Historical Portraits

Portraits of modern Greece

In October 1982 ERT2 began a new series by George Petritsis: Historical Portraits. Each episode presented the portrait of a person who had played an important role in the politics, the letters or the arts of modern Greece. The press welcomed it under the headline “The greats on TV”.

The first portrait was of Vlasis Gavriilidis, the journalist who founded the newspaper Akropolis and is often called the father of Greek journalism. Others announced that year included Alexandros Papanastasiou, the founder of the first Hellenic Republic; the academic Nikolaos Veis; Fotos Politis, theatre critic and one of the first directors of the National Theatre; the writer Giorgos Theotokas; the educators Manolis Triantafyllidis and Alexandros Delmouzos; Alexandros Svolos; the socialist Georgios Skliros; Emmanouil Benakis, the friend of Venizelos; Spyros Louis, the first Greek Olympic champion; and the former prime minister Georgios Papandreou.

How the portraits were made

The portraits were filmed as documentaries. In each episode the relatives of the person spoke, along with their close collaborators. George Petritsis used visual material from the time each person lived: photographs, texts and newspapers, and film footage wherever it existed. Historians, professors and journalists commented on the person and on the events of each period. The research for the first episodes was by Giannis Giannoulopoulos, professor at the University of Crete, and the main goal of the series was to present unknown documents of modern Greek history.

A second period, 1986–1987

In 1986 the series returned with 26 new documentaries, recorded on U-matic videotape. The first was dedicated to Charilaos Trikoupis. By the end the series had grown to 56 documentaries, broadcast on ET1 and ET2, with personalities from every field: Penelope Delta, Psycharis, Kostas Varnalis, Dimitris Glinos, the caricaturist Themos Anninos, Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis and many more.

Thirty years later

In 2014, the year before he died, George Petritsis returned to the form with Portraits: twelve historical documentaries for the television channel of the Hellenic Parliament, from Charilaos Trikoupis and Alexandros Zaimis to Penelope Delta and Stavros Kallergis, the first Greek socialist. His son, Adam Petritsis, was co-producer, cinematographer and editor of the series.