When Iris Skaravaiou Met Iris Barry

This chapter examines the emergence and editorial development of film literature in Greece in the 1920s by drawing two pioneer female film critics, Iris Skaravaiou and Iris Barry, into an “imaginary community” between 1920s Athens and London. It investigates the activities and early professional life of Skaravaiou as well as her links with women critics and cinéphiles of the 1910s and 1920s in France and the United Kingdom in order to relate Greek to West European film literature. It explores how Skaravaiou became involved with film journalism and with developing Greek cinema. It shows that Skaravaiou fought hard to claim a place in Greek journalism and to establish cinema as the newest form of twentieth-century art. The chapter argues that a reconsideration of silent cinema history in Greece, based on neglected but important sources, should welcome Iris Skaravaiou as an important contributor, and that her writings should be placed in the context of a form of modernism that legitimated personal expression and was not aligned with the male canon.