Dimitrios Kechris

    Kechris Dimitrios: Curriculum Vitae
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Supervisor: Maria Chalkou
Members: Aphroditi Nikolaidou, Anna Poupou

PhD research topic:

In my dissertation, I examine Greek essay-films from the 1960s to date. Specifically, I look at essay-films that address History and memory and their relationship in the public sphere – with a focus on the urban experience. Central to my research is the recognition of a certain shift that took place in the West after the Second World War: the attenuation of the use of History as a privileged tool of modernity for the conceptualisation of time (aiming either to the safeguarding of temporal continuity or to the deterministic rationalisation of events) and the simultaneous emergence of the “culture of memory” as an alternative approach to time. My research attempts a critical recording and intertextual interpretation of the ways in which Greek essay-films relate to memory, and, specifically, to that kind of memory which takes hold between institutional historical narratives that claim objectivity and mnemonic fragments that often lie in the realm of subjective contemplation. The questions that arise about how temporality is represented in the light of memory, as well as what kinds of memory are constituted in these representations are, of course, political. As such, they are inextricably linked to the character of the public sphere and the articulation of identities in it. I will therefore approach these issues through interdisciplinary synapses that link the aesthetic techniques developed by the filmmakers to major events of contemporary Greek political history while I will also employ sociological frameworks drawing on “collective memory” and critical readings of modern urban planning. 

Dimitris Kechris is a photographer, filmmaker, curator, and doctoral candidate in Film History and Theory (Ionian University). He holds a BSc in Physics from the University of Athens and an MA in Digital Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts. His work has been presented at the Benaki Museum, the Byzantine Museum, the Greek Film Archive, the Athens Municipal Art Gallery, the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, and Galeria Hexagono (Barcelona). He is the co-founder of ALDEBARAN, a platform for photography theory and a curator for MedPhoto Festival. His writings on photography and cinema have appeared in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals.