For the Attikon, the Ideal and the Opera
Sometimes there is no big news, just a nagging sense of loss or anger about the relentless plight of downtown Athens’ cinemas. With local elections coming up soon, this may, therefore, be a good time to send out a small reminder to the powers that be of this plight. Indeed, one such reminder was sent out at the opening of the Premiere Nights Athens International Film Festival this past week, where it was noted that the historic Ideal cinema will only be with us until the end of the year.
What happens to it after that is anyone’s guess. Sure, it was listed for protection as a cinema (along with the Astor) in the spring in response to reactions against it disappearing off the map completely, but its future as a movie theater for the general public inside a building that is slated for development is most assuredly not secure.
The list of losses is growing, as there have been rumors that the Opera, another historic downtown cinema, will not open for the winter season this year. The obituary of the capital’s cinema is topped, of course, by the Attikon and Apollon. The two foundations responsible for the building they’re located in (the Dekozi-Vouros Foundation and the Vouros-Eutaxias Foundation – which runs the Museum of the City of Athens) were merged in a legislative amendment in 2020 that put an end to a decades-old dispute. More recently, the Athens municipal authority submitted a proposal to the museum’s board asking that it cover the entire cost of restoring the fire-ravaged building on the condition that it be allowed to use it for a certain number of years. The proposal has gone unanswered.
And, as answers are not forthcoming, as the voices of protest rise and fall, Athenians are gradually losing an intrinsic part of life in the city center, where useless projects are scattered all over the place in a state of incompletion, where sidewalks look like they’ve been bombed, where graffiti and stench form the backdrop to what has evolved into a tourist attraction. The truth is that the city center is simply inundated by people during the day, mostly visitors passing through to take hundreds of selfies, have a walk around, visit the key sites, eat where their drivers tell them to, and then leave.
But the Athenians are still here. And at night we avoid walking along the city’s once bustling thoroughfares as they grow inhospitable and – like the marquees, foyers and screens of our cinemas – dark.
