Greek Film Noir

Dr Anna Poupou teaches film history and theory at the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is co-editor of three collective volumes: City and Cinema: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches (2011), Athens: World Film Locations (2014), The Lost Highway of Greek Cinema 1960–1990 (2019). Her research interests focus on the history of Greek cinema, film and history, urban spaces and cinema, and film noir. Nikitas Fessas holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences: Communication Sciences from Ghent University, Belgium. He has published numerous cultural criticism essays in both Greek and English-language media, as well as academic articles on Greek film noir in peer-reviewed journals. Dr Maria Chalkou is the principal editor of Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies. She holds a PhD in film theory and history from University of Glasgow. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Panteion University, while teaching film history, theory and documentary at Ionian University. She has published on Greek cinema, film censorship, film criticism and cinematic representations of the past.

An impressive array of scholarship on a topic that a few years ago would have been deemed inconceivable. While, as the authors and editors demonstrate, noir sensibility is evident in Greek cinema as early as the 1950s, its trajectory developed in the critical shadows. This collection honours this elusive breed of films, reassessing established accounts of Greek film history and firmly placing the cinema of this small nation within broader transnational contexts.

• Preface by Andrew SpicerIntroduction by the editorsPART 1. PARTNERS IN CRIME: RECEPTIONS, AFFINITIES, HYBRIDITIES 1. There Will Be Ogres: The Interstitial Aesthetics of Film Noir in the Early Films of Nikos Koundouros - Vrasidas Karalis2. Of Mice, Men and Greek Film Noir: The Little Mouse - Maria A. Stassinopoulou3. Historical Coincidence or Generic Cross-pollination? The Angry Hills and the Birth of Film Noir in Greece - Yannis Tzioumakis4. Noir Backstage: Yannis Maris from Page to Screen - Thanassis Agathos 5. Dark Cinema, Dark Sounds: Mimis Plessas and the Integration of Jazz in Greek Film Noir - Nick Poulakis 6. Fatal Absences and Female Gazes: Alternative Femininities in Greek Film Noir and the Psychological Thriller of the 1950s and 1960s - Anna Poupou 7. Bums and Dark Alleys: Constructing Queerness in a mid-1960s Greek Noir - Nikitas FessasPART 2: POLITICAL ASPECTS AND TRANSNATIONAL DYNAMICS OF THE GREEK NEO-NOIR 8. A Dark Intrigue of Murder: Kierion (1967-74) and Reconstruction (1970) or Film Noir as Politics - Maria Chalkou9. Neo-Noir and ‘Becoming-Murderer’ in Tonia Marketaki’s John the Violent (1973) - Ioulia Mermigka 10. The Unbearable Queerness of Singapore Sling. Towards a Queer Ethics and Politics of Representation -Marios Psaras11. Hong Kong and Athens: Contested Spaces of the Global and the Local in John Woo’s and Alexis Alexiou’s Neo-Noir - Yun-hua Chen 12. Darker Worlds Come in Small Packages: Neo-noir Sensibility in Greek Cypriot Short Films - Costas Constandinides 13. Greek Sleuths and Tough Cops: Noir Masculinities in Television Crime Shows (1992-2020) - Georgia Aitaki and Spyridon Chairetis 14. Mediterranean Film Noir: Twilight Falls on Mare Nostrum - Dennis Broe