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Photo courtesy from Film Director Dimitris Indares from his documentary Lenkai, The Curse of Fire (2024)
LMU GREEK CINEMA WEEK
Homage to Xenios Zeus
March 11-18, 2025
Host and Curator: Prof. Katerina Zacharia
Curation Advisor: Nikos Nikolopoulos
With the support of the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival (LAGFF)
Q&A with invited guests will follow the film screenings
Zeus is the king of the Olympian Gods and the most powerful. His cultic attributes and titles of Zeus Xenios and Zeus Hikesios attest to his protection of those who stand outside ordinary social bonds — the strangers, suppliants and beggars, positing guest-friendship and hospitality (xenia) to refugees and asylum seekers as the quintessential marker of civility in classical democratic Athens. Zeus punishes those who do not uphold justice for the vulnerable. He does not rule as a tyrant, but submits himself to fate, safeguards cosmic order and the natural environment.
The selected Greek fiction feature films and documentaries offer an Homage to Xenios Zeus, as they encourage us to explore our common humanity, identify with those on the margins of society, and develop a sense of responsibility, combating the rise of xenophobia in the contemporary world, by promoting and embodying meaningful social action.
The Classics & Archaeology department celebrates 25 years of Greek Cinema at LMU.
The LMU Greek Cinema Week is a scholarly inquiry into Greek Cinema with an emphasis on contemporary issues and the discipline of Classics. Prof. Katerina Zacharia selects the topic and curates the annual event, and will conduct all the post-screening discussions, which will be recorded by LMU staff/interns. The film screenings are supported by students in Prof. Zacharia’s spring 2025 course on Representations of Greece: Ancient and Modern.
Following the success of the 2024 LMU Greek Cinema: An Homage to Dionysus, we have secured funds from the Dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, and the Dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts, and a continued collaboration with the department of Film, Television & Media Studies for the March 2025 LMU Greek Cinema week.
The LMU Classics & Archaeology department values our 10-year LMU-LAGFF community partnership, which offers supervised internships administrated by Prof. Zacharia, LAGFF Director of Education, to LMU students. Over 200 LMU students have interned with LAGFF acquiring first-hand experience in several aspects of film festival production, such as programming, industry labs, event production, videography, interviewing filmmakers, film reviewing, and more. In addition, 15 SFTV faculty have served as LAGFF jurors since 2014. We are thankful to the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival for our invaluable partnership and collaboration in both the LMU-LAGFF internship program and the LMU Greek Cinema Week.
The event is free and open to all.
3/11 and 3/18, 3:45-6:45pm @ Ahmanson Auditorium (UNH 1000)
3/14-16, 1:00-7:00pm @ LMU’s Broccoli Theater
For dates and details, view the schedule for LMU Greek Film Festival: Homage to Xenios Zeus
For more information about the LMU screenings, please contact: katerina.zacharia@lmu.edu
LMU Sponsors: Departments of Classics & Archaeology, and Film, Television & Media Studies, the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, and the College of Communication and Fine Arts.
