The Cinematheque

“The essence of Greek cinema is its diverse and intricate embrace of how to picture life’s experiences.”

Christos Dikeakos, visual artist and co-founder of the VGFF

This year’s festival leans into life’s experiences (as so imaginatively suggested by the quotation from Christos Dikeakos) with a contemplation of politics and family, as they separate and intertwine through Greek cinema and the cinema of the Greek diaspora.

With the fifth edition of our annual Vancouver Greek Film Festival, we’re delighted to acknowledge our partner, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, under the leadership of its director Sabrina Higgins, associate professor in the Department of Global Humanities and Archaeology.

This year’s festival offers a heady mixture of filmmakers, from heavy hitters to newcomers on the Greek cinema scene.

We open with Electra (1962), adapted for the screen and directed by Michael Cacoyannis, the Greek Cypriot filmmaker, theatre director, and playwright best known for helming the Oscar-winning Zorba the Greek (VGFF 2022). Electra serves as a tribute to two cultural giants who passed away in recent years: composer Mikis Theodorakis (1925–2021) and actor Irene Papas (1929–2022). No less a luminary than Katharine Hepburn referred to Papas as one of the greatest actors in the history of cinema.

We are pleased to present two new restorations by our friends at the Greek Film Archive in Athens—two films that deal in the politics of this often politically volatile country of fractious and passionate citizens. The allegorical Happy Day (1976), written and directed by the towering filmmaker of political and social engagement, Pantelis Voulgaris, is a special treat for cinephiles and Hellenophiles alike. As is I Remember You Leaving All the Time (1977), a 45-minuter by the insightful feminist director Frieda Liappa, pioneering presence in the New Greek Cinema.

There are many offerings this year with a spotlight on women directors, both in Greece and in diaspora. None may be as audacious as Head On (1988), the breakthrough film of Ana Kokkinos, a Greek Australian writer-director still working today. Her film is a significant piece of New Queer Cinema, dealing in themes of family, sexuality, Greeks in diaspora, and urban alienation. Like so many films in our festival, it also foregrounds the quest for human contact.

The theme of urban alienation permeates the noir classic Panic in the Streets, directed by Greek American Elia Kazan, whose America America and On the Waterfront have featured in previous VGFF editions. In Kazan’s flip on a police procedural, Richard Widmark plays a public health official and epidemiologist who tries to stop a plague from starting. Greek actor Alexis Minotis (Boy on a Dolphin, VGFF 2025) appears in two scenes, opening up a conversation about Greeks in Hollywood and their representation onscreen.

The festival also includes the Vancouver premiere of Kyuka: Before Summer’s End, a stunning first feature by self-taught newcomer Kostis Charamountanis, an instant darling of the art cinema world.

We close with the latest film of Greek Weird Wave charter member Athina Rachel Tsangari (known to our audiences from VGFF 2022) and her first in English, Harvest (2024), a genre-bending fusion of folk horror, costume drama, and political allegory, also receiving its Vancouver theatrical debut.

Enjoy yourselves!
καλά να περάσεις
Harry Killas
Curator, Vancouver Greek Film Festival

Sponsors
Anastase E. Maragos, Watson Goepel LLP
Christos & Sophie Dikeakos
Greek Film Archive (Ταινιοθήκη της Ελλάδος)
Moshe Mastai, Team 3000 Realty Ltd.
Nick & Maria Panos
Omega Travel