THE Kalithea loved it cinema from early. It was called the first cinema in the area Virgin and opened it 1928, to mark the beginning in a district that has been one of the most cinephiles in Athens -36 were the halls that worked in Kallithea over the years. THE Phoebus Delivorias, avid film buff, he remembers his old neighborhood as “the ultimate cinephile’s paradise”: the cinemas ruled “like small churches, to be entered by the only one who needs a myth, the company that wants to become a society, the child who is reflected in the hero”.
If anyone today wants to take the cinematic walk of Kallithea, he will find only nuggets to guide him. In the central Theseos avenue he will walk in front of a semi-basement but wide clothing store and a little further down and across the street he will find a supermarket with a large marquee that might remind him of something. There were once the Etoile and tropical, respectively, two of the central cinemas of Kallithea. Entering the narrows, he will see an abandoned one Daisy on her Arapaki, with a battered but steadfast poster of her “Dangerous Mission 3” by Tom Cruise.
A little further, the machines still put forward: every summer the Cine Fleury introduces himself to the younger ones and reminds the older ones that they once lined up not only for his summer screenings, but also for the legendary skewers of the one that accompanied them (the only summer one together with the re-opening in recent years Cine Dionysia on her Composer that remain in the area).
The last winter refuge for the cinephiles of Kallithea (with the exception of Calypso Municipal Cinema) remained until recently the alexandra, at the junction of the streets Cream and Skipi, the uncertain future of which leads most to believe that the cinema screen of the region’s only winter theater will never be lit again. According to an announcement made a few days ago by the cinema, but also as confirmed by its administrators in the last 9 years in telephone communication with “K”, the owner of the space did not renew (nor negotiate) the rental agreement with them and did not inform them of his intentions about what he will do with the space from now on.
We are talking about a cinema that started its operation in 1969 with a single large hall of 563 seats. Much later and having now been renamed to Etoile Alexandra, the 2003 it was divided into a large and a small hall. The 2011 the Alexandra closed for two years and reopened as an art cinema, mainly showing reruns New Star, before it passed into the hands of its last administrators who formed a classic prime-time program.
Whatever the fate of the venue, definitely the Alexandra cinema, after its last screenings Wednesday, April 24 (which will also be supported by residents who have made appointments there through social media), will cease to function as we knew it. Together he will seal the memories of those once lost in his dark room.
“Wheel, Bag and Cup” in Etoile, “Marked” in Alexandra
There was no teenage walk of his Phoebus Delivoria in his neighborhood which did not end up with mathematical precision in one of the cinemas’ showcases, including Alexandra’s. And the cinema, like everything, were versions of life: “I wanted to get all the posters, find out what’s coming next week – and the week after and in a month, if possible. For what was to come was nothing less than the life to come, which would always be better: with a different light, a better color, more convincing, more modern and closer to the solution of the mystery. Art films and first-run films, popular B-movies and “Greek”, sometimes half-full, sometimes empty, part of life anyway, a reflection of its light”.
A few years earlier, he had also found his own shelters in the cinemas of Kallithea Spyros Corfu, journalist, who recently returned to the theaters of the region to do with him Mike Puguna the handmade documentary “When Kallithea Went to the Cinema”. With his two best friends – who, depending on the movie, “showed” at 5 and 6, maybe 12 people – each cinema in their neighborhood in the 80s performed a very specific role: the Sinan in Herakles, he was waiting for them at noon on Sunday, to “make it summer” with “Godzilla” and “King Kong” and no one should tell them anything. The Etoile in the heart of Kallithea was the triptych “Wheel, Bag and Copana”, while in Alexander’s “center-outside” -as well as in Fairy, to Filaretou – they would go for “good” movies.
There he remembers watching all the movies of his two favorites, his Robert De Niro and his Al Pacino. And to have déjà vu: “In Alexandra, we usually went to the 4:00 p.m. screening. So we had gone to see “Marked” and there were only ten of us. We leave the hall and hundreds of people are waiting outside for the second screening, they have booked all of Kremos. That’s how we “stepped on it” with “Once Upon a Time in America”: again we were “three and the cuckoo” inside and we said, no one will see it and when we came out, there was a crowd for the evening screening”.
“Desolation in Kallithea” that persists
Knowing well the cinematographic course of the region over the years, the impressive thing that Spyros Kerkyras observes is that the halls of Kallithea were not “victims” of either the video or the crisis. But somewhere between the two they found themselves closing en masse, shortly after the Olympic Games and “falling” one by one until today. He himself finds this decline “strange” and if he has to somehow justify it, he will charge it mainly to changing the anthropo-geography of the region and the advance of the internet.
Alexandra, however, was until now a hall that stayed healthy from tickets. This is also confirmed by the younger people of the neighborhood who became friends with him. The 30-year-old Helen Peppa she literally grew up next to the cinema and Alexandra is an integral part of her childhood and teenage years: “I remember that from our first outings without parents in 1st High School, we went to get coffee and go to Alexandra after the cinema. “But even earlier, in elementary school, we used to take groups of children together to see a movie, a phenomenon that I saw happening even now with the younger generations,” he says.
In fact, sometimes teachers also contribute to this. THE Chrysanthi Polyzou she may live in Nea Smyrni, but as a philologist at the school complex of Agios Nikolaos in Kallithea she has been responsible for the last 15 years in the cinematographic part of the cultural sector. Considering it her duty to support the only winter theater in the area, she taught cinema to the students, organizing screenings in Alexandra two or three times a year. Yes, yes “many children had never been to the cinema before we took them. And they watched in shock. Afterwards, they thanked us and this was very important for us teachers”, explains the professor.
The most beautiful childhood memories from the hall also have Vangelis Arvanitakis. The 29-year-old private employee remembers the thrill he felt when he watched him on the big screen “The Lion King” and “Finding Nemo”. “The cinema screened all kinds of movies: blockbusters but also Korean cinema. As for the children, every Sunday there was a performance by Karagiozis, something very special for the whole region”, he emphasizes.
Through neighborhood cinemas, sometimes our whole life passes. The 28-year-old Dimitris S. he remembers that “Alexandra’s” big box of popcorn was always really big, and he realizes that he’s been there so many times since he was a kid that his memories aren’t particularly shocking. They are the ones that everyone has from their neighborhood cinema. If there is one story that deserves to be remembered, it is this one of a doubly illegal date in an almost empty theater, for a mediocre movie.
“Finn”
If the suspension of the operation of Alexandra really marks the end of the cinema Kallithea, the cinema in one of the largest municipalities of the country it will not have a “happy ending”.
The epilogue, in Phoebus Delivoria: “The closing of the last cinema, by a gust of wind that gives thirty pieces of silver to anyone who wants to tear down the city’s social outlets in the name of a dubious development, a future that will have everything but joy and meaning for the common man, it’s criminal, to put it mildly. Because participation in society presupposes love for a meaning. As much as I was angry with Ideal – the jewel of the Center -, I am even more angry with the possibility that Alexandra, the last cultural beacon of a large neighborhood, will be permanently closed. And the irony is that – like Ideal – Alexandra was doing well, its last managers were excellent and full of life. So I say it again: what is the point of development when the average citizen’s life becomes unbearable? When someone who is doing well gets discouraged and gives up? What is the point of the congratulatory announcements for Lanthimos’ victory, when this country does everything to prevent the talented artist from having a nursery to grow and an audience to talk to? Anger therefore for the innocent owner, but greater for the Ministry and for the Municipality of Kallithea who do nothing to give incentives to anyone who keeps our quality of life a little higher”.
