We are standing behind the half-open door of the Riviera summer cinema, in Exarchia, and it is almost impossible to avoid the curious looks of the passers-by. They look at the space with the excitement of a small child, wondering if the moment they were waiting for has come prematurely. The city’s summers are slowly emerging from their winter slumber.
The picture of the previous months had something post-apocalyptic. The ivy has taken over the walls, the rooftops are waiting for permission from patrons to give the nights the aroma of popcorn and the taste of lemonade. Grasshoppers lurk behind foliage. You have the feeling that everything around you is holding its breath. Looking at the pandemic period from a distance, a year after the big blockbusters, the owners of the summer cinemas are already polishing the marquees just before welcoming us.
“Preparations for the opening of a summer cinema are not such a simple matter”, says Peggy Riga, owner of the summer cinemas Riviera, VOX and Cine Athenaia, and “an archaeologist by nature”, as she declares. “It also depends on the cinema, everyone has their own needs.
The Riviera, which is a jungle, needs a gardener for two days and then transport the branches. There are a lot of expenses. It needs painting, it’s like treating a house that was exposed, with most of it outdoors. In the past, in VOX, we had many more plants, climbers, but the snowstorm burned them and they did not recover. Many times the chairs need to be changed, because they are exposed to the sun, it’s not like we go in and just open it.
Because it is a seasonal business and because the cost of digital projectors is very high, most of us carry them over from the winter or rent them.”
He explains that the “explosion” in summer cinemas started in 2020, when in the midst of quarantine they were the only spectacle. In recent years the Riviera, which opens this year on May 16, has seen a dramatic increase in attendance for a number of reasons. The world’s interest in the new Greek cinema, which peaked with the Magnetic fields, was largely identified with the summers of the region. It also played its part in the summer of 2022, which had many popular movies, as well as the special screenings that people loved through dates like those given on Midnight Express and Big Movies Big Mondays. The favorite reissues were honored by the public: it is characteristic that last year at VOX most tickets were bought in Theorem by Pasolini. As for the behemoths Barbie and Oppenheimer, these brought to the summers of many neighborhoods of Athens a young world that until recently was completely unaware of their existence. THE Barbieas reported by Ms. Riga, brought in several theaters a 20-30% increase in tickets compared to those that were cut the previous year.
This year, the program is expected to include Very wet of Alexandros Voulgaris and Carmen’s summer by Zacharias Mavroides, along with reprints of course. Midnight Express will continue at the Riviera, the “Suddenly This Summer” program will apparently be dedicated to the Paramount, while the Lawrence of Arabia. Ms. Riga hopes that the films will still be shown Rocco and his brothers and Chaos of the Taviani brothers. One could say that such tributes have created a kind of “cinema school”. People are choosing the big screen to discover masterpieces that are not easily accessible in this day and age.
Capital tourism
In anticipation of a few more record tourist arrivals in Athens this summer, experience has shown that there are not a few foreigners who seek to watch films of the new Greek cinema in a theater. The summer culture seems to be well integrated into the city’s development. They even have a place on the list of suggestions that Airbnb owners will indicate to guests. The first messages are already being sent to the hall masters. “Which movies are showing the week we come to Greece?” Many cinemas now request English subtitles from the distribution companies for the Greek films. The attendance of tourists even on days when the Greek will not go out is important for the income of the cinemas.
Many cinemas now request English subtitles from the distribution companies for the Greek films, as the summer experience concerns the tourists of Athens.
Cine Paris is now added to the cinema attractions, which after a four-year hiatus reopens its doors, offering romantic screenings overlooking the Acropolis. The legendary summer theater of Plaka, which first opened in 1920, will reopen on May 11, renovated, under the management of the Behtsis family, which is behind Cinobo and Cine Fleury and Cine Alexandra. “At Cine Paris we are determined to be able to accommodate people who do not speak Greek. This will be done either with English subtitles in all the films or with a surround system in the English-language films”, says Dafni Behtsi. “We want to breathe new life into a space that is iconic and historic, but still retain its character. The goal was to upgrade it, as well as the sound and image quality, but we remained faithful to the historicity that governs it”, he adds. At Cine Paris, the public will be able to see the most important new releases of the summer alongside older masterpieces of world cinema, as well as new and classic Greek films that are connected to the city of Athens.
The “new” Lanthimos
“Certainly the announcement of the new film by George Lanthimos sets the tone this summer,” he says regarding Kinds of Kindness, which will start showing on May 30 in our country, Babis Kontarakis, the man behind the movies Carmen, Stella and Dafni. All three will open their doors on May 16.
“Besides many others, we singled it out Neighbor huntinga very funny comedy that won the Audience Award at the French Film Festival a few days ago, the Last taxi driver, a Greek film by Stergios Paschos, starring Clelia Andriolatou in a role to be discussed. And of course There is always tomorrowa phenomenon film that has exceeded 5 million tickets in Italy and I think it will be the film of this summer”.
Inflation and streaming
The survival of Athens’ summer cinemas is largely due to the provision made in the 1990s for the preservation of listed buildings, surviving reconstruction. Thanks to this, they light up our evenings today, offering a collective experience that temporarily freezes the frenetic pace of modern lifestyles. What are the challenges he defines? And how have streaming platforms and accuracy affected the life of summers?
“I think people can’t bear to pay a 9-10 euro ticket to go to summer,” says Peggy Riga. Some cinemas may, however, increase their prices this year. For his part, Iordanis Tosonidis, owner of Cine Pallini, a cinema that has been a meeting point for the Mediterranean region since 1960, says that inflation is a problem for all businesses. “We try to keep the prices at the same levels. Most of us haven’t done some kind of increase in tickets,” he says. It is expected that there will be small price increases in canteen products, as the hall masters try to adjust to the reality.
“We try to keep the prices at the same levels. Most of us have not made any kind of increase in tickets”, says Iordanis Tosonidis, owner of Cine Pallini.
What has changed, however, the great economic crisis of the past years, according to Tassos Adamopoulos, manager of the Lais summer cinema of the Film Archive of Greece, is how the viewers are distributed among the screenings. “In recent years, the number of people who will come to the evening screening after 11 has decreased a lot, because they cannot go home by means of transport. So we have an increase in the projection of 9”, he observes. He sees more and more visitors develop into regulars who return two and three times a month to the Film Gallery to see new screenings. “In the theaters of the Film Library this year there will be a combination of arthouse distribution films as well as tributes to Greek and foreign directors,” he says. We will specifically see a tribute to Korean cinema and two others, one to Nikos Perakis and one to Stavros Tsiolis.
It is certain that the winter theaters received the biggest blow from the streaming platforms. What seems to save the summers is that they offer a complete, different type of experience as well as the adoration of the Greeks for summer night outs. If there is one thing that has possibly changed because of the platforms, it is, according to Iordanis Tosonidis, the range of options for the hall masters. “There is no room for mediocre films. No one will bother with a movie they could watch at home. It’s a tougher choice.”
There are of course other external factors that can affect a season, such as this summer’s big sporting events or the weather. Mr. Tosonidis notes that the operating time of cinemas has increased by two months compared to ten years ago. Cine Pallini will open this year on May 6. “If it wasn’t for Easter, I might have opened at the end of April,” he says. “From where we were closing at the end of September, we are now closing in the middle to the end of October.” This year, there may not be the big productions of last year, but among other things, he is looking forward to Angry by George Miller. While the world in the neighborhood is renewed, the experimentation in the program continues. It is an ongoing process in which viewers indicate their preferences.
In 2023 there was a 34.8% increase in tickets purchased in Greek cinemas compared to last year. The contribution of the summers was great. Where can the numbers go this year? “Fluctuations are not as important as feeling that we have a role to exist, to relate to someone, to not be dinosaurs,” says Mr. Tosonidis characteristically, before concluding with a note of optimism that “the summers are still enduring.” In Palini, Exarchia, Kypseli and in every neighborhood, they faithfully continue their sacred mission. The doors open, the signs light up again, they await a signal to bring back summer.
2024-05-02 19:59:00