The chapter offers a critical overview of the media ecology of film and television distribution in Greece by the middle of 2019. It maps out the stakeholders engaged in delivering professional audiovisual content online and highlights some of the ways in which residual and emerging screen media have intersected in creating the contemporary digital landscape in the country. The chapter positions distribution in the broader context of the audiovisual industry and policy developments in Greece in the decade since the financial crisis, while also exploring the impact of global disruptors, such as Netflix, on the national media ecosystem. Drawing on a conceptual framework provided by research on “small media systems,” as well as the work of Amanda Lodz and Ramon Lobato on Internet-enabled distribution, the chapter uses data from policy documents, press reports and content analysis to assess whether digital technologies can help stimulate a virtuous cycle of production–distribution–consumption in the country’s audiovisual sector.

The image of Greece as a fun-loving tourist resort and escapist paradise which was presented in Greek film musicals of the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the growth of the Greek tourist industry during this same period. These film musicals treated their viewers as virtual tourists, offering them a two-hour wish-fulfillment without any costly physical displacement. This paper explores the social and symbolic parallels between the respective utopian desires on which actual holiday-making and the film musical relied. The analysis of some extremely popular musical films, including Some Like it Cold (1963), Girls for Kisses (1965), and Mermaids and Lads (1969), reveals the development of a contradictory attitude toward the tourist industry in the musical film genre. This is understood as an indirect result of increasing competition from tourism and, ultimately, from a successful leisure industry in Greece.

The article focuses on Greece and explores the extent and ways in which film production funding cultures have changed in the period 2010-2015. It maps out the hybrid modes of funding embraced by filmmakers in this period, and explores the extent to which new models such as crowdfunding were adopted, European coproduction opportunities were more fully embraced, as well as how far traditional modes of financing such as, on the one hand, state funding, and, on the other, private, distributor-led, backing have persisted. As a country of the European periphery, and one particularly hard-hit by the recent financial crisis, Greece offers a good example of the processes of an uncertain, but also creatively productive, cultural and financial transition. Set within the broader context of global changes led by technology, the national case study illustrates how state and private top-bottom funding initiatives have begun to co-exist with bottom-up production and dissemination processes, and how some new players have entered the scene. The patterns revealed through this exploration of the new funding cultures for film production in Greece contribute to an understanding of the impact of global economic transformations on a national level, and help us assess the effectiveness and viability of the new funding models for small markets.

Around the start of the 2010s, while Greece found itself in the midst of a deep financial, political and social crisis that troubled its relationship to Europe, Greek cinema was being noticed in prestigious film festivals. Soon the term 'Weird Wave' was adopted to suggest the unusual aesthetics and challenging ethics of the most distinctive films that emerged from this troubled nation at the time: Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth (2009) and Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg (2010). Despite being made before the consequences of the crisis had been fully felt in Greece, these films became emblematic of a turning point in Greek art cinema, a shift towards a different approach to theme, narrative, style, as well asless obviouslytowards new production practices. Such practices involved a new culture of professional solidarity that involved filmmakers supporting each other to overcome financial and institutional deficits; increasingly, however, they consisted of a more systematic approach towards building European co-productions -the main (if not only) means for securing a decent budget, and also a path towards more visibility in the film festival circuit and in international markets. 1The article explores this 'extrovert' culture in Greek filmmaking. By 'extroversion' I refer to the active search for funding and production partners beyond the traditional state and private options, and towards international co-productions, which in the Greek context, effectively, means European co-productions. 2 The article argues that the intensification of co-production activity that has become more evident in the last few years has been the result of a number of factors, including the continuing impact of European institutional frameworks, the reduction of national funds towards cinema (partly as a result of the crisis), the emergence of a number of new producers trained in building co-productions, and the critical success of a number ofGreek films in prestigious festivals. The analysis draws on film studies, media industry and film policy studies as it aims to reveal the ways in which both Europe-wide and localised social, financial and professional conditions have affected the production culture in Greece, especially with regard to art/quality cinema. It focuses in particular on European coproductions as a system of funding and making films that requires transnational collaboration and exchange. The article maps out the extent to which European co-productions have been adopted in Greece, and identifies some of the ways in which they have changed its production culture. It ends with an examination of the style, themes and reception of six recent Eurimages-funded co-productions in order to assess whether and how there is discernible change in the films made in the direction of a more recognisably 'European' cinema.The study will combine quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitatively, the number of European co-productions involving Greece since the formation of Eurimages in 1989 will be examined and situated in the broader context ...

The study of film festivals has grown significantly in the last decade, partly in response to the rapid international proliferation of film festivals in the past 15 years. Since 2009, Dina Iordanova's Film Festival Yearbook anthologies have reoriented festival studies away from the Venice-Cannes-Berlin axis toward other countries, regions, and emphases. As a sign of the field's maturity, Iordanova's The Film Festival Reader (2013) reprints a number of canonical texts (Daniel Dayan's 'Looking for Sundance: The Social Construction of a Film Festival' , Julian Stringer's 'Regarding Film Festivals' , Thomas Elsaesser's 'Film Festival Networks: The New Topographies of Cinema in Europe' , etc.). Meanwhile, Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell, and Skadi Loist are assembling a textbook of new essays, Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice (forthcoming). But much research still tends to be about recent manifestations: about their functions as networks, their roles as alternative distribution and/or exhibition circuits, about their market sections, about particular institutional practices, such as programming, about festivals and activism, and so on. While not entirely absent (Wong 2011), historical concerns mostly contextualize more contemporary-focused analyses. This special issue on 'Film festivals: origins and trajectories' aims to bring historical concerns to the center of film festivals studies. Foregrounding the global dimensions of festivals, this issue brings together a number of in-depth historical studies of practices that have developed in vastly different parts of the world in the course of this almost century-long phenomenon. While shining light on lesser-known 'peripheries' of the festival circuit, this issue also outlines new approaches and methodologies for unearthing and discussing them. By bringing these case studies together, we seek to encourage a comparative exploration of the diversity of the festival phenomenon within distinct historical periods and sociopolitical systems. As such, this special issue ranges widely in both geography and historical periods. It covers topics from the prehistory of film festivals in Europe (Taillibert-Wäfler), to the recent growth of festivals in Chile (Peirano); from the pre-1966 phenomenon of 'Film Weeks' in the People's Republic of China (Ma) to the functions of a current Turkish mobile film festival (Odabasi); from the grassroots emergence of the Melbourne Film Festival in the 1950s (Stevens) to the colonial origins of the Hong Kong International Film Festival (Cheung); from the changing mission of the Yugoslav Documentary and Short Film Festival during and after socialism (Jelenković) to the ongoing role of the Lima Film Festival in developing a national film culture in Peru (Barrow); and from the fitful international trajectory of the Thessaloniki Film Festival since the 1960s (Papadimitriou) to the concept of 'festival memory' in relation to the recently defunct Brisbane International Film Festival (Van Hemert).