“The Hellenic National Audiovisual Archive Presents...”
“The Hellenic National Audiovisual Archive Presents…” opened on Friday, March 20, 2009. The event is organized by the Hellenic National Audiovisual Archive (HeNAA) in conjunction with the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. Vice Minister of the Interior responsible for media issues, Kostas Gioulekas, President of the Board of Directors Yiannis Tzanetakos and Managing Director of HeNAA Yorgos Bolanis spoke about the work of the Archive.
Welcoming the public, and especially the Vice Minister of the Interior, Yiannis Tzanetakos declared that the Hellenic National Audiovisual Archive preserves, restores and makes available to the public the audiovisual heritage of our country. As Mr. Tzanetakos said, there is an invisible thread which connects himself, Vice Minister Kostas Gioulekas and the director Roussos Koundouros, whose film This is Athens was screened later: “Twenty five years after the shooting of the film, Koundouros played a leading role in the citizen’s movement to free radio which led to the “spring” of the media in Greece. At the time, the present minister was working at the Thessaloniki Municipal radio and television, and I was working at the Athens Municipal radio. It’s a happy coincidence that we meet again at a parallel event which justifies the actions we had taken then”, noted Mr. Tzanetakos, adding that with a half century delay the state is creatively managing the work of media people.
“The National Audiovisual Archive is the guardian of a large heritage which records the world of the image, and it could not be absent from the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival”, noted the Vice Minister of the Interior Kostas Gioulekas, and he praised the work of the HeNAA’s people, who tirelessly served an important goal. “Thanks to their hands and their minds, we have important pieces of our audiovisual history available. We still have much work ahead of us, but we are on the right path”, stressed Mr. Gioulekas.
The creation of the National Audiovisual Archive began three years ago. Its managing director Yorgos Bolanis said: “We are not creating a newsreel archive, nor a purely historical one. Our goal is the continuous preservation of audiovisual and original digital material, in order to offer Greek society and anyone interested access to the changing and developing audiovisual heritage of the country. We want the National Audiovisual Archive to be a reference , to give every citizen the chance to access a “mapped” material and through a combination of sources to be able to cross check information. We are not interested in a closed archive. We wish to offer services to citizens which will open the door to the incredible world of image and sound”. Finally, Mr. Bolanis announced that the National Audiovisual Archive has taken on the organization of the annual International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) Congress, from September 20 to the 25, in Athens.
A screening of four recently digitalized documentaries followed, works that are unknown to the wider audience: The Manakia Brothers (1988), by Costas Andritsos, Theophilos – A Painter’s Fairy Tale (1963) by Nestoras Matsas, The Greatest Force (1963) by Robert Manthoulis and Iraklis Papadakis and This Is Athens (1960) by Roussos Koundouros. The films were presented by Stelios Kymionis, Documentation Coordinator of the HeNAA.
