A History of Greek Cinema

In the preface of his History of Greek Cinema, Vrasidas Karalis questions the aptness of designating the filmic corpus that he treats as “Greek,” wondering whether “it would be fairer to talk about the history of cinema in Greece” instead (p. xvi).1 Karalis is referring to several related methodological challenges he sees facing the project of writing a Greek film history. First, how to account for films that are recognized internationally as “Greek” without being made (financed, scripted, directed, acted, filmed, etc.) by or even addressed to Greek nationals. As he puts it, what international audiences came to consider as “Greek cinema” has not been determined “by films made solely by directors of Greek origin, or, indeed, for Greek audiences” (ibid.). Another methodological challenge the author highlights has to do with the continuous institutional impact of foreign personnel on Greek filmmaking: “Greek cinema and images about Greece were made by Greeks and non-Greeks alike; starting with the patriarch of local cinema, the Hungarian Joseph Hepp and continuing after [WWII] with the English Walter Lassally and the Italian Giovanni Varriano” (ibid.). The personnel problem is directly linked to a third difficulty which has to do with the “sourcing” of Greece’s cinematic image (“images about Greece”): The attribution and construction of cinematic “Greekness” are an international affair outside Greek “national” control. There is yet another related methodological stumbling block which is not mentioned in the preface but shows up briefly in the