London Greek Film Festival
We’re onto Sunday now and the evening of the awards ceremony in Athens for The London Greek Film Festival. They also hold a ceremony in London but have the one in Athens for those who can’t make it to London. The festival accepts and honours films and scripts that are either written by Greek people or that are about some aspect of Greece. That’s why ‘Girl Gone Greek’ could be entered. It was written by an English author, Rebecca Hall, and scripted by me, currently a very reluctant English person. [Rebecca’s blog, Life Beyond Borders is here.]
It was a hot evening, but thanks to the excellent metro in Athens I didn’t have to walk far and arrived at the cinema just as Rebecca was getting out of a taxi with a friend who was accompanying her. The ceremony was held at the Cinema Alkyonis in the Victoria area of Athens, not far from the metros station. We arrived early, so the shot of the cinema interior is before the 100 or so people arrived.
We watched trailers and some shorts from the winning entries for 40 minutes and then there was a succession of awards for various categories. I have no idea what I said when we came to ours. I babbled in Greek for a while, only realising later that I was using the wrong tense in my verbs, and all the time I had in my head, ‘Must not call Rebecca ‘Rachel.” That’s the name of the main character in the script, you see. I didn’t, but trying not to kept interrupting my concentration, so when I got as far as I could in Greek, I mumbled ‘gamoto’ (which is a bit naughty) and switched to English, even then I can’t remember what I said, but I did manage to thank the festival, Rachel… Rebecca! for asking me to write the script, and then thanked Greece for, basically, not being the yUK.
That done, a bit of networking later and we headed off to Monastiraki for a glass of wine in a prison, as you do. Fascinating building, still with the cells intact around a central courtyard, so it looks run down. It isn’t though, the bar and courtyard are modern, and the music wasn’t too loud, the people there very friendly, mainly a young crowd, and the prices not bad at all. One drink there and I wandered back to where I was staying and home. Monday was a shopping and chilling day with a trip to the Acropolis (where I found €10.00 on the ground which I gave to the homeless Moroccan guy near my apartment the next day) and another visit to the restaurant I’d used before. This time it was a piece of salmon the size of a boxing glove (but much more edible). I wasn’t allowed to leave the restaurant until I’d had another glass of wine and then an ouzo from the management. This Greek philoxenia can really give you a headache – it was the ouzo – but it’s good to see it happens even in the swanky parts of Athens.
I’ll bung up some extra photos, and next week, I’ll tell you about the journey back, and then we will be back to the usual Symi Dream kind of blogging. Have a good weekend.
