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Tainiothiki tis Ellados (TTE)


Founded in 1950 in Athens, the Greek Film Archive is holding the largest and most important film collection in Greece.

The Greek Film Archive was founded in 1950 by the Union of film critics in Athens. In 1963 the Film Archive of Greece was set up by royal command (105/1963). Its founding members were among the leading personalities in Greece’s cultural affairs. The driving force of the organisation was Aglaia Mitropoulou, who was at first the General Secretary and later its President. Since 1983 the Greek Film Archive has been a full member of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). The Greek Film Archive is registered as a non-profit association and is financially supported with an annual subsidy from the Greek Ministry of Culture.

The Greek Film Archive organised the 1991 FIAF Congress in Athens. It has participated in the following programs: Projetto Lumière, Archimedia (European Training Network for the Promotion of Cinema Heritage), Eureka Project. The Greek Film Archive is preparing to move to its own new premises, (Lais project) in a new culturally growing neighbourhood of Athens, to start a new era in its activities.

The Archive holds the largest and most important film collection in Greece:

  • over 7.500 foreign titles (full length feature films, documentaries and short films)
  • over 2.500 greek titles (full length feature films, documentaries and short films)

The Greek Film Archive has a large collection of pre-cinematic apparatuses, magic lanterns, as well as various types of cameras, lighting devices and cinema-related equipment. It also holds around 7.000 photographs from Greek films, and another 10.000 from foreign films, about 5.000 stills and programs, around 800 Greek and 1500 foreign film posters, personal archives of the pioneers of Greek Cinema, as well as the personal archive of Aglaia Mitropoulou. The Archive’s Library has a wide collection of out of print cinema-related books, Greek cinema catalogues and magazines. The library is directly accessible to the public and allows researchers to consult its holdings and electronic documentation system.

The Greek Film Archive collaborates with the Athens University, Communication and Mass Media Department, as well as Panteion University, with a variety of projections and educational projects, in both graduate and postgraduate levels. It also works closely with the Athens School of Fine Arts, while curating related collections and exhibitions. The Greek Film Archive has a long standing tradition in organising projections and festivals along side with the Greek Film Center and the Thesalloniki Film Festival. For the past three decades the Greek Film Archive has maintained a series of cinematographic educational activities, offering a rich program of film projections and guided tours to its Museum of Cinema for schools and various educational foundations.

Apart from collecting, identifying, preserving, screening and promoting film and film heritage, the Greek Film Archive has started, since 2005, a large project to update and transfer in digital format its cataloguing system. Among other activities, the Greek Film Archive has undertaken the task to digitise a collection of early Greek cinema feature-films, newsreels and documentary footage, along with a significant number of its holdings, as well as a wide selection of photographs, stills and programs. Additionally the Archive is currently designing a new database, in accordance with international standards, accessible to public and researchers, via its computer network and/or the internet, a project that could be ideally combined with the works and research results of Midas Project.


Tainiothiki tis Ellados