The Ministry of Culture and Sports is pleased and honored to proclaim 2022 ‘The Year of Iakovos Kambanellis’ on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the writer’s birth. On his birthday, 2 December 2021, the inaugural event of the year dedicated to his memory will take place. All events during the commemoration year will be held under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Sports.
The process involved in the proclamation of ‘The Year of Iakovos Kambanellis’ began in March 2020, with the letter of nomination from Mrs. Anna Psarouda-Benaki, as President of the Academy of Athens, to Mrs. Lina Mendoni, Minister of Culture and Sports, stating that “the plenary membership of the Academy of Athens expresses its fervent support for the proclamation designating December 2021-December 2022 as ‘The Year of Iakovos Kambanellis,’ who held the Chair of Dramatic Arts at the Academy for 12 consecutive years.” It should be noted that the same request was submitted by the Municipality of Naxos and the Lesser Cyclades, the birthplace of the “patriarch” of contemporary modern Greek theatre.
“The proclamation of 2022 as ‘The Year of Kambanellis,’ stated the Minister of Culture and Sports, “constitutes but a small acknowledgment of the enormous intellectual contribution of the great Greek writer. In his unsurpassed body of work, Iakovos Kambanellis captured Greek history and the social reality of the post-war period in a unique manner. More than any other artist, he managed to create, with a blend of realism and lyricism, a portrait of the difficulties and struggles, as well as the strength and hopes, of the Greek people. Beyond, however, the timeless value of his work, Iakovos Kambanellis was a great and worthy Greek. He was an intellectual, a concerned, active citizen, and a courageous fighter, a symbol of resistance to every form of fascism. Kambanellis was unique. For those of us who had the honor and pleasure of knowing him, we learned a great deal from our interaction with this great man. Brilliant, kind, magnanimous, sensitive, poetic, an islander.”
EN Translation © Diana Savas
