Symi Cinema
So, what is there to do on Symi in the winter? Well, for a start, for some, it’s work as usual. For others, it’s time to look for another job to help make ends meet for six months. For others, it’s time to travel and, for some, time to go away to work, to help make ends further meet. For those who have saved for the winter, or have an income through the winter, there’s time to relax after the summer, spend time on all those things that get put off during the hot weather, meet fiends and socialise, and spend some quality time. Yes, but what is there to do?
Apart from the walks, you mean? Apart from the festivals to attend, the occasional evening meal at one of the open tavernas, some time at the bar watching sport, mingling, chilling out, and all that? Well, there are also some organised events. Birthday parties, name days, that kind of thing. And there’s the cinema. Okay, so we’re not talking usherettes and ice creams in tubs, Kiora orange and Pearl & Dean adverts: “Visit our curry house, the finest curries in Folkestone!” announced in a clipped 1950s British accent. “Ron’s carpets, the bet carpet shop on the High Street.” (The only carpet shop and it’s just off the high street actually, around the back of the public toilets.) Not that kind of cinema, but the semi-open air one arranged at Mandeio’s in Horio each Sunday.
Peter and the Symi Gallery have been showing films there for a few years now and manage to find interesting world cinema and subtitles, usually in English and Greek, or whatever is appropriate, and punters sit on the terrace (enclosed in the plastic sheeting of winter at this time of year) where they can order drinks and food and watch the films projected onto a decent sized ‘large’ screen. These events are free.
And now there is the children’s cinema club every second Sunday. These films start at 5.30 pm and have Greek subtitles/dubbing where needed. I am told that the next show will be The Smurfs, on Sunday 20th at half five, at Mandeio’s, Horio. Often with children’s films that are not Greek, the dialogue is dubbed into Greek and I think that’s going to be the case with this one. I’ve often tried to Watch the Asterix films on television, where the dialogue is in French and the subtitles are in Greek; that’s a challenge for the linguistically challenged like me, but I have managed to get through one of the Crimson River films in this manner and understood, between the two languages, around 70% of it. It’s that thing about translating the dialogue from, say, French into English at the same time as translating Greek the subtitles, or as much as you can get of them in the short time they are there.
Anyway, if you’re around Symi at the moment and fancy the Smurfs in Greek – and let’s face it, who doesn’t? – then Sunday 20th is your date. Keep an eye out on Facebook and elsewhere for announcements about other films that might be showing at the Symi Cinema Club.
