A lively dialogue between theatre, cinema, dance and performance is inaugurated this summer by Athens Festival Epidaurus through the series After-night projections, entitled "Star sky – Star nights", to be held in June and July, in Piraeus 260.
In this industrial landscape, in the quiet of summer Athens, under an open roof, film recordings of performances that have left a special imprint, with the signatures of great Greek and foreign creators, such as Michael Maramarino, Romeo Costelucci, Bella Tarr etc.
Works that have been filmed in a special way, not as simple documentation but as autonomous transcriptions of stage experience, retain their intensity, rhythm and dramatic quality. Contemporary creators compose a polyphonic field, where theatre, dance and performance chat with cinema.
At the same time, Piraeus itself 260 – a landmark that complements twenty years of continuous presence – acts as an active carrier of this experience: a space that remains alive through the multiple forms of art it hosts, constantly redefining the relationship between the past of the performance and the present of its view.
Programme
16 June
Tadeusz Kantor
The Dead Class
1975 / 85
One of the most important works of modern theatre worldwide. An iconic visual and verbal wholeness by a reference artist for contemporary theatre. Kantor along with Grotowski are considered the most critical reformers and visionaries of modern theatre.
In a small hamlet, in 1971, Kantor looks through the window at the hall of an abandoned school, and urges us to meet the "dark and invisible depths of memory". ..
With English subtitles only
24 June
Eimuntas Nekrošius
Hamletas
1997 / 190
Hamlet of Nekrošius, an emblem of the classical Shakespearean drama, resembles a ritual of a world that slowly collapses under the weight of memory and power. His stage approach carries all the wealth of Lithuanian school. The ghost scene almost “for dictionary” theatricalism. The Lithuanian aesthetics in the theatre at its height.
With English subtitles only
Duration over 3 hours with two short breaks
3 operations
28 June
Thierry De Mey
Phase
2002 / 58
Based on the work Phase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich
by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Rosas, 1982
A reference work on the evolution of European contemporary dance, the iconic choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. A happy period of choreography, minimalism and filming, where De Mey converts choreography into an autonomous film language. An unrelenting pulse, the Fasemethuse the repetition in ecstasy and the body in moving music.
4 July
Michael Marmarinos
Insenso
2012 / 101’
A “perpermanent monologue without music” turns into a site-specific performance in two places. The Space as an organic element of dramaturgy. One of the most iconic site-specific experiences of the Athens Festival hosted in Piraeus 260, returns to the celebration of 20 years, in the same space, on the screen of Piraeus D 260, revealing a landscape next to the Festival that no longer exists.
8 July 2026
Johan Simons - Paul Koek
Buckets, 2002
[150']
An iconic musical theatre approach to Euripides myth, through the radical stage language of ZT Hollandia, where the ancient tragedy is associated with ritual and musical roots of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. A wild experience of the limits of reason, power and human desire.
With Greek subtitles
13 July
Christoph Marthaler
Murx den Europäer! Murx ihn! Murx ihn! Murx ihn! Murx ihn ab!
1993 / 120
A performance station of the post-Union German theatre, which internationally established Marthaler's characteristic stage language. Musicality, absurdity, political melancholy and poetic of waiting, in a world that has already collapsed, figures who insist on singing, waiting and exist.
With Greek subtitles
21 July
Romeo Castellucci
Inferno
2008 / 180’
One of the most shocking and transformative theatrical experiences of the 2000s, reshaped the boundaries between image, performance and metaphysical theatre. Dante's hell, in Romeo Castellucci's graphic world, as an extreme experience of beauty, horror and revelation. The danger in the center of theatrical experience.
24 July
Béla Tarr
Sátántangó
1994 / 439'
The sacred chalice of Art-House cinema, with the riveting footage and the incompatible vision of human existence and despair in a decadent, post-communist Hungarian village. A hypnotic film ritual, where the world of Krasznahorkai ( Nobel Prize in Literature, 2025) emerges as a dark allegory for the end of an era and the dissolution of every collective utopia.
With Greek subtitles
Total duration over 7 hours - 3 parts, 2 breaks