During the inter-war years in Greece, alongside the self-taught sign-writers and draftsmen, a group of set-designers in Athens became involved with publicizing theatrical and cinema performances. Their work served as a stimulus for another group of contemporaries, which included talented young painters, to venture into the décor of cinema façades in three major urban centres.
Thanks to their individual character, artistic affiliations and youthful experiences, these painters-printmakers-affichistes developed a unique artistic style that left its imprint for decades on the cinema art, as well as on the methods of advertising and promoting Greek films and foreign films screened in Greece.
They painted on a gigantic scale the most impressive scenes from the films shown in the central cinema houses of Athens and Thessaloniki, freezing shots, magnifying frames, ‘zooming in’ on the faces of the leading actors, staging with an explosion of colours what the black-and-white film deprived its viewers of. They then placed the enormous painted surfaces (décor) on the cinema façades, thus in reality directing the films for a second time -this time, however, as a dazzling visual feast.

During the golden age of Greek cinema, that is the period 1950-1975, there existed in Athens 3-4 big ateliers of Cinema poster artists, the most important of which was that of George Vakirtzis (1923-1988). This was located at the centre of the city, in Stadiou street in the basement of ATTIKON cinema house. This cinema was run by the SKOURAS Company, which was the official film distributor in Greece of 20th CENTURY FOX. The same Company also run cinemas REX, PANTHEON, KOTOPOULI, all located at the centre of Athens. The George Vakirtzis atelier, however, also produced hand-painted giant posters for the films of PARAMOUNT and other American and European film production Companies (mainly French and Italian).

Every Monday morning, Athens was transformed into an outdoor art gallery, hosting the weekly joint exhibition of the painters who embellished the city.
On Monday nights, cinemas ATTIKON, REX and PALLAS would often hold first screenings of films. These were attended by formal guests, as well as big crowds of citizens who longed to watch on screen their favorite actors in their new adventures.

Many decades later, we managed to locate photographs documenting these evening screenings at the archives of old Athenian photographers. The latter were usually film aficionados who, in addition to the film photoreportage they did, would also take photographs of the cinema façades with the giant-posters in the foreground or in close- ups, at night and in the morning hours.

Every week the painters-affichistes would adorn the corner faces of buildings and houses on the most frequented streets of Athens, with a row of lithograph posters of standard – classic- dimensions. Not only did they etch the plates for these, but they also personally supervised their six-colour reproduction, inside the chromolithographers’ workshops of the day.

For the last 40 years, a team of people, who in their teens had been passionate about the cinema and the visual culture surrounding it, have been collecting, archiving and hence preserving parts and pieces from these unique and precious hand-painted giant posters, which are nowadays extremely rare.
They have studied, restored, documented and digitalized all this “material”, thus producing an ensemble: a complete Collection, of educational and historic value.
Thanks to these Archives, one can study today the entire sequence of artistic creation, production and display of this hand-painted material used for the advertising and the promotion of Greek and foreign films screened in Greece.

The Starlets Collection® comprises

• representative sketches, drawings, gouaches and maquettes which are small scale models of the hand-painted Giant cinema posters,
• a number of original hand-painted Giant cinema posters,
• lithograph posters and their models,

• credit titles, lettering types, graphics and special constructions produced mainly by G. Vakirtzis (1923-1988) for advertising the films shown in Greece in the years 1950 to 1975.

The Collection also comprises:

• a large number of rare (vintage) documented photos of the facades of Athenian cinemas (movie-theatres), where the above painted giant posters were displayed, during the ‘50s.

• Material from the G.Vakirtzis Archives (photographs of actors, press clippings and miscellaneous “documents”)
• Artworks and drawings of G. Vakirtzis, not related to the cinema.
• Cinema drawing works by the engravers K. Techritzoglou and K. Grigοriadis.
• Documentation material (printed, electronic): books, newspapers, posters, photos, video tapes, cds and other.

In 2012 Christos Ph. Margaritis, one of the Starlets Collection founders, edited the scientific catalogue of the Collection (Catalogue Raisonné), comprising 304 pages, in Greek and English, under the title:

This Catalogue is also available in digital form.

The Starlets Collection® is, as far as we know, unique in its kind, not least for being the product of a group of people who share a common passion for the
cinema and are committed to safeguarding the monuments of its early history.

N.B.

● Models and Drawings for the Giant Posters are indicated as VGM.X.
● Hand-painted Giant Posters are indicated as VGP.X.
● Models for Lithographic posters are indicated as VLM.X.
● Lithographic posters are indicated as VL.X.
X stands for the artwork’s Serial Number in the Starlets Collection®.