FOCUS ON GREECE AT MAREMETRAGGIO

Maremetraggio, in cooperation with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture and Drama Film Festival, and thanks to the support of the Eastern Greek Community of Trieste, dedicates its tenth edition to Greece
In Trieste, 2009 will be the year of Greece.

In January, Greek productions have played a major role at the 20th Trieste Film Festival, which dedicates to Greek cinema a two years project, that will continue in January 2010. The first part of the tribute started in January 2009 and was dedicated to the best Greek films of the last decade.

This tribute to Greece will reach its climax in summer with an event aimed at linking the two winter events. In fact, for its tenth edition, Maremetraggio Festival, in cooperation with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture and thanks to the support of the Eastern Greek Community of Trieste, proposes a section fully dedicated to this country located between Europe and Asia, between the Balcans and the Mediterranean. A 360° focus, which will take place during the Festival, through cultural initiatives which will allow the public of Maremetraggio to get in touch with this young European democracy. The event will start from cinema.

Thanks to the collaboration with Drama Film Festival – the main Greek event dedicated to short films – Maremetraggio will bring to Italy and screen a selection of the best Greek short films of the last ten years. The directors and the actors of the selected films will come to Trieste to present them to the public. At its turn, Maremetraggio will move to Greece for the 2009 edition of Drama Film Festival, where will be present with a season of the most significant Italian short films proposed during the summer edition of the Triestine festival.

The leading event of the film tribute to Greece will be the screening, in national preview, of the movie “El Greco”, which will be presented exclusively to the audience of Maremetraggio by the director Yannis Smaragdis.

This cultural exchange with Greece will be total and, thanks to the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, several Greek schools will be involved into the project. In fact, the Corallino section of Maremetraggio festival, dedicated to the short films produced by Italian students, was extended also to the young film-makers from the high schools of the Greek Republic. The best short films authors selected by the jury have been invited to join the festival, visit Trieste and meet their Italian colleagues. It will be an occasion to mix different creativities and cultures that will certainly enrich their fund of experience.

But the event won’t concern only cinema. This summer Maremetraggio will offer to its public a full immersion into the whole Greek culture: from cinema to music, from art to gastronomy. The festival will certainly be the occasion to get in touch with this great civilization and its cultural heritage.

Just as it was for the last year’s focus on Romania, the choice of Greece is not a coincidence. Trieste, in addition to its marked multicultural vocation, has deep ties with Greece and its culture, which have been maintained along the years by a lively Greek community. The Easter Greek Community significantly contributed to the growth of Trieste by establishing companies, maritime business and insurance institutes, participating in stock exchange activities and improving the architecture of the town. On the basis of this live presence, the Greek Parliament decided to base in Trieste the Italian section of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture aimed at promoting its cultural traditions all over the world.

Headed by Aliki Kefalogianni-Hatzakis, the Italian section of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, established in 2007, soon started to promote seasons and events which animated the town of Trieste, such as the exhibition dedicated last year to the “divina” Maria Callas and the event “Musei di sera 2008”, fully dedicated to the Greek musical scenario.

The collaboration with Maremetraggio perfectly fits with this series of events which will enable the Foundation to make familiar the Italian audience with the Hellenic cinema. At the same time, the support the Eastern Greek Community gave to Maremetraggio responds to specific cultural polices aimed at spreading the Greek culture thanks to well-appreciated Triestine initatives addressed to people of all ages.

To Maremetraggio, an international festival yet deep-rooted in the Triestine territory, a tribute to Greece was particularly significant. And what a better moment, now that Maremetraggio celebrates its first ten years?

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