Giant posters painted by Stefanos Almaliotis and displayed at the cinema ORFEFS, at Stadiou str., for the films The CORSICAN BROTHERS (1941) and NEPTUNE’S DAUGHTER (1939-1964).

F. 580

F. 616

…Almaliotis worked in the realm of the cinema poster for exactly twenty years, from 1935 to 1955. he then abandoned the Giant cinema poster and returned to the place where he began: iconography. Vakirtzis stayed with the cinema poster even longer: he started off next to his famous teacher Almaliotis in 1938, while he was still a child, and continued until 1963.

Almaliotis took his first lessons on color in Thessaloniki, next to the iconographer I.Matsigos, at the age of 12. he painted his first cinema posters when he was 14.

My first posters for cinema façades, says the veteran artist, were created at the CARAVAN SERAI and ATTIKON cinemas in Thessaloniki. This was around 1927- 1928, when silent films were still shown.
Almaliotis, a modest man of fine built, with an open forehead and grey hair, talks about his work on the veranda of his atelier, somewhere in exarhia. I am now painting a Pantocrator, intended for a new church… (Interview with St. Almaliotis in Nea Politeia newspaper of 5/8/1970).

Christos Ph. Margaritis