangari.”
It was during the ’60s that Greece first began the tradition of the auteur, imported to the country from France, bringing art house films to the fold. But that had another impact on Greek cinema at the time. Even though art house films changed the aesthetic of Greek cinema – and dominated till the late ’80s with a resurrection again now – it alienated the audience. The ’60s was the Golden Age of Greek cinema, taking 1969, for example, when around 300 films were produced.
“Suddenly these art house films brought a new aesthetic and a completely new understanding of what film was about, should be about, but they destroyed commercial cinema.”
He says the success of art house films at the time was very limited, and people preferred to watch Aliki Vougiouklaki films. But now this has all changed as Greek art house films are receiving much wider attention, not just in Greece, where public taste has changed and diversified, but for international audiences, including Australia.
But one thing he is quick to point out is the representation of the Greek Australian experience on film. He says directors must pay attention to the Greek Australian experience, its diversity and complexity, and try to express it through film.
“Essentially we have only had Head On by Ana Kokkinos,” he starts, “but we need to produce more of these films exploring other aspects of Greek Australian experience and Greek Australian presence. We must be bold and experimental in this case – we have to find new pages in the Australian history.
“They have to forget the folklore and cultural exoticism that has happened and to see it as a living organism, which means an organism that loves, hates, and is at the same time both beautiful and ugly,” he explains.
As for Greek film itself, he remains optimistic that Greek cinema is still as creative as it looks to the future and will continue to create new images and new representations of and on Greece in a very globally interesting way.

The Delphi Bank 20th Greek Film Festival runs in Melbourne from 7-24 November. The Festival also travels to Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra.
Tickets from www.greekfilmfestival.com.au, www.palacecinemas.com.au, or calling 03 9827 7533.
The Greek Film Festival is an initiative of the Greek Community of Melbourne & Victoria.

* Professor Vrasidas Karalis teaches Modern Greek at the University of Sydney and is also the author of A History of Greek Cinema