a day ago
In Athens, a cinema keeps the tradition of hand-painted film posters alive
Letter from Athens
The managers of the Athinaion have worked tirelessly to preserve an art form that has almost disappeared. In the entrance hall of this central Athens cinema, only an old vintage projector displayed in front of the popcorn bar echoes the retro style of the enormous, freshly hand-painted movie posters exhibited on the building's façade.
From Pierrot le Fou to Avatar, in addition to the dozen or so Greek films produced each year, the Athinaion has commissioned and displayed hand-painted posters for new films shown in its theaters every week for the past 65 years. This tradition, which began to fade from the film world in the mid-1970s, has never been abandoned by the successive owners of this cinema – all members of the same family – since its founding in 1960.
Behind every one of these posters is the work of artist Virginia Axioti, who took over about 10 years ago from Vassilis Dimitriou, a former boxer and self-taught painter who died in September 2020. The granddaughter of one of the two brothers who founded the Athinaion, Axioti remains Greece's last movie poster painter to have kept this endangered art alive on a global scale. Each week, the Athens School of Fine Arts graduate paints the billboards for films shown in the Athinaion's two large theaters using acrylics in her studio on the island of Lesbos.
