Greek Cinema - Hellenic University Club of Southern California

tablishment of the Greek Film Center supported
by the Ministry of Culture. The Greek
Film Center financed partially many new directors
in this field.
From 1975 onwards, the involvement of
women in all aspects of film production gave
a big thrust to the industry. We notice that in
this genre there is also an overproduction of
films, analogous to what happened to feature
films from 1960 to 1975. The number of
films produced was disproportionately large
to the population such that many of these
could not be absorbed by the movie theaters
and TV channels and were financial flops.
Many of these participated in festivals but
were never heard of again. To help the situation,
Parliament passed a law in 1961 requiring
that movie theaters play at least four short
Greek movies each month. The law was never
enforced. The question remains, why do
the large majority of these productions become
flops and have no international or domestic
appeal? Another question is, is there a
future for this type of film?
We hope that the new directors and
scriptwriters will make better movies with
international appeal. Greece is very rich in
original subjects.
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