Olympion cine (Thessaloniki): Α (cine) travel to the past

When you visit a big city, you probably go to its museums, all the important monuments and maybe hit the restaurants and nightclubs. But when you are a cinema and movies lover, among other things, you also visit the cinema halls of the city.

Right? (Please me, tell me you do so, too and that I am not the only crazy one!)

Although I live near Thessaloniki, I have not been given the opportunity to go to the most famous cinema of the city, "Olympion".

Honestly, I do not know where to start writing about this cinema hall.

• It is the oldest (in operation) cinema in the city, since it began to be built in 1938, but the advent of World War II stopped construction and resumed building in 1948 by a famous Thessaloniki architect. It started operating as cinema in the 1950s.

                     Poster outside the buiding promoting the film shown during this week. 
                                   The greek title reads: "The City and The City"
                                        (It was the one that we watched)

• It is located in the center of the city, in the most famous square of the city, Aristotelous sq. (named after Aristotle), which -for me- is the most beautiful in the whole city, as it crosses the area vertically from the center reaching the sea.

• It is a beautiful building (if you want to see photos of it from above, you can see in this post), imposing reminiscent of earlier times, full of grandeur, with special architecture, as the facade is curved, with arches and galleries and walls decorations on its top floors.

• But above all, it is the historical seat of the Thessaloniki Film Festival (originally called the Greek Film Festival, but since 1991 it is named "Thessaloniki International Film Festival", with films competing for the grand award, the Golden Alexander).

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A large part of the competing films are shown in this building, in two large halls, one on the ground floor, that can accommodate about 700 people and is the major hall of the festival, and one on the fifth floor with a smaller capacity of about 200 people.

So you can imagine my thrill, when I entered this "sacred" space (for us, Greek cinephiles). Inside these walls have been "holy monsters" of international cinema: Francis Ford Coppola, Wim Wenders, Fatih Akin, Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano, Jim Jarmusch, Nagisa Oshima, Ken Loach, Agnès Varda, Béla Tarr, Werner Herzog and the list goes on...

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I wanted to go and caress the door of the big cinema hall on the ground floor, the door that all these great women and men of cinema have gone through, (unfortunately now is closed, because it is used only for the needs of the festival), but the clerk was looking at me strangely, in a way "well, here is another crazy lady".

The movie we were going to see was on the fifth floor' hall and we hurried up the elevator because the screening of the movie had already started.

We entered the dark room and were looking to find the perfect seats.

I know that the photo is dark, but if you look closely, we will see that there was only one person in front of us in the hall. 

I must tell the truth: the cinema was empty, as only a few spectators were in the hall. The film we would watch, belongs to the wave of the "Weird Greek Wave" - ​​its characteristic representative is George Lanthimos who directed "The Favorite" - and had a "hard", difficult to touch, theme: the fate of the Thessaloniki's Jews during the Second World War and after.
Title of the Film: The City and The City by Syllas Tzoumerkas and Christos Passalis

I must be honest again: I did not like the movie very much. I think that the director, whose other works I have watched and thought of them as quite interesting and powerful, got lost somewhere along the way and could not render the issue in a way that would reach the audience.

However, I didn't care much about the movie. I was like a small child during the screening of the film,staring at the ceiling of the room, the surrounding decoration, stroking the velvet chairs, looking at the faces of the spectators around me. I did not know where to hide my joy of being nside this hall. But I had to wait patiently for the end of the movie.

As you can see in this poor, dimly lit photo, I didn't have much patience and tried to sneak some photos around

Unfortunately, at the end it was the last screening for the day and we had to leave the room relatively quickly as the clerk wanted to close the hall. I took some pictures in a hurry.

                                         The hall

                      You can almost feel the velvet covered seats

                        The ornament above the door, now fully lit

And this time, instead of the elevator, we went down the stairs. The decoration around them justified us. Huge stairs reminiscent of old apartment buildings,

the white color prevailing everywhere and on every floor an exhibition of giant posters depicting movies from the past.

                                    Phaedra by Jules Dassin

In Greece, in the early years of cinema and until almost the 1970s, painted posters by well-known artists promoting the films shown, were very popular, depicting either scenes from the film or having another artistic look. On all floors they had framed copies of these giant paintings on a smaller scale.

                              Posters of popular Greek films of 1950s and 1960s

                                    James Dean 

                                    Fantasia by Walt Disney

                               Elevator to the Gallows -Louis Malle

                       The Wages of Fear - one of the greatest movies with Yves Montand

I left with a very sweet aftermath in my soul. I really wanted to stay a little longer (on the same floor as the room where we watched the movie, it has a lovely bar overlooking the square and the sea), but we had to leave at dawn the next morning.

Believe me, this November I will definitely go to the Festival. I have promised myself that. To see as many movies as I can, to talk to people who also love cinema, to feel all this atmosphere on the big screen.

And all this in a place reminiscent of all previous eras, a monument to the history of Greek and international cinema.

Thank you for reading!

(For anyone interested in reading about the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, I will add here the official link of the Festival but also the post from wikipedia)

All pictures taken by me, apart from those stated otherwise. Information about Olympion were taken also by Wikipedia (greek edition) and the official site of the Festival.