Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2023
Summary
Transnational discussions on the subject of Greek cinema in the first quarter of the twenty-first century typically revolve around the ‘Weird Wave’, the awkward and bizarre cinema that is considered a product of the ten-year financial and political crisis that began in 2008, and that interrogates urgent biopolitical issues that emerged even before the Covid-19 pandemic (Papanikolaou 2021). This new visibility of Greek films, attributed to Yorgos Lanthimos and his fellow filmmakers, gave film scholarship the chance not only to discuss contemporary Greek cinema, but to revisit its history and put on a global map films and filmmakers that deserve to be known by a wider cinephile community. Only a decade ago, the majority of English-language academic literature on Greek cinema focused almost exclusively on the patriarchal figure of Theo Angelopoulos; we feel that now is the right moment to rewrite a transnational history of Greek cinema in a more inclusive way, relating cinema to critical strands of contemporary cultural theory, addressing issues that have remained obscure, and questioning certainties, cinematic myths and national stereotypes.
Why deal with the Greek version of the film noir? During this last decade, and in the midst of social turmoil in the country, many filmmakers turned to crime films and hybrid forms of the neo-noir, using as their backdrop the financial, political and migrant crisis, and expressing a critical view on neoliberalism, nationalism or gender discrimination. The Greek film To thavma tis thalassas ton Sargasson/The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea (dir. Tzoumerkas, 2019), which premiered at the 69th Berlinale, features as its protagonist a disgraced, alcoholic, no-nonsense, female local police chief who, while uncovering a monstrous conspiracy, bonds with an abused young woman, and together they wreak revenge against patriarchy. The film was reviewed as a neo-noir (Mitsis 2019), while its premise is considered a norm in different national contexts (from ITV's Prime Suspect, 1991, to Destroyer, dir. Kusama, 2018). However, by the standards of Greek genre cinema, and compared to the first attempts at Greek noir, we have come a long way. We have also, seemingly, moved on from fruitless debates about whether a Greek film noir category exists. Or have we?
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- Greek Film Noir , pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2022