The first showing was scheduled for February 13, 2020 at the Benaki Museum. The new coronavirus has already terrorized the West, but has not yet had time to manifest itself in Greece. Maria Iliou’s new documentary, along with a photo exhibition, will kick off an ambitious film project divided into five films – sections covering 200 years of contemporary Athens.

“We only managed to do five screenings, and now, if you think about it, we are very lucky, because we hugged and kissed, completely unaware of what was in front of us…” director Maria Iliou recalls today about the two new opportunities that we have, tonight and tomorrow to see in Athens Concert Hall (Alexandra Triantis Room, 8:00 pm) The first documentary called “Athens from East to West, 1821-1896” was in danger of being covered in the dust of a health crisis. The 90-minute film tells the unknown success story of how a small ruined early 19th century Ottoman city was transformed into a European neoclassical city in less than seven decades. “The old desire to enter Mayakovsky’s time machine and see Athens at different moments returned with a rush,” she recalls in the introductory text to the book based on the film, published by Minoas. “The desire to see not only monuments, but also everyday life, to constantly see images, how the life of the city and its inhabitants changed over time, finally, the story of the city’s history in images took shape and began to become a project.”

“We conducted huge searches on three continents to find incredible drawings, prints, early photographs,” says M. Iliou.

In this first “episode” images, drawings, prints and photographs (a very large part of the material was searched and found in the most unexpected places on the planet and 80% presented for the first time) necessarily bear the brunt of the cinematic narrative. Indeed, wasn’t he afraid that the lack of animation would jeopardize that first step? “I thought so at first, that it would be the most unpleasant of all. But since we didn’t have cinema, we had to do a lot of research on three continents to discover amazing drawings, prints, early photographs. And with this technique, as you move the camera across the image, you suddenly have the illusion of a movie.”

The second film is also ready

There is a backbone of employees that has not changed in this long-term journey (Alexander Kitroev as a historical consultant, historian Christina Kouluri and journalist and colleague on “K” Nikos Vatopoulos), but each new “episode” will be enriched by new participants, each of whom will bring their own narrative baggage. By an unfortunate coincidence, both of the people who made a decisive contribution to the initiation and implementation of the project are no longer alive: Angelos Delivorias (1937-2018), with whom Maria Iliou shared the initial idea and discussed together many of the main chapters of the project. project (“together we divided it into sections and made important decisions about the story, so the Benaki Museum accepted the project”), but also the eupatride sponsor, who asked not to be identified (“left” in 2020). The second film in the cycle is already ready (“Athens of Conflicts, 1922-1950”) and will be shown in January, and the completion of this long journey is expected by 2025.