The unveiling of the bust of the patriarch of Greek cinema, the leading Greek film producer and founder of Finos Film, Philopoimenos Finou, was made today by the Minister of Culture Lina Mendonis and the mayor of Athens S. Doukas, in the park of the Larissa station.

The work was created by the sculptor Vangelis Ilias.

In her greeting, the Minister of Culture, after noticing that today the honor is being given to Philopoimenas Fino belatedly, praised his passion for cinema, recording the milestones of his thirty-year creative path which goes hand in hand with the history of Greek cinema.

“It is really extremely difficult, he said, to summarize, in a few lines, the course of Philopoimenas Fino. To restore his contribution and influence to their true dimensions, contemporaneously and later. Fino’s films have a decisive influence on the way in which we perceive Greece today in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Quotes from these films are, even today, a point of reference in all our discussions, friendly and more formal, having even infiltrated in our public discourse. On the other hand, it is necessary to honor his work in a cool and fair way, away from inevitable nostalgic moods and idealizations of a Greece that no longer exists, the one captured forever by the frames of his films. How many people, in truth, had such a great and long-lasting influence on Greek society, without being, except rarely, in front of the public spotlight?

Philopoimin Finos was born in Kato Tithorea of ​​Lokrida in 1908. His father, a doctor, became a theater manager, turning theaters into cinemas. The young Filopoimin loves “machines” and the technique of cinema. He studies Law in Athens, political science in Germany, but cinema wins him forever.

“In 1939, notes Lina Mendoni, she filmed “The Song of Separation”, the first and last film she directed. His decision to make this his last film shows his maturity. He had realized early on what his inclinations were, his creative power, his gifts. Perhaps the great secret of Fino’s success lies precisely in this: He realized, this great lover of cinema, that he was not cut out to be a director and decided to serve his great love from another position and to become – and remains to this day – the greatest Greek producer of all time, a rather unrepeatable phenomenon”.

Philopoimen Finos, within three decades, set up an empire. It highlights a multitude of actors, directors, screenwriters, technicians who will mark a meteoric course, having passed through the “school” of Finos Film. “The Minister of Culture seals, she notes, more than anyone else the golden age of Greek mass cinema, which is essentially born and dies with it.”

Actor Yiannis Vogiatzis and cinematographer Nikos Kavoukidis, who worked at the Finos Film studios, and many other people from the cinema spoke about Finos. The event was also attended by the mayor of Athens, Haris Doukas, the former mayor of Athens, Kostas Bakoyannis, with whose cooperation this initiative was undertaken, and representatives of the film industry.