200 years of Revolution? Rewriting ancient myths today.

The International Analogio Festival opens its gates for the 18th consecutive year from the 21st to the 28th of September 2021 with a wide-ranging program on writing, theatre, literature, and arts, having as a backdrop the sacred rock of the Acropolis and the Athenian sky as seen from the Old University in Plaka.

The festival's program's axis revolves around the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution, and it is titled «200 years of Revolution? Rewriting ancient myths today».

The festival’s main program this year includes the opening of eleven new plays from Greece and abroad which qualified as works in progress for the world writing competition organized by the festival. The festival’s parallel events that are organized every year under the title "Libraries as Gardens" include online meetings, documenting the works, and creating podcasts, educational and outdoor activities through the use of innovative media in the public space. These actions encourage the public to discover the wealth and diversity of contemporary writing.

The International Analogio Festival, in the context of the 200th anniversary of the Revolution of 1821, organized a global writing competition for a short play entitled "200 years of Revolution? Rewriting ancient myths today." A total of one hundred and eighty works were submitted from twelve countries: Greece, Bolivia, Germany, Republic of North Macedonia, Switzerland, U.S.A., India, Iran, Mexico, Mongolia, Slovenia, Czech Republic. All the works received by the organization unfold the linguistic richness, diversity, and imagination of the writers - representatives of modern playwriting.

In the manuscripts we received, the Revolution is outlined not only as an act aimed at political and social change. The Revolution emerges as the concept and the substance behind every innovation, contemporary achievement, new technology, exploring of spiritual horizons, nurturing of new ideologies and beliefs, spreading socio-political messages, renegotiating literary, aesthetic, and artistic movements, creating new myths, and questioning the old ones, as well as assimilating them into the present. The Revolution, therefore, is a canal that irrigates from the waters of the past, feeds and fertilizes the present, and carries hope into the future. The works of the competition convey this image to us.

Ten works were selected to receive prizes and be presented as work in progress; three come from abroad (Bolivia, Republic of North Macedonia, Czech Republic), and seven come from Greece. The justification for these awards lies in the fact that they contain the "seeds" of all the above-mentioned "qualities" of a revolution that leads to evolution.

The event's program also includes the work "Wireless Connection" by Natalia Katsou, commissioned by the festival and presented at the International Analogio Festival 2019 in a preliminary version. This year it will be presented in its final form. As part of its program of extroversion and international collaborations, the festival hosts the performance "August" directed by Zoltán Balázs, a production of the Maladype Theatre (Hungary).

Every year, the festival is accompanied by a series of parallel events entitled "Libraries as gardens," which includes tributes, workshops, seminars, discussions, and actions that use new technologies.

This year's tributes include the Tribute to the French university professor, theorist, critic Robert Abirached (recently deceased) organized by Nektarios Konstantinidis and the Tribute to our great music composer Mikis Theodorakis organized by Panagiotis Andriopoulos with the music ensemble "Polytropon".

Geert Vermeire organizes the actions using new technologies and in collaboration with the organization THE MILENA PRINCIPLE, the portal walk - listen - create, the SUPERCLUSTER Locative Media, and the RASURAS – MARGINAL GEOGRAPHIES (language, poetics, movement) RESEARCH GROUP, will spread out throughout the historical center of the city highlighting writings, sounds, and locations. Digital Applications will be developed that will unite people from different cities of the world where similar actions will be taking place simultaneously.

The International Analogio Festival 2021 is implemented with the support and under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the collaboration of the Laboratory of Music, Acoustics, and Technology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the support of the Department of Theatre Studies of the University of Peloponnese, the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpretation of the Ionian University, the Association of Book Publishers, the Book Festival in Zappeion, the Czech Centre in Athens, the National Cultural Foundation and the Embassy of Hungary.

See the detailed program here here