Greece - Korina Miller [45]
Women and men until recently danced separately (or often used handkerchiefs to avoid skin contact) and had their own dances, while courtship dances such as the sousta were danced together.
The often spectacular solo male zeïmbekiko, with its whirling, meditative improvisations, has its roots in rembetika, often danced while drunk or high on hashish. Women have their own sensuous tsifteteli, a svelte, sinewy show of femininity evolved from the Middle Eastern belly dance.
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The memorable opening-credits track from the 1994 film Pulp Fiction was based on surf guitar legend Dirk Dale’s 1960s version of ‘Misirlou’ – originally recorded by a Greek rembetika band around 1930.
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The best place to see traditional dancing is at festivals around Greece and at the Dora Stratou Dance Theatre in Athens.
Contemporary dance in Greece is gaining prominence, with leading local dance troupes taking their place among the international line-up at the prestigious Kalamata International Dance Festival and the Athens International Dance Festival. Acclaimed choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou was the creative director of the Athens 2004 Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies.
Cinema
Cinema in Greece took off after the end of the civil war and peaked in the 1950s and early ’60s when domestic audiences flocked to a flurry of comedies, melodramas and musicals being produced by the big Greek studios. The 1950s also saw the arrival of significant directors such as Michael Cacoyiannis (1950s classics Zorba the Greek and Stella) and Nikos Koundouros, while more social themes were tackled in the 1960s.
After those heydays, Greece’s film industry was in the doldrums, largely due to the demise of the studios after the advent of TV, inadequate funding and state film policy. Film production decreased dramatically – from its peak in 1967–68 when 118 films were made in one year to the 15 to 20 films made annually since the late ’80s.
The problem was compounded by filmmakers taking on writer, director and producer roles, as well as the type of films being produced. The ‘new Greek cinema’ of the ’70s and ’80s was largely slow-moving, cerebral epics loaded with symbolism and generally too avant-garde to have mass appeal.
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Costas Ferris’ acclaimed movie Rembetiko (1983), is based on the life of Marika Ninou, a refugee from Smyrna who became a leading rembetika singer in Piraeus.
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The leader of this school is award-winning film director Theodoros Angelopoulos, winner of the Golden Palm award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for Eternity and a Day. Angelopoulos, known for his long takes and slow pans, is considered one of the few remaining ‘auteur’ filmmakers. His films have won international acclaim, including the epic Alexander the Great (1980), Travelling Players (1975), Landscape in the Mist (1988) and Ulysses’ Gaze (1995), starring Harvey Keitel.
Another internationally known Greek director is Paris-based Costa-Gavras, who made his name with the 1969 Oscar-winning Z, a political thriller based on the murder of communist deputy Grigoris Lambrakis in Thessaloniki by right-wing thugs. His recent films include Amen (2003), The Axe (2005) and Eden is West (2009).
The 1990s saw a shift in cinematic style, with a new generation of directors achieving moderate commercial successes with lighter social satires and themes, and a more contemporary style and pace. These included Sotiris Goritsas’ Balkanizater (1997), Olga Malea’s Cow’s Orgasm (1996) and The Mating Game (1999), Nikos Perakis’ Female Company (1999) and the hit comedy Safe Sex (2000), directed by Thanasis Reppas and Mihalis Papathanasiou.
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Pantelis Voulgaris’ acclaimed 2004 film Brides