During the Occupation, the backstage of the cinema was stacked with German weapons—left there as soldiers sat absorbed in the film. In the golden decades of postwar Greek cinema, people would celebrate Easter right in their seats, while Haris Theofilopoulos, the cinema’s owner, pedaled between theaters to fetch reels for simultaneous screenings. The story of the “Pantheon” cinema in Amaliada plays out like a film from another time.
This podcast is part of the series “As If It Were Yesterday.”
Narrator: Haris Theofilopoulos
Researcher: Chrysoula Ladea
Podcast Producer: Anna Gioka
Sound Design: Giorgos Ramantanis
Sound Editing: Dimitris Karavasilis
Istorima is the largest oral history project in Greece. Over 1,000 young researchers have set out to find storytellers, to listen, to gather, and to preserve personal histories from all corners of the country—stories of place and belonging, of love and transformation, of past and present. These are stories that rarely make it into history books, stories at risk of being lost to time.
The project was founded by journalist Sofia Papaioannou and historian Katherine Fleming.