Greece's last film poster painter soldiers on

By Sophie Makris

Far from the limelight of Cannes, Greece's last painter of film posters toils away in a little garden studio to deliver his latest commission.

Vassilis Dimitriou is 80 years old, works alone and knows his days on the job are numbered -- his left hand trembles from the early onset of Parkinson's disease.

But Dimitriou, a survivor of Greece's wartime occupation by the Nazis, remains determined to fight his lonely battle against digital printing for as long as he can.

For him, it's an art that truly comes from the heart.

For more than 65 years, the diminutive, beret-sporting artist has depicted all the big names, but some he pays extra attention to.

"For instance I have drawn Clint Eastwood 50 times. If I close my eyes now I can start drawing Clint Eastwood," he adds.

During the 1960s when cinema was at its peak in Greece, Dimitriou would be commissioned to paint up to 10 posters a week.

Nowadays, only one cinema in Athens, the Athinaion near the center, has held onto the tradition.

"Painting is a medium that makes it more intimate when everything is becoming more plastic," says the hall's co-owner Virginia Axioti.

"The laminated billboards are something you use one day and throw away the next. We are not of this mentality, we like tradition, we like keeping this connection between the arts," she adds.

"Music, painting, dance, cinema for me are one," Axioti says.

Born in the working-class district of Kypseli in 1935, Dimitriou apprenticed beside a Czech poster-painter and later developed his own style.

In his heydey he had two assistants as well as his wife to lend a hand, and could turn out a poster a day for a dozen cinemas in Athens.

Today, a commission takes...