Domesticating Modernity: Kinimatografikós Astír, the Work of the Imagination, and the Emergence of a National Cinema Culture, 1924–1927

The year 1924 marks a milestone in the history of Greek film: the birth of a distinctly national film culture as cosmopolitan Greeks and cosmopolitan-identified Greeks in the countryside engaged with the medium of film in order to imagine both the modernity of the contemporary world and their relationship to it. The periodical Kinimatografikós Astír played a key role in the emergence of this new film culture, facilitating its transformation into a movement. As a medium, cinema offered Greece a fresh start: an opportunity to heal internal schisms and rebuild the nation's stature around the world following the disastrous Asia Minor Campaign. Cinema, however, was not without its foes. Film eventually became a terrain of contestation in which modern and counter-modern sectors of Greek society struggled for superiority. Cinema was emerging as a mature medium, capable of altering the social and political status quo by exposing audiences to alternative social realities and allowing them to imagine new political possibilities.