Themis Bazaka

Themis Bazaka (Θέμις Μπαζάκα, sometimes spelled Mpazaka) was born in 1957; Greek reference works give Thessaloniki as her birthplace. Her parents were teachers who were posted to villages in Macedonia, so she spent her early childhood, as she told To Vima in 2016, in village yards. At first they did not want her to become an actress, but later they supported her. She trained at the drama school of the National Theatre of Northern Greece in Thessaloniki and graduated with distinction. She could have stayed with the company, but she wanted to make films, so in 1982 she moved to Athens and began asking where auditions were held.

A small television part, Silvia, a troubled painter in the series Το μινόρε της αυγής (The Minor Key of Dawn), got her noticed. Through the actor Konstantinos Tzoumas she met the director Costas Ferris, and in Ρεμπέτικο (Rebetiko, 1983) she played Andriana, the mother of the singer Marika. Two years later came Πέτρινα χρόνια (Stone Years). She has said that from 1985 to 1995 she made “cinema and only cinema”, 35 films in all, sometimes two or three in a year.

Then, from about 1996 until about 2003, she took a break from film; afterwards younger directors began to cast her. She has also acted in about 23 Greek television series and in many plays. On 7 March 2016 the French state made her a Knight (Chevalier) of Arts and Letters.

Πέτρινα χρόνια (Stone Years, 1985), written and directed by Pantelis Voulgaris, is a Greek-language film inspired by real events. In 1954 two young communists, Eleni and Babis, belong to a banned party. Babis is arrested; Eleni, played by Bazaka, hides in Athens for years, is later caught and sent to prison, where she gives birth to their child. The couple are allowed to marry only behind bars, and the story runs until the end of the military dictatorship in 1974. Dimitris Kataleifos plays Babis and Stamatis Spanoudakis wrote the music. At the 1985 Thessaloniki festival the film won Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress for Bazaka; in Venice she received a special mention, and the Greek state also gave her its best actress award.

In Ρεμπέτικο (Rebetiko, 1983), Costas Ferris’s musical drama loosely based on the life of the singer Marika Ninou, with songs by Stavros Xarchakos, she plays Marika’s mother. She worked with Voulgaris again in Ήσυχες μέρες του Αυγούστου (Quiet Days in August, 1991), three stories of lonely people in an empty Athens, and in Ακροπόλ (Akropol, 1996), set in the theatre world of the 1950s. On stage she has taken large roles: Amanda in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (2016), Lyubov in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at the Dimitris Horn Theatre (2019) and a leading role in Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer (2020).

For many Greeks, Bazaka is still Eleni of Stone Years, one of the best-remembered Greek films of the 1980s; she recalls that it sold about a million cinema tickets, and Rebetiko even more. Her long stage career keeps her in front of new audiences in Athens. Try this: watch a short scene from Stone Years, which is in Greek, with subtitles. Then write three simple sentences of your own in Greek: Η Ελένη είναι στην Αθήνα (Eleni is in Athens). Πρώτα… (First…). Μετά… (Then…). Finish each sentence with an action you really see, such as περπατά (she walks) or μιλά (she talks). These are practice frames, not lines from the film.

• She graduated from the National Theatre of Northern Greece’s drama school with distinction, but chose film work in Athens over a contract there.
• She joined Rebetiko after a dinner at director Costas Ferris’s home, when the main roles were already cast.
• She has said that for ten years she made “cinema and only cinema”.
• In 2016 France made her a Knight of Arts and Letters, mainly for a play performed in France.