Paintings from Batman and Joker, in pastel and bright colors, hand-painted on a large surface and with such detail that you get the feeling that they will “talk” to you. The images, now hard to find in Athens cinemas, are the product of a tradition that Virginia Axiotis. After graduating in painting from the School of Fine Arts, Ms. Axiotis has been working since 2015 with a painted poster as a means of promoting films in historical Athinaion Cinema, one of the oldest cinemas in the city, located at a key point in the Ampelokipi area.

“This is a family business founded by my grandparents,” says Ms. Axiotis in cathimerini.gr. This is the only cinema in the city that still makes posters by hand, and this has contributed a lot Vasilis Dimitriou, considered a master of the ephemeral art of handmade film poster creation. When the offer was made to Mrs. Axiotis to follow in his footsteps, replacing him, she did not know exactly how she should work on the theme, since she had never collaborated with artists of this genre. Her first job took 10 days and was dedicated to the film “Mad Max”.

Ms. Aksioti, who is also into singing and music, spends three to four days creating a poster and produces 20 to 25 posters a year.

“I usually have five days of serious work at my disposal, and since the premieres are every Thursday, I find out about next week’s films on Thursday and on Friday of the previous one. The poster must also be ready at the cinema, from Wednesday evening until the first screening,” adds the artist, who has now settled in Mytilini and sends her work from there.

The process of making a poster is not an easy job, especially since “the day is sealed with paper for six-meter posters. So, to reduce the time of creating and making a poster, I use a projector. I initially project onto a projector to make the design so that the scale transfer clicks correctly and everything is correct. Then I color, also using kraft paper (recycled paper).”

Regarding the complexity of the work, she says: “The difficulty also lies in the material, which is fragile paper that tears very easily. In addition, their maintenance is difficult. For 7 years I drew 100-150 posters. Of these, 40 have been disbanded.

But who created the art of the painted poster, and to whom did Mrs. Axiotis succeed?

Notable artists such as George Vakirtzis, George Kouzunis, Nikolaos Andreakos, Stefanos Almaliotis each time they hand-drawn a still frame of the film, and it was usually an important scene. In this way they attracted people to the theatres. This collection includes giant posters for Greek films from 1950-1975 such as Alice in the Navy, Maddalena, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Kalpian Lyra, etc. and is located at the Thessaloniki Film Museum.

As for Dimitriou, a boxer and boxing trainer by profession, he was a self-taught artist and was very fond of poster art. He wanted to deal with this topic, as he watched the work of Vakirtzis and other creators. He began working in Athenion at the age of 15 and has produced over 8,000 works for cinemas in a career of almost seventy years. “He stopped working 2-3 years before his death in 2020. He would go to the cinema, stick a poster on a box, and he was always a strong, creative and happy person,” recalls Ms. Aksioti.

In a remote corner of the country, namely in the countryside of Soufli Evros, Giannis Tsiakiris he was an accomplished poster artist who served the art for many years. A weaver by profession, Mr. Tsiakiris was headlining at the local cinema in the evenings. At the same time, since he also had a talent for drawing, it was he who designed movie posters. “In 1953, I drew the main characters of the film on strong paper and used casein glue and pigments. I added powder paints to the glue, and later I used plastic paints. Posters, along with the title of the work, were the only advertising medium of the time,” he says nostalgically. But he also stopped in the mid-1970s, when the work was now done in print shops.

With the passage of time and the development of technology, the painted poster has been replaced by large digital prints (banners), and companies give the material to print. But Athenaion, like few cinemas in Greece and abroad, continues this tradition, despite the large amount of work and additional costs involved.

Where does this tradition come from then? “AT the love of the masters of the hall for poster art and art in general. This is their choice. Athenaion is the only hall in Athens that chose painting over plastic. But it was difficult because he basically survived financially only thanks to the support of the hall master himself.”

But what does an aesthetically painted poster suggest to the city? Undoubtedly, since everything is now becoming digital, this is at least a romantic “break” from the monopoly of digitization. “Painting is something alive, it immediately catches the eye, even if it is a caricature. The feeling of being handmade is completely different because it is a gesture and it shows. And as bad as it is, someone will turn to look at it because they have a sense of writing. And the truth is, our streets lack art. I want there to be reconciliation in the city,” emphasizes Ms. Axiotis.