In Dreams! The grand tribute of the 26th Athens International Film Festival

If cinema is the experience of dreaming with eyes wide open, amongst other “dreamers” in the audience, who are all eager to journey into another dimension, then during the quarantine period what we were all deprived of was the ability to dream. The magical property of the movie theatre, of the collective experience of watching a film within it, the en masse submission to the screen left a gap during the isolation period which cannot be atoned for. 

As the unacknowledged “progeny” of the quarantine, this year’s tribute of the 26th Athens International Film Festival resulted from a need and an admission: the need to find ourselves in cinemas once again and the admission of the unique quality cinema has to alter the world it faces.  To transform it into a poem, a tale, a religious experience.

From a direct line to the subconscious as attempted by directors such as Resnais (“Last Year at Marienbad”), Bergman (“Hour of the Wolf”) and Lynch (“Mulholland Drive”) to the spectacular reconstructions of reality, such as Parajanov’s “The Color of Pomegranates” and Jires’ “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders”, dreamy depictions of the world we live in (“Koyaanisqatsi” and “Liquid Sky”), 3D wanderings of the mind (the stunning “Long Day's Journey Into Night” by Bi Gan in its highly anticipated Greek premiere at the cinema and in 3D), hallucinatory trips via camera to the ultimate consciousness-expanding (“Enter the Void” by  Gaspar Noé) and post-modern reflections on the narcotic and metaphysical substance of the medium of cinema (such as the legendary “Rapture” by Iván Zulueta, which will also be screened for the first time in our country), this year’s tribute invites the audience to a whimsical celebration: an apotheosis of the dreamy and charming otherworld, of cinematic seduction and beauty, which could not be experienced on a smaller screen, or through any online medium but only inside a cinema, the ultimate refuge from the outside world, a place where the privilege to dream will always remain an inalienable right. Loukas Katsikas

The films of the tribute:

PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (1951) by Albert Lewin


 
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) by Alain Resnais



THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1965) by Wojciech Has



HOUR OF THE WOLF (1968) by Ingmar Bergman



THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES (1969) by Sergei Parajanov



VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS (1970) by Jaromil Jires



THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973) by Alejandro Jodorowsky



HEART OF GLASS (1976) by Werner Herzog



RAPTURE (1979) by Iván Zulueta



KOYAANISQATSI (1982) by Godfrey Reggio



LIQUID SKY (1982) by Slava Tsukerman



ALICE (1988) by Jan Svankmajer



BARTON FINK (1991) by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen



ΜULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) by David Lynch 



INNOCENCE (2004) by Lucile Hadzihalilovic



ENTER THE VOID (2009) by Gaspar Noé



LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT 3D (2018)  by Bi Gan

The 26th Athens International Film Festival will take place between 23rd September and the 4th October 2020, in its usual venues, IDEAL, DANAOS1 and OPERA1 cinemas, and exclusively for this year, within the context of the hybrid and safety-minded organisation of the event, films will also be screened at the open air cinemas LAIS - the Greek Film Archive Foundation, RIVIERA, TRIANON STELLA and at Technopolis City of AThens.

The full schedule of the Festival will be presented at the Press Conference which will take place on Wednesday 16th September 2020 at the open air cinema AEGLI ZAPPEIOU at 20:30 and will be streamed live  through the Festival’s social media accounts.

For updates and more information tune into the sites of aiff.gr and cinemagazine.gr and the relevant social media pages: Facebook AIFF, Instagram, Twitter.  
 
The 26th Athens International Film Festival takes place under the auspices of and with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and Sports.