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Antonis Kioukas

“THE MYTH OF MYKONOS was shaped in the mid-20th century by that particular mix of affluent tourists,
intellectuals, artists and aesthetes who in their search for the ‘beauty that will save the world’, found Mykonos and
declared it a heaven on Earth,” explains director Antonis Kioukas, whose love of art and culture rivals his love of
Mykonos. The unique synergy between the island’s poor, largely uneducated, rustic population and the free-spirited,
creative and joyfully open-minded new arrivals created a unique culture and way of life shaped by extraordinary
individuals, including Luis Orozco and Le Corbusier, Stavros Xarchakos and Yehudi Menuhin, Christian Dior and
Jean Paul Gaultier, Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis, and a host of other artists, aristocrats and maverick
cosmopolitans. “Art was ubiquitous on Mykonos during those decades,” Antonis says, “but then things slowly started
to change.” An artist himself, with multiple accolades for his film work both in Greece and abroad and with over three
decades of experience in planning and managing major cultural events, Antonis has worked for years to preserve the
island’s cultural and artistic spirit. He was instrumental in founding Mykonos Art Festival, has organized numerous
concerts and events on Mykonos and the neighbouring sacred island of Delos, and, since 2011, has run Cine Manto,
an open-air cinema and art space in the heart of Mykonos Town that is both a celebration of the island’s artistic and
cultural legacy and a force carrying this spirit into the future. Not least, Antonis has been documenting the island’s
unsung heroes, the everyman guardians of its traditions and authentic way of life. “I make films about the people of
this island,” he explains, “people who won’t make the history books but who have, quietly and unintentionally, indelibly
marked the course of this place with their generosity of spirit.” Endlessly inspired and enchanted by Mykonos, he
doesn’t hesitate to share his discontent at the loss of that golden age of cosmopolitan bohemianism, of boundless
creativity and freedom of spirit and of mind—but most importantly, he doesn’t hesitate to imagine a world of new
possibilities. “My dream is Delos,” Antonis says of his ambitions to establish a new cultural institution. “Europe’s
largest archaeological site with its unique humanist and cosmopolitan heritage. Delos, the birthplace of light!”

OF ART AND LIGHT
Mykonian by blood and by love for the island, internationally acclaimed director Antonis Kioukas is a driving force in the effort
to preserve and revitalise art and culture on Mykonos.

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