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New Year's Eve with "Anna Karenina"

A different film adaptation of Tolstoy's classic love story

Vladimir Nabokov called it "one of the greatest love stories in world literature", while by mutual recognition, "Anna Karenina" is not only one of the greatest novels of the 19th century but also the "spiritual autobiography" of its author, Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. Deep and multifaceted meditation on maddened love and destructive infidelity, but also a shocking panorama of the Russian society of the 19th century against the background of the glorious imperial Russia.

Driven by her passionate love for a rich army officer, Count Vronsky, Anna Karenina defies the conventions of Russian society, she leaves her husband and son, she is condemned by those around her, she is ostracized and due to her unruly character slowly but methodically sinks into a complete dead end.

Since his birthright, cinema duly honored Tolstoy's tragic heroine. The first film adaptation of "Anna Karenina" dates back to 1911 while his silent film 1927 with Greta Garbo as Karenina remains a classic. Since then there have been many more films and series about Karenina, most recently Joe Wright's in which his muse stars, or Keira Knightley with which he has made "Pride and Prejudice" and of course the masterpiece "Atonement".

With Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love screenwriter Tom Stoppard on the screenplay, the waning imperial Russia of the 19th century revives again, marking the beginning of the cinematic 2013 since its premiere in Greek theaters is set for New Year's.

You could say that when it comes to feelings, mainly that of love in all its versions - maternal, sisterly, childish, carnal, patriotic-  but also the motivations of the heroes, Tolstoy has given clear "instructions". Wright and Stoppard decided that their version would have a theatrical basis.

Filming did not take place in Russia (as in many other film adaptations of Karenina), nor in beautiful parts of the English countryside where Wright usually shoots his films. On the contrary, the entire production of the film was set up at Shepperton Studios with the aim of not being another period film but a very different one compared to the previous versions of "Anna Karenina".

With the help of the magic of special effects, the viewer feels like crossing doors and being in snowy landscapes, while the scene where important scenes of the film take place is transformed from a ballroom into an opera house or even a hippodrome...

According to Stoppard, the screenwriter not only studied the book thoroughly but also carefully watched various film and television versions (among them Russian) in order to capture the wealth of intersecting themes and philosophies with which Tolstoy engages.

The clash of classes, the policy, morality and love end up in an unusual cinematic cocktail where some parallel stories are illuminated which in previous adaptations went unexploited since the focus was exclusively on Karenina.

Finally, we should point out that the film contains an excellent Jude Law in the role of Karenin, Karenina's husband, who precisely because of his love for her is forced to suffer her inability to control her emotions which ultimately lead to her destruction.

The movie "Anna Karenina" will be distributed in theaters on Tuesday 1 January 2013

Source : tovima.gr

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Fame: The historical musical in the Greek world

The Fame, the historical musical loved like no other by young and old all over the world, is coming to Athens for the first time, in a Greek blockbuster that gathers on stage 36 artists!

Actors, singers, musicians and dancers bring aspirations to the stage, the dreams, the loves and adventures of a group of talented young students at the New York School of the Arts, struggling to make it in the entertainment industry…

The legendary show is based on the classic movie musical that won two Academy Awards, became a serial, but also a film remake 30 years later.

A Greek blockbuster with unexpected artistic encounters, vitality, fun and lots of surprises!

There is a place where dreams come true…

Direction: Themis Marcellou
Render text: Gerasimos Evangeliatos, Themis Marcellou
Lyrics performance: Themis Marcellou
Orchestration & music teaching: Nikos Platyrachos
Choreography: Alexander Giannis
Scenery – Costumes: Christina Kostea
Lighting: Tasos Zafeiropoulos
Assistant directors: I close Javier, Maria Vasilatou

They star:

Aleka Kanellidou
Nikos Vourliotis
Demy
Nadia Boulet
Konstantinos Lagos
Isaiah Matiaba
Sophia Kourtidou
Christos Jean Baptiste
Andreas Konstantinidis
Vassilis Axiotis
Idra Kayne
Jason Vastor
and Themis Marcellou

Source : culturenow.gr

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"Greek World": Educational programs for many tastes

Aesop, Odyssey, chocolate cooking in January from IME

Aesop's fables, the Olympiad of the forest, the doll and wood workshops, the search for the traces of Odysseus and other activities claim the interest of the young visitors of the "Hellenic World" in January 2013 at the Foundation of Greater Hellenism (IME).
The first month of the new year unfolds new and old educational programs, which on Saturdays are aimed at pre-school children (from 3 years and older) accompanied by their parents.
The Sunday Educational Programs are aimed at toddlers and elementary school children. Specifically:
Saturday training programs
Saturday 12 January

Aesop's fables (from the troupe "Athenian Marionettes")
In this new program, three fables of Aesop, "The False Shepherd", "The North and the Sun" and "Mercury and the Woodcutter", compose a comic story through the eyes of the "Athenian Marionettes" troupe. Marionettes, glove dolls, puppets and giant dolls come to life before children's eyes, while the techniques of shadow theater and black theater give a different artistic note.
Saturday 19 January
"Flour, dough, bread… let's get to know their story together"
Children have the opportunity to discover the ingredients and secrets of bread, which is one of the oldest delicacies. Together with their parents, they will follow the path of the seed from the field to… fermentation.
Saturday 26 January
"An Olympiad for forest dwellers"
The animals organize their own Olympiad and invite children to compete alongside them. In the context of this new educational program, young and old discover the Olympic sports starring their favorite animals. The goal of the program is cooperation, the fun, team play as well as a better understanding of the body and its relationship with space.
Sunday educational programs

Sunday 13 January
"Doll Workshop"
Familiar everyday materials come to life and transform into dolls. Friends of the "Greek world" using various materials will create their own dolls, which will then be animated by the same.
"Wood Workshop"
In this workshop, the wood becomes a city, snake, doll or whatever,what else can one be inspired by... Children create constructions with wood as a raw material, while at the same time discovering information about its uses and different types. They play with volumes and colors and make toys or decorative objects from scratch.
Sunday 20 January
"In the footsteps of Odysseus!»
Children dive into the Odyssey to learn about the adventures and ingenuity of the mythical king of Ithaca, of one of the most famous heroes of Greek mythology. Through stories, pictures, games and creative activities, children will discover that the adventures of Odysseus highlight the timeless value of man's struggle to achieve his goals.

Sunday 27 January
"Chocolate dishes!»
In this educational program the "Hellenic World" acquires a sweet taste and invites children to play and create, discovering all the secrets of their favorite confection. Young visitors will discover the different types of chocolate, they will get to know its origin as well as the ways of its preparation, they will discuss the myths and truths about its consumption and, of course, they will try secret recipes.
Source : tovima.gr
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The temptation of freedom

Exhibition in Berlin shows the post-war adventures of the highest social good

She is blind, but not spiritually unscented, or asleep. Justice never sleeps. At least not in the minds of the artists, where he works constant overtime. A permanent court-martial, which turns against everything – sometimes of himself.
That is why in the imaginary "Court of Right Reason", as the first part of the exhibition "Temptation of Freedom" at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin is called, the roles are not clear. Not only the opponents of freedom are sitting in the accused's dock, but also many of its supporters. Judges are not professionals, but amateurs. And their verdict is not recorded in documents, but in pictures – tables, sculptures, facilities, photos, video.
Upside down world: Artists judge not only the crimes committed in the name of Enlightenment, but in necessity also the Right Word itself, as a potential source of atrocities. Not only the sleep of Logic, they say, but her wake can also give birth to monsters – more frightening, from everything else.
Accused Robespierre and Marat: Guilty! says judge Yiannis Kounelis. His work, a metal plate, on which the names of the two heroes of the French revolution are written in chalk, as well as the phrase: «Free Death» (freedom or death), reminds, that anyone who did not then agree with the Jacobin regime, he was in danger of ending up in the guillotine. Jacobin freedom, based on "terreur", the terror, it produced unfreedom and death. A lighted white candle in front of the plaque gives a religious overtone to the verdict.
The judge's judgment is also speculatively extreme – whether it is a "sweet" greeting, as in the sculpture "Je vous salue Marat" (Greetings Mara) by Ian Hamilton Finley – where the phrase is the work itself, formed from neon tubes. Either a "sharp" sentence like a guillotine stroke, such as "The Age of Enlightenment" by Ginka Shonibare, which shows the Orthologus as beheaded, i.e. mindless body.
The exhibition presents projects 113 artists from total 28 Countries, which were created after the 1945. From the Greek side, except for the installation of Kounellis, a surrealist painting by Nikos Eggonopoulos is also on display.
 Two prostitutes, surrounded by fascists, Stalinist and democratic symbols, they escape from a mess only to end up in a much worse one – as always happens in a "Civil War", as the work is called.
The starting point of works is freedom, as she secured the 1949 in the United Nations Charter of Human Rights.
The exhibition follows the aesthetic adventures of freedom against the background of the two blocs of the cold war, the east, under the guidance of the Soviet Union, and the west, under US hegemony.
A century and a half full of dizzying successes, but also tragic mistakes, captured in classical works, such as René Magritte's "Memory" from 1948, or in completely modern ones, such as "Untitled" by Maria Bartusova from 2012: a set of small amorphous sacks tied together with thin strings, which shows how fragile the balance between the components of the social fabric is today.
The newest of all projects: "Capital-ism" by Dan Perjovsky, the highest stage of social chaos, which was created just on the eve of the inauguration – at 17 October.
One of the good things about the exhibition is its systematic division into 12 thematic sections with more or less poetic titles: "Journey to the Garden of Wonders", "Fear and Darkness", "The other place" so to speak. The visitor can thus more easily understand the problematic and the affinity of the works per each section.
Of course, the most interesting ones are those that throw it into the "fine" with the established political and aesthetic perceptions.
Example, the "Portable engraving for three persons" by Tamas Oby, a 90x155x53 cm parallelepiped made of cardboard with three open surfaces, which was created 1969 in response to the Warsaw Pact tank raid the 1968 in Prague. A completely inappropriate one, if not a ridiculous means of self-protection, which, precisely for this reason, makes a mockery of any concept of war.
The 10x10 are also enjoyable, namely 100 unwound alarm clocks with the inscription "Minutes of the Hour", which Armand has lined up on a tableau (Fernandez). For the French artist there is only subjective time: political, personal, erotic, coke. Objective time, on the contrary, it doesn't exist, the metronomes, says, they record only the destruction of human life. That is why he tries to destroy destroyers himself – winding the clocks.
Question from the undersigned: Space, there is;
But even Damien Hirst's painting "Professions without a future" does not go back to ingenuity. Only here, instead of alarm clocks, extinguished cigarette butts are exposed. "They express insecurity in the labor market," says the artist. "This is the price of the so-called free market in the age of globalization".
The project, in front of which one remains dazzled, is "Flowers" by Aurora Reinhardt: A bouquet of gloves, on the edge of which they grow, like flowers, "living" polished nails. "It's the projection of men's fantasies in our accessories" says their producer. Feminists never sleep either: The latest here, the visitor realizes that the feminist "Court of Right Reason" does not behave with a glove. And that the fingers he will order to be cut off, it will not be feminine.
—
The exhibition "Temptation Freedom" at the Historisches Museum Berlin, which takes place under the auspices of the Council of Europe, lasts until 26 January 2013.
Source : tovima.gr
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Saint John of the Slaughterhouses directed by Nikos Mastorakis at the Acropolis

Nikos Mastorakis chose to present a play that has rarely been performed in Greece in his first collaboration with the Acropolis Theater Organization.

It is "Saint Joan of Slaughter" by Bertolt Brecht.

The play was written by the great German author the 1929, but he himself did not get to see it performed on stage, as its first presentation took place in 1959…

Like all of Brecht's works, so it also highlights the human condition.
"Saint Joan of Slaughterhouses" could be seen as a modernized one, scathingly satirical version of the story of Joan of Arc, which takes place with many nested songs in his Chicago 1929 and the financial crash.

Director Nikos Mastorakis notes features:

Having experienced two world wars, of the Weimar Republic and the Great Change of East Germany to a Communist State, bertolt brecht begins to write the 1929, too soon, Agia Joanna of the Slaughterhouses, which he himself will never manage to raise. So, Saint Joan, which is more a paraphrase than a parody of Schiller's Maid of Orleans, played after his death the 1959, the time when the economic miracle of post-war Germany is being cooked up, and is perhaps the postscript of his spiritual path.

Here Brecht, in the form of the epic theater, explains to modern man the mechanism of the capitalist economy and the absolute dependence of all of us on it, as well as our inability to escape the impasse of a system destructive to both man and nature.

They star: Emilios Chiilakis in the role of Pierpont Mauler and Vicky Voliotis in the role of Joanna Dark

They also play (in alphabetical order) the: Kika Georgiou, Dimitris Degaitis, Minos Theocharis, Danai Katsameni, Lambros Ktenavos, Mother Luca, Constantine Maravelias, Angel Bouras, Michalis Oikonomou, Eleni Ouzounidou.

Source : culturenow.gr
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Year of Constantine P. Cavafy is declared the 2013

Occasion of the one hundred and fifty years since the birth of the Alexandrian poet

"Year of K.P. Cavafy" proclaims it 2013 the Ministry of Education, of religion, of Culture and Sports on the occasion of the anniversary of 150 years since the birth of the leading poet.
Constantine Cavafy (1863 – 1933) is one of the most important Greek poets of modern Greek literature. His poetry is characterized by a strong symbolic tendency and is combined with a simple but timelessly relevant speech.
The ironic mood, what has been called Cavafian irony, combined with the tragedy of reality and became the point of reference for many later poets.
His work has been the subject of long-standing study around the world and his poems have been translated into French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and many other languages.
The central planning of the action program will be carried out by the General Directorate of Contemporary Culture, the Directorate of Letters and the National Book Centre (E.KE.BI ) and will collaborate with the Onassis Foundation (House of Letters and Arts) which has under its jurisdiction the complete record of the poet, foreign embassies in Greece, the Chairs of Modern Greek Language and Culture of the Universities abroad where Cavafy is taught, the Library of Alexandria, the Hellenic Foundation of Culture and the Hellenic Foundation in Alexandria, the European Cultural Center of Delphi, literary societies and other bodies.
Source : tovima.gr
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The musical "Chicago" in Thessaloniki

The award-winning musical "CHICAGO» directed by him Stop Beans, will be presented by 30 December for a limited number of shows at Thessaloniki Concert Hall.

With 30.000 tickets from Pallas in his luggage, with excellent rates, a wonderful ensemble of actors and dancers in particularly demanding roles, in choreographies by Fokas Evangelinos and a ten-member orchestra on stage conducted by Alexis Priftis, "CHIGAGO" is undoubtedly the most glamorous show of this year's theater season.

The Emerald Coconut, Tanya Trypi, Konstantinos Markoulakis, Antonis Loudaros and Marinella in a surprise role, demonstrate their virtuoso skills in the inventive stage environment of Giorgos Gavalas and Yiannis Mourikis and the impressive costumes of Denis Vachliotis, justifying the bold choice of Hellenic Spectacles to stage this year, the "Rolls Royce of musicals".

The story
"CHIGAGO" is an authentic "jazz" story set in the Prohibition era and combining love, the comedy, adultery, the drama, satirizing "justice", "state Pharisaism" but also the "starter" of every form! Murders, violence and corruption, explosive dance moves and powerful songs excite and enthrall audiences around the world.

First uploaded on 1975 on Broadway and completed 936 representations. The direction and innovative choreographies that went down in history were signed by Bob Fosse. The public applauded it enthusiastically for two years and due to its great success it was staged again 1996 and 1997 on two Broadway stages making it the 4th longest running musical in Broadway history! It had the same excellent run in London's West End since it was played by 1997 until September 1st 2012 where the last performance was given!

Premiere 30/12
Next performances 2-6/1/2013

Buy tickets:
From the publishing houses of Megaros Musikis, in Aristotelous Square and from www.tch.gr.
Information and purchase of tickets: 2310-895938-9

Source : autotriti.gr