14th Ethnofest – Athens Ethnographic Film Festival
Screenings | Tributes | Parallel Events
29 November – 10 December 2023
ASTOR | Goethe Institut Athen | The Greek Film Archive Foundation | Online Screenings
Click here to watch the trailer (link)
How does it feel to be a middle-aged lift operator from Armenia dreaming to be an astronaut? How does it feel to be a Rom teenager in today’s Sardinia? How did it feel to be a farmer in the irish province of 1967? A musician in Mozambique at the turn of the century? Or a marble artisan in the island of Tinos? The human condition has been and always will be the epicentre of the Ethnofest – Athens Ethnographic Film Festival which runs its 14th edition from the 29th of November till the 10th of December.
Gravitating towards the sounds and the images of the outer world, the festival does not fail to gaze within, towards the familiar, to all these little imperceptible daily elements that in the end, form the greater picture. Just like this year’s poster – designed by George Skarmoutsos – where a typical apartment of an ordinary building, emits warm light as a symbol of life, energy and creativity, and hence reflecting the human experience, personal but also collective, as a main source of inspiration.
Premiere
Poetic, beautiful and deeply emotional, Jennifer Rainsford’s documentary “All Of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars” raises the curtain for this year’s festival. With the 2011 Tsunami as a backdrop, from the depths of the abyss to the edges of the universe, nature and human destiny are being united in this lyrical essay on grief and the ways life recuperates after trauma.The film producer, Mirjam Gelhorn, will be with us at the film screening at Goethe Institut on the 29th of November.
Tributes
«Intangible Cultural Heritage: 20 Years Within The World»
Under the auspices and with the support of the Ministry of Culture and 20 years after the proclamation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO, the Ethnofest – Athens Ethnographic Film Festival opens its 14th edition with a great tribute to this substantial effort for the promotion and safeguarding of the world’s cultural heritage with screenings, open discussions, a special edition as well as the screening of two great short documentaries: the “The Goat Dance” (1971) by Pantelis Voulgaris and the “Feast in Drapetsona” (1977) by Takis Papagiannidis, which will be screened with Audio Description for the blind and the visually impaired and Subtitles for the Deaf or Hard of Hearing.
In the tribute “Focus on the Environment” carefully selected films investigate the urgent matter of human interaction with nature. Innovative, sustainable filmic techniques, urbanisation, gentrification, memory in the urban environment, different interpretations of ecology are some of the approaches that we encounter at these screenings.
Panorama, Filmic Experiments in Ethnography & Initiations
More than 30 films are part of this year’s programme and run through the festival’s sections, Panorama, Filmic Experiments, International and Greek Student Films.
Οnline Screenings
The online screenings will take place after the theatre screenings are concluded – from the 4th till the 10th of December.
Parallel Events
Open discussions and book presentations enrich this year’s edition.