The Cinemas of Athens

A wonderful book about Athenian cinemas by Dimitris Fyssas.

It is a unique detailed record of Athenian cinemas from 1896 to 2013, with many useful and often entertaining details. The best; It is freely available on the internet.

It is a 960-page alphabetical dictionary that includes 650 entries and refers to 550 cinemas in Athens, most of which have ceased to exist for many years.

According to the author, the book includes “All kinds of cinemas: winter and summer, local and non-local, popular and Cyrillic, regular and small, preserved and not, short-lived and long-lived, demolished, trunks or in operation, etc.”

To create the book, Dimitris Fyssas had to invest “10 years of work: field research on plots, about 300 oral testimonies (people in the industry plus spectators), programs, tickets, newspapers, books, blogs, manuscripts, sketches, magazines, film”.

Each entry includes the name and address of the cinema, information and facts, research events, personal, literary or cinematic references, some of the films it has screened, comments on the venue, personal testimonies or press releases.

Indicatively for the Athenian cinema, we read among other things from an article of the “Cinema Star” of 1927: “Its first seats… are paved with leather seats… It is worth emphasizing the beautiful Pianolan in the place of music… It has a classmate… The world He who frequents it is not an aristocrat, but he is not a peasant at all λεί He is an exception in the other neighborhoods… in terms of decency, order, cleanliness and culture “.

More than a detailed and detailed manual for recording the rooms themselves, however, the book is something much more, a fascinating narrative of the history of Athens itself, and often a novel and anxious reading.

We read in the file about the open-air cinema “Rozan” that was once in Naples “The necessary explanations were given to me by Takis Katsamantos, a flower in the corner of the park, on Asklipiou, a local Neapolitan, a willing and precise man. He guided me to the place and told me the following: “Rozan was indeed here. But it only had the highest of the two levels, the one where you see the playground. It was about triangular, very small, with the screen facing Lycabettus. The backs of the spectators looked at Asclepius. The spectators came in from the side. His storehouse is preserved, this is the door you see towards the mountain. It was too green. The square on the lower level did not belong to the cinema, it was another plot. That is, the cinema was not released in Asklipiou, did you understand? When ‘Rozan’ closed and they ate it, the two plots were united and the Municipality made the park. Today, the Municipality and the church are in the courts: either to maintain it, or to build a church “. Other locals inform me (anonymously, of course, because of the object) that the famous Gabriela, who lived a little further away, sometimes came here – and when she found a poor man, he was explained some kindness “.

Read the whole book below and in return the author Dimitris Fyssas, only asks for your help in its dissemination and future improvement waiting for corrections, additions and ideas at d.fyssas @ gmail.com

DHMHTRHS-FYSSASDimitris Fyssas prepares the publication of his next novel, “The Gardener and the Weatherman”, based on the true cases of an agronomist who published a book about the Vegetable Gardens of Athens, and a meteorologist who did the same with a climatic study, both holding live scientific research in Occupied Greece. The book will be published by Estia.

You can download the book by Dimitris Fyssas from the following links:

www.athina984.gr

www.athensvoice.gr part 1 , part 2

www.staxtes.com

periodikotrypa.wordpress.com