Athens Nights
I'm in Athens and it's hot! It reminds me of how unbelievably hard it used to be to go to work in the summer in this heat. What you really want to do is sleep the day away waiting for night-time to fall. Summer nights in Athens can be magical. Summer nights in Greece can be magical.
I went to the Athens Open Air Festival yesterday night. It's a free roving festival now in it's third year - and thus I have missed it so far by being in London - that shows films in a different open air public location each time. Last night they were in Abyssinias Square in Monastiraki. Because the square is quite small they used a blow up screen.
We saw an old greek film from 1981. The greek title would literally translate into "The people opposite", the english title is quite stupidly "A Foolish Love".
Even though I was only 3 in 1981, a lot of what is shown in the film reminds me of my own childhood. It's basically about young people in the summer in Athens, kicking about the suburbs of the city that are brutally transversed by large highways. It's too hot during the day and most of the action takes place at night. You get snippets of how americanised life for the young was just starting to become: motorbikes and racing at night along the highways, video game arcades, listening to the radio station from the american base that was still in Athens at the time (my mother used to listen to that radio station all the time) or to pirate radios that played american music.
The hero is called the Ghost because he spends all his days in his blacked out room either sleeping or studying - he's an astronomy student - or spying on the people across the highway with his telescope. He only ventures out at night to make money by helping a gang steal motorbikes, visit the video arcade or watch "his friends" race on their motorcycles. He ends up become obsessed with the mother of a teenaged daughter that he constantly spies on with his telescope, and that's were the aimless story starts to become an odd romance.
I couldn't find a good link for a video with english subtitles unfortunately, but you could also watch it as a documentary really. There isn't all that much talking in the film, and a lot of it isn't really important to the plot.
Interesting fact about the lead actor of the film: if you look him up on imdb you'll see that he only plays in a couple of films in the 80s and then disappears. That is because he became a stage actor specialising in ancient greek plays, and imdb doesn't list stage plays.
I went to the Athens Open Air Festival yesterday night. It's a free roving festival now in it's third year - and thus I have missed it so far by being in London - that shows films in a different open air public location each time. Last night they were in Abyssinias Square in Monastiraki. Because the square is quite small they used a blow up screen.
We saw an old greek film from 1981. The greek title would literally translate into "The people opposite", the english title is quite stupidly "A Foolish Love".
Even though I was only 3 in 1981, a lot of what is shown in the film reminds me of my own childhood. It's basically about young people in the summer in Athens, kicking about the suburbs of the city that are brutally transversed by large highways. It's too hot during the day and most of the action takes place at night. You get snippets of how americanised life for the young was just starting to become: motorbikes and racing at night along the highways, video game arcades, listening to the radio station from the american base that was still in Athens at the time (my mother used to listen to that radio station all the time) or to pirate radios that played american music.
The hero is called the Ghost because he spends all his days in his blacked out room either sleeping or studying - he's an astronomy student - or spying on the people across the highway with his telescope. He only ventures out at night to make money by helping a gang steal motorbikes, visit the video arcade or watch "his friends" race on their motorcycles. He ends up become obsessed with the mother of a teenaged daughter that he constantly spies on with his telescope, and that's were the aimless story starts to become an odd romance.
I couldn't find a good link for a video with english subtitles unfortunately, but you could also watch it as a documentary really. There isn't all that much talking in the film, and a lot of it isn't really important to the plot.
Click to viewInteresting fact about the lead actor of the film: if you look him up on imdb you'll see that he only plays in a couple of films in the 80s and then disappears. That is because he became a stage actor specialising in ancient greek plays, and imdb doesn't list stage plays.