The lecture will focus on an aspect of the Greek War of Independence that calls for answers to questions as basic as they are elusive. What role did the Byzantine heritage play in conceptualizing, representing, or animating the struggle against the Ottoman Empire? What strands of Byzantium were foregrounded and through which mechanisms did they...
Popular support for the Greek Revolution in the United States garnered national attention at a level unparalleled to any other international event in the early 19th century. Early Americans supported the Greek cause because they felt a strong, sympathetic tie with the ancient Greeks and because they had a long-standing distrust for the Muslim World....
Benaki Museum curator Mara Verykokou guides us through an exhibition that includes more than 300 objects related to the Revolution of 1821 and the movement of Philhellenism in Europe and America from four important private collections: Nikitas Stavrinakis and Evangelias Stavrinaki, Petros Vergos, Apostolos Argyriadis and Stéphan Adler. We shall be asked to decide whether...
2022 marks one hundred full years in operation for the biscuit and food manufacturing company E.J. PAPADOPOULOS S.A. Through the items of the Historical Archive of the PAPADOPOULOU Company—one of the most complete and best-organized archives of a Greek company—the Benaki Museum presents for the first time all the important aspects of the hundred-year history...
This lecture, co-sponsored by the Embassy of Greece, will be introduced by Her Excellency Alexandra Papadopoulou, Ambassador of Greece to the United States The acclaimed folk artist Theophilos represents the tradition of Greece and its people. Born in ca. 1870 in a village close to Mytilene, his father was a cobbler while his mother, Penelope...
Celebrated director and actor Yorgos Karamihos pays tribute to General Yannis Makriyannis, the hero of the 1821 Greek Revolution, in a show that tells the story of a nation in revolt and an individual in the process of self-formation. Adapting selected passages of Makriyannis’ Memoirs, a seminal work of Modern Greek letters, Makriyannis Unplugged renders...
How does a novella written more than one hundred years ago help to illuminate pressing issues in Greece today? Karkavitsas’ Archeologist, an allegory for the contestation of antiquity’s role in Greek modernity, was published at a time when Greece’s ancient past was emerging as a modern national industry. Major excavations were tied to the establishment...
Landscape in the Mist (Topio stin Omichli) Greece/France/Italy, 1988 A young girl and her brother run away to find the father they’ve never met in Germany. Ducking train conductors and hitching rides, they’re befriended by Orestes, a young man working with a troupe of traveling actors before his compulsory military service. Theo Angelopoulos conceived the...
Days of ’36 (Meres tou ’36) Greece, 1972 A political assassination kicks off Theo Angelopoulos’ portrait of one Greek dictatorship made under the shadow of another. This opening act of violence triggers a series of more ambiguous but equally ominous machinations—a prison escape, a hostage crisis, foreign powers conspiring over cocktails—with Angelopoulos emphasizing the atmosphere...
The Suspended Step of the Stork (To Meteoro Vima tou Pelargou) Greece, 1991 The plight of refugees in the Balkans and internationally dominated much of Theo Angelopoulos’ attention in the 1990s, leading to two of his most acclaimed films, Ulysses' Gaze (1995) and Eternity and a Day (1998). The Suspended Step of the Stork, which...
We welcome the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA) and participants to the 48th Annual Byzantine Studies conference at UCLA! Most conference activities will take place at the Luskin Conference Center and Hotel on the UCLA campus.
Kouvenda: Hellenic Conversations is a bi-weekly discussion forum where members of our community discuss in Greek topics of Hellenic interest. For further information, contact Dr. Simos Zenios (szenios@humnet.ucla.edu).