Authors
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Panayiota Mini
University of Crete, Greece. & Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Institute for Research and Technology (ITE) - Hellas
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Nikos Tsagarakis
University of Crete
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Katerina Komi
University of Crete
Keywords:
film locations, transnational cinema, European cinema, film coproductions, international cooperation
Abstract
Since the late 1940s more than forty foreign films have been partially or fully shot on the Greek island of Crete. This article focuses on five of these films: Jules Dassin’s Celui qui doit mourir (1957), Ella Lemhagen’s Tsatsiki, morsan och polisen (1999), Costa-Gavras’s Eden à l’Ouest (2009), Çagan Irmak’s Dedemin İnsanları (2011), and Hossein Amini’s The Two Faces of January (2014). The article examines the effects of these productions on Cretan communities, their foreign producers and filmmakers, and their audiences around the world. As the research shows, these productions had many material benefits for local communities and foreign producers alike, and were equally important in bringing people from different backgrounds together and creating transnational bonds. Moreover, having been made within an international context, most of these films told stories of mutual respect and tolerance, thus becoming crucial in promoting international solidarity and advancing transnational cinema as a powerful vehicle for social awareness.
Author Biographies
Panayiota Mini, University of Crete, Greece. & Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Institute for Research and Technology (ITE) - Hellas
Panayiota Mini is Associate Professor of Film History at the University of Crete, Greece, and a Collaborating Faculty Member of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (Rethymno, Crete). She holds a Ph.D. in film studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2002). Since 2003 she has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses of film history and theory at the University of Crete. Between 2004 and 2009 she also taught Modern Greek theatre and film at the Open Greek University. Her research interests and publications concern Greek cinema, East European cinema, Nikos Kazantzakis’s screenplays, representations of history, film adaptation, and film style and narration. Her recent work includes a monograph on Greek modernist filmmaker Takis Kanellopoulos (2018) and two co-edited volumes (Domestic Servants: Historical Subjects and Artistic Representations in the Greek-Speaking World (19th-21st Centuries, Panazisis, 2020) and Approaches to Film History (University of Crete & Institute for Mediterranean Studies, 2020).
Nikos Tsagarakis, University of Crete
Nikos Tsagarakis holds a BA in Film Studies with History from Middlesex University London; an MA in film studies from the Department of Philology at the University of Crete (MA thesis: “The History of Heraklion Cinemas in the 20th century”) and a Ph.D. in Film studies (University of Crete, Ph.D. thesis: “History of the Greek Avant-garde Cinema”). He is a post-doc Research Fellow at the University of Crete, involved in a project on international film productions in Greece (European Operational Program, National Strategic Reference Framework).
Katerina Komi, University of Crete
Katerina Komi is a Ph.D. Candidate in Film Studies at the University of Crete, Greece, and a Research Fellow in a project on international film productions in Greece (European Operational Program, National Strategic Reference Framework). She holds a B.A. in theater studies from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a M.A. in film studies from the University of Crete. Her publications concern transnational cinema (“The Moon-Spinners (1964): When Hollywood Travelled to Elounda,” in Proceedings of the 12th International Congress of Cretan Studies, 2019) and the reception of the French New Wave in Greece (“Distribution and Exhibition of French New Wave Films in Greece [1958–1974], in Panayiota Mini and Konstantina Georgiadi, Approaches to Film History, University of Crete and Institute for Mediterranean Studies -ITE, 2020).
