The Cinematheque hosts fourth-annual Vancouver Greek Film Festival, March 13 to April 2

Program includes Boy on a Dolphin, The Travelling Players, On the Waterfront, and more

SPONSORED POST BY The Cinematheque

The Travelling Players.

The Cinematheque is gearing up to host the fourth edition of its annual Vancouver Greek Film Festival, organized by curator and cofounder Harry Killas, from March 13 to April 2.

Previously held in June, this year’s festival pivots to a new month to bring a little Aegean turquoise and Greek sun to the Lower Mainland as it marks Greek Independence Day on March 25. The festival also welcomes a new partner, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, under the leadership of director Dimitris Krallis.

Boy on a Dolphin.

Programming opens on March 13 with Jean Negulesco’s 1957 film Boy on a Dolphin, a pleasurable and touristic window into village life and its connection to the ancient past, with surprisingly contemporary themes of cultural appropriation and theft. It was the first Hollywood film to be shot on location in Greece, and marked a 23-year-old Sophia Loren’s English-language debut.

Considered by many to be the greatest Greek film ever made—and one of the high watermarks of world cinema—Theo Angelopoulos’s masterpiece The Travelling Players comes to The Cinematheque as a new restoration on March 21 and 30 in honour of its 50th-anniversary year. Angelopoulos traces an alternate history of mid-20th-century Greece as a company of players travels the landscape through time and space.

On the Waterfront.

The popular A Touch of Spice and documentary portrait 01 each touch on cultural displacement and the complexities of Greek identity. A Touch of Spice reminds viewers of the presences and absences of Greeks in Anatolia, while 01 connects diasporic Greek artists and intellectuals to Western artistic practices and contemporary Greek arts.

The iconic On the Waterfront, a 1954 passion project by Greek-American director Elia Kazan, asks whether one man can make a difference in a cynical and corrupt world. Another title on the program this year is Topos, which presents a counter-narrative of contemporary Greece through the lens of filmmaker and visual artist Antoinetta Angelidi. There’s also Nikos Papatakis’s The Shepherds of Calamity, a caustic examination of village life, Greek church ritual, dancing, and patriarchy.

Purchase tickets and browse the full lineup of films through The Cinematheque.

Post sponsored by The Cinematheque.

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