Koursal

“Koursal” was the name of the only cinema in the world that ever operated on a sailing ship on the beach at Thessaloniki during the inter-war years. The search for specific data surrounding the mythic cinema becomes an anguished quest as it disappears into a misty landscape through which, over the space of approximately one hundred years, other facets of the city emerge – facets which official history defiantly ignores… Our guides on this journey are Yannis Tamtakos and Nikos Bililis.The former, a man with a rich history in the workers’ movement and a road made rockier because of his political ties, first to the Trotskyist movement and then to anarchism. The latter, a man with a passionate love for celluloid that walks the fine line between the destruction and the preservation of our filmic heritage. And then there’s the sea: sometimes calm, wrapped in the morning fog; other times stormy, but always waiting for the “Koursal”…