Cinema Paradise: Industries of Coexistence

As Marina Fokidis says, Mystery 73, Cinema Paradise: Industries of Coexistence is “a collection of film narratives about a variety of communities, rituals, seas, the destruction of the planet, work and displacement, aspiring to momentarily occupy space and provoke cathartic conversations – for as long as they last – between different individuals and groups. An experiment on how artworks can be presented outside museums and art institutions, in venues of daily entertainment, like an open-air cinema with a sea view, a historical cinema built by American soldiers who served in Elefsina during the Cold War and which, though it changed ownership through the years, survived thanks to the loyalty of local cinephiles.”

“The title Cinema Paradise evokes the symbolism of the passage from the ‘world of the living’ to the ‘world of the dead,’ a theme that ever since antiquity permeates the mythology of Elefsina and the human soul. The subtitle Industries of Coexistence refers to the wider concept of work and the workforce in labour and production, the people who work incessantly, keeping our world in motion, even at personal risk, throughout the pandemics and a series of global geopolitical conflicts. The essential coexistence of all the different ‘worlds’ is the issue at stake in this particular project.”