Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Greek Oscars

On Monday night I put on my best outfit and headed over to the award ceremony of the Greek Cinema Academy. On the way over I prepared my speech. Nervous about conjugating verbs correctly and using proper articles, I settled on ευχαριστώ ("thank you"). Unfortunately, I didn't win any awards and never had to address the audience.

When my friend Sophia invited me to the event, I imagined something out of People magazine - red carpet and all. I've got to say that my pre-conceived notions of the Greek Oscars weren't too far off (apart from the red carpet, I think it was a tiled floor).

The award ceremony was, of course, all in Greek. Fortunately, my friend Manolis translated for me and I could put my 2nd grade context clues skills and 2-year-old knowledge of Greek to good use for everything else. For almost every category a film titled "ψυχή βαθιά" (that's Greek for "Deep Soul") was nominated, but never seemed to win. A movie about a transsexual won several awards, including best make-up and the film nominated to be submitted to the Oscars was titled "Dog Tooth" (I'm just as perplexed as you).

After the awards, actors, actresses, directors and no-namers such as myself were mixing and mingling. I was shifting weight from one foot to another and scoping out the hors d'oeuvres table while my Greek friends tried to act natural about standing so close to famous Greek people. My guess-work about potential celebrities turned out to be spot-on: big Greek men with frumpy clothes and untidy facial hair were directors, scantily-clad women with sleek hair were actresses, guys wearing all black with Chuck Taylors were cameramen and under-dressed people making a dinner out of hors d'oeuvres were Americans...or just me and my friend Chris. Why must stereotypes be so true?

The picture below is of me winning an award for Best American Spectator ;)

1 comment:

  1. oh, so cute you are. i can just see you shifting weight, drooling for delectable hors d'oeuvres, and wearing your best outfit... what was it? flip flops, a skirt, and a frilly top? ;) it's fun when you stereotype yourself.

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