Goethe Institute

A total of 2,000 police officers are to be deployed across Athens for a two-day visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel starting on Thursday afternoon.

German poet Jan Wagner, recipient of the Georg Buchner and Popescu prizes, will appear at the Goethe Institute on Friday, March 23, as part of events for the 2018 Athens World Book Capital initiative. Wagner will discuss his work and sign books, while there will also be a presentation of selected poems that have been translated into Greek.

Nobel Literature Laureate Herta Muller has been invited by Athens's Goethe Institute to attend the Greek premiere of the poignant 2015 documentary on her turbulent life as a member of Romania's German-speaking minority during the Ceausescu regime. "The Alphabet of Fear" (in German with Greek subtitles) by John Albert Jansen, will be screened on Wednesday, March 21, starting at 8.30 p.m.

Best known for her heartfelt portrayal of the titled character in the Austrian "Sissi" trilogy about Empress Elisabeth of Austria, German actress Romy Schneider is being honored by the Goethe Institute on Monday, March 5, with a screening of her last film before her untimely death from a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 43. The free screening starts at 8.30 p.m.

The Goethe Institute invites professional and amateur game writers, designers, storytellers, artists, developers and musicians to apply for a spot at the three-day Game Jam exhibition and event, taking place at the City of Athens's Serafeio community center (121 Pireos) on February 16-18. Applications must be submitted by Wednesday, February 14, and there is no charge for the process.

Five contemporary Greek composers - Iakovos Konitopoulos, Alexandros Mouzas, Vassiliki Filippaiou, Alexandra Papastefanou and Leonidas Kanaris - have set to music clerical poems by Panagiotis Kapodistrias, Stylianos S. Charkianakis, Evangelos Galanis and Moisis Agioreitis.

Free screenings, workshops with respected figures involved in the creative and technical sides of filmmaking, seminars and a concert make up the program at this year's Film Factory, an event dedicated to the art and craft of cinema. The event is organized by the Goethe Institute, the Greek Film Academy and the Onassis Cultural Center and runs through December 11.

The Goethe Institute is screening a short drama titled "Nowhere" on Wednesday, October 25. Written and directed by Sotiris Palaskas, the Greek-German production envisions what it would be like if Europeans were forced to migrate en masse.

The Goethe Institute pays tribute to Czech filmmaker and writer Harun Farocki (1944-2014), director of more than 120 films and installations that analyzed the power of the image, with screenings of landmark works from Monday, March 27, to Wednesday, March 29.

Applications are still open for participation in Game_Unconference at the Goethe Institute on Friday, March 10, where bloggers, gamers and pundits will come together to talk, play and discuss creative new ideas. The event runs from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.