“Thission Cinema" is a documentary about one of the oldest open air cinemas in Athens operating incessantly since its foundation in 1935. Although it owes its reputation to its closeness to Acropolis what gives it its unique character are its people, both those who work in it and its audience. Despite CNN’s recent pronouncement of it as ‘Best Cinema of The World’, which has been added rather pitifully over the entrance, Cine Thission stubbornly defies modernity and remains strangely timeless. Untouched by the touristy frenzy that surrounds it, the cinema exudes an old Athenian aroma, from the time when the modern city and the ancient ruins co-existed in mutual indifference. It is not nostalgia one feels here for the old days, nor admiration for the antiquities around, but a visceral sense of the energy that flows through time, and connects our lives to the stories we watch, the past to the present, the cinema to life. Even Acropolis, with its impossible weight during the day, seen at night from here, looks like a bright air balloon, weightless, unreal - a spectacle that retreats gently in front of the gigantic screen of the cinema that absorbs us.
