Introduction

During this last decade, and in the midst of social turmoil in the country, many filmmakers turned to crime films and hybrid forms of the neo-noir, using as their backdrop the financial, political, and migrant crisis, expressing a critical view on neoliberalism, nationalism or gender discrimination pointing to film noir as a timely genre. This introduction explains the aim of this collection and answers to the question why deal with Greek film noir today. The authors of this collection feel that now is the right moment to rewrite a transnational history of Greek cinema in a more inclusive way, relating cinema with critical strands of contemporary cultural theory, addressing issues that have remained obscured and questioning certainties, cinematic myths and national stereotypes. The first part of the introduction presents a possible periodization of crime cinema in Greece, from the end of the Greek Civil War to the present, showing that some of the masterpieces of Greek cinema bear a noir signature, which was acknowledged either too late or never. The second part discusses the uses of the term “noir” in the Greek context and addresses the reasons of a critical denial in the labeling of the Greek film noir.