To provide an example of contemporary Greek cinema, two films were shown as part of the Spring 2011 phase of the Initiative, both with introductions by Dr. Tatiana Summers, of the University of Alabama’s Department of Modern Languages and Classics.
Both films were shown at 5 pm in Smith Hall 205.
The films were:
March 30th: Brides (2005), directed by Pantelis Voulgaris (executive producer Martin
Scorsese), starring Damian Lewis and Victoria Haralabidou; the film depicts a fascinating story of poor (but beautiful) mail-order brides, sent by boat from Greece and other Eastern European countries to America in the early 1920s, equipped only with the handsome picture of their betrothed. Social class differences and conventions do not stop love from flourishing across the great divide, but will it be the requited kind? (Learn more here.)
March 31st: Touch of Spice (2003), directed by Tassos Boulmetis, starring George 
Corraface and Renia Louizidou; a story of three generations of Greeks, who, in the mid 1900s, are forcefully uprooted from their ancestral city of Istanbul to Athens, Greece, and are engaged in a heart-aching effort to reshape their personal, national, and ethnic identity, so they may fit in with the people in the motherland, who treat them as aliens. The culinary philosophy they brought from Istanbul becomes the connecting thread among the broken pieces of their life; both food and life need a “touch of spice” to give them flavor and make them palatable. (Learn more here.)