Visual folklore in 1960s Greek popular cinema: Athens at the threshold of tradition and modernity

Abstract

Despite its slow and ambivalent transformation, particularly after WWII, Greek society strived to present a novel and relatively modern face during the 1960s. While tradition in all its facets had been a long-lasting staple, even affecting critical aspects of everyday life, modernity began to take steps and seek changes: peasants left the countryside to explore new opportunities in the urban centers, immigration rose, education emerged as a means to escape poverty, while technology penetrated the Greek household slowly. Such urban shifts have been particularly documented in the popular Greek films of the 1960s, providing a rich framework to explore the notions of tradition and modernity in visual folklore. By employing a qualitative approach, this article focuses on how Greek popular film reflects the critical tensions surrounding everyday urban life by examining customs, rituals, identities, and material culture as represented in particular film case studies. It will argue that the popular Greek film of the 1960s documents glimpses of tradition still surviving in the city and presents to the Greek audience ways of handling, preserving, or even rejecting tradition, while flirting with modernity.