revolution is not a one time event

Screening sessions

How do we tell our stories? 

by Nionia Films (Alkisti Efthymiou, Maria F Dolores, Smaro Papaevangelou, Sofia Dona)

A series of six screening sessions on the topic of HER/HIS/THEIR stories and non hegemonic story telling. The film program is an attempt to discuss methodological tools found on queer and feminist cinema. 

In Kaliarda (Greek gay slang), “nionia” means memory. Nionia Films is an encounter of people that love queer moving image works. They explore contemporary queer feminist cinema, silenced films, hybrid experimental forms. Through this gesture of collecting and retrieving, they want to share and construct an archive of pervert cinema in Athens.

Friday, 7th of April, 21.00, Watermelon Woman by Cheryl Dunye, 1996, 90 mins

A romantic comedy-drama written, directed, and edited by Cheryl Dunye. It stars Dunye as Cheryl, a young Black lesbian who works in a video store while trying to make a film about a Black actress from the 1930s known for playing stereotypical “mammy” roles relegated to Black actresses during the period. This is the first feature film directed by a Black lesbian and is considered a landmark in New Queer Cinema.

Friday, 28th of April, 21.00,, november by Hito Steyerl, 2004, 25 mins

In november, Hito Steyerl investigates the role of images in revolution, gender in political uprisings and the aesthetics of protest, chronicling the journey of Andrea Wolf, a friend who became involved in the Kurdish liberation movement in Turkey. The work weaves together documentary footage from Kurdish television, scenes from an amateur film made by the two friends as teens, clips from Bruce Lee movies, and Steyerl’s own narration.

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9/8fight41 by Gizem Aksu, 2022, 29 mins

This short dance documentary is inspired by the dance/fight of the legendary German Sinto boxer Johann Rukeli Trollmann (1907-1944) to highlight recent Roma demands in Turkey. In a 9/8 musical meter, four dancers combine the power of dance with their struggle for justice in Sulukule and Fikirtepe, Istanbul’s Roma neighborhoods.

Friday, 5th of May, 21.00, Rebel Dykes by Harri Shanahan and Siân A. Williams, 2021, 89 mins

Α feature-length documentary about the explosion that happened when punk met feminism, told through the lives of a gang of lesbians in the riotous London of the 1980s.

Friday, 12th of May, 21.00, Tilos Weddings by Panayotis Evangelidis, 2022, 74 mins

In 2008, the mayor of the island of Tilos agreed to perform the first gay and lesbian civil marriages ever held in Greece. The film follows the story of these two civil marriages through visual material that was shot ad hoc, but also through footage from the Gay Pride of the same year, from press conferences, and from other demonstrations about the same topic.

Friday, 19th of May, 21.00, Tongues Untied by Marlon T. Riggs, 1989, 55 mins

Tongues Untied makes visible the experience of living as an outsider both in a Black community filled with homophobia and a largely white gay subculture poisoned by racism. Through music and dance, poetry from path-breaking writers like Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam, and interviews with queer African American men, this radical combination of documentary and performance defies the stigmas surrounding Black gay sexuality in the belief that, as long as shame prevails, liberation cannot be possible.

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Playback by Agustina Comedi, 2019, 14 mins

Argentina, late 1980s, in the conservative and ultra-Catholic provincial town of Córdoba. Delpi and her fellow ostracized drag queen friends form the Kalas Group, putting on spectacular lip-syncing shows. Their performances are a means of resistance, as well as an attempt to exorcise their own personal demons: the AIDS scourge that plunged their community into grief and loss. A parade of rare footage that bittersweetly bids farewell to the wild days of companionship, rebellionm and heartache.

Friday 26th of May, 21.00, Gut Renovation by Su Friedrich, 2012, 81 mins

A documentary that tracks small changes in the urban landscape evolves into a historical record of gentrification in New York. The resulting film is a melancholy, essayistic requiem for a neighborhood and an entire way of life. It also provides a case study of the rapid urban “development” of our cities.