Leonidas Liambey
Film Festival: Notes from Thessaloniki
Talking about Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, actor David Strathairn praised the film’s screening at the opening of the 48th Thessaloniki Film Festival, as “it is screened in a country which has been dealing with the very difficult topic of humanity and the search for love for millenniums”
2007-11-29
Tirana
Voyage à Tirana, ville longtemps isolée du reste du monde. On y apprend que la société civile albanaise s’organise doucement mais sûrement pour sortir de la torpeur et de l’oppression qui l’a longuement minée, tout en dénonçant la corruption qui sévit dans le pays. Et les créateurs suivent: spectacle, musique, cinéma, littérature…
2007-11-21
Thessaloniki Film Festival 2006
Every November, Greece’s cultural centre shifts northwards and critics, film- makers and viewers shed their usually myopic Athenian focus to head for the International Film Festival in the large port city of Thessaloniki. From Friday 17th November, for ten days, the city’s old port and central cinemas host the largest cinema festival in Greece and draw crowds of cinema lovers from Greece and beyond.
2006-10-25
A dangerous journey
The film Hostage opens in Greece on the 4th March and is based loosely on the hijack of a bus in northern Greece by an Albanian immigrant in 1999. At the same time a number of separate groups are exploring the new realities of immigration and integration in Greece and the Balkans.
2005-03-09
A Gravelly Prophet: The Music of Thanassis Papakonstantinou
Thanassis Papakonstantinou is not happy with his voice, he’s said so in numerous interviews, he’s just not a singer. Nonetheless, his summer concerts sold out, and in true Athenian fashion, were then crashed by at least a third more people than had tickets...
2005-01-20
Transcultures
A major exhibition by the National Museum of Contemporary Arts in Athens examines the encounter between different cultures in the production and reception of contemporary art. Bringing together new works by some of the world's leading artists, 'Transcultures' addresses issues of locality and cultural identity in an increasingly globalised world.
2004-10-11
Athens: a Metropolis by mistake?
What makes a city a metropolis? Can Athens, described to me as the New York of the Balkans by an Albanian actor, really be considered as such city? One thing is for sure: Athens is changing. The frenetic building which took place for the Olympic Games this summer were aimed at transforming the city into something new and better. The many clogged arteries of the city were to become free-flowing modern transport links with a new train line, metro, tram and pedestrian areas. But despite their enormous budgets and successful individual projects, these changes, along with the new sports facilities built to host the Games, are perhaps only part of the transformation the city is undergoing.
2004-10-08
Balkan Dream Theatre
Alfred Bouloti, a successful actor and stage manager at the Tirana National Theatre set up in 1998 a festival based in the ancient theatre of Butrinti, in the south of the country, just an hour from Corfu by ferry. He wanted to call it "a Balkan dream", That is the dream of living together without borders, like neighbours in the rest of Europe.
2004-06-09
Towards today’s Tirana
Towards today's Tirana opens a cycle of features carried out by Babelmed correspondants around the Mediterranean. First stop, Tirana, a city and its inhabitants who are trying to break isolation and overcome a very heavy political past. This cycle of features have been sustained by the European Cultural Foundation. Next stops: Alexandria, Paris-Algiers, Tangiers, Beirut, Tunis..
2004-06-09
Planter des arbres dans le désert
"En Albanie, beaucoup de gens au début des années 90 ont cru que les choses allaient changer rapidement. Or, ils ont constaté, ensuite, que cette liberté est un désert dans lequel il nous faut planter des arbres pour nous orienter. C’est la question que notre génération doit résoudre".(Stefan Capaliku) Rencontre avec l’écrivain Stefan Capaliku, la comédienne Ema Andrea et le réalisateur Alfred Trebickq
2004-06-09
