For the fourth year in a row Athens Open Air Film Festival will turn squares, parks, museums, theatres and cinemas into informal cinemas with free admission. From 16 June to 17 September, when Premiere Nights Film Festival will begin, the mobile summer festival will cross Athens from start to end and will break the monotony of the urban environment.
The programme will include 20 films that will be shown at dozens of places throughout the city, including Dionysiou Areopagitou walkway at the foot of the Acropolis, the wooded park in Petralona, the park of Akadimia Platonos, Avdi Square, Mesolongiou Square, the Numismatic Museum, the Byzantine Museum, Rematia Theatre in Halandri and the wooded park in Nea Smyrni.
The festival will involve the historic open-air cinemas in Athens such as "Cine Thiseio", "Cine Psirri", "Cine Ellinis", "Dexameni" and "Lais" (the open-air cinema of the National Film Archive).
The programme will be opened with the thriller "The Two Faces of January" that was shot in Athens and Crete. In it, viewers will be able to see how Athens looked in the 1960s. The story is as follows: In 1962, American Chester McFarland and his wife Colette are on tour in Greece and visit the Acropolis. There they meet Rydal, who works as a tour guide and cheats on his customers, the tourists. The McFarlands invite him to dinner and Rydal, attracted by the couple’s wealth and beauty, accepts their invitation. During his visit to the hotel at which the couple is staying, Chester presses him to help him move the body of an unconscious person. Rydal helps him, thus being involved in a series of events. At the same time, he is attracted by Colette, thereby taking the risk of incurring Chester’s wrath.
Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Isaac star in the film which is based on the novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith, the author of "The Talented Mr. Ripley." She was inspired by her visit to Greece and wrote the book after it, in 1964.
The festival programme will also include representative films of contemporary Greek cinema as follows: "The Acropolis" by Pantelis Voulgaris, "Let the Women Wait" by Stavros Tsiolis, "Back door" by George Tsemberopoulos, "Cheap Cigarettes" by Renos Charalambides, as well as the following documentaries: "Parvas" by Gerasimos Rigas, "Open-air Cinemas in Athens" by Magdalene Remoundou, and the classic film by Nikos Koundouros "Magic City."
Film fans will have the opportunity to watch some of the best examples of classic and modern American cinema, including "Suddenly, Last Summer", "Chinatown", "All That Jazz", "Sorcerer", "The Warriors", "Being There", "Crimes and Misdemeanours" and "Do the Right Thing".
Furthermore, on 14 July, the festival will participate in the celebration of the national day of France by showing the film "Same Old Song" ("On Connait la Chanson") by famous French director Alain Resnais, who died this March.
Silent films will be shown too, to the sound of live music. Greek artist Felizol will perform the soundtrack of two films by master of experimental film Kenneth Anger, namely "Scorpio Rising" and "Lucifer Rising".
For the third year in a row, Athens Open Air Film Festival collaborates with the Hellenic Centre for Cinematography and participates in the production of five short films.
Admission to all film shows will be free. They will be organized with the kind support of the Greek National Tourism Organization EOT.
Tags: CinemaAthens Open Air Film FestivalOpen-air cinemaThe Two Faces of JanuaryAthens
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