PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

KNOW THYSELFIE

Who are you? In truth, there is probably no simpler or more complex philosophical question. ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ. A Socratic provocation and an unavoidable reminder to all approaching the Delphic Oracle. For some it’s a seemingly simple answer, for others more convoluted, perhaps, confronting…. and for many… the precipice of an existential unraveling.

We are living in an epoch where identity is being explored, exercised, expanded, exterminated, extorted, exported, exploited and thoroughly examined. Not only by humans but by our own machines and the ghosts embedded in them. What kind of connection is this?  Are we being enabled or disabled?  Those thoughts you’re thinking… are they yours? And… where did they come from?

Welcome to FESTIVAL HELLENIKA 2026.

 It is a pleasure to present a programme of events that not only entertains and informs, but one that provokes wonder. It is our role to put up mirrors to investigate who we are and in so doing hopefully bringing more depth, understanding,  enrichment, connection and meaning. Socrates, after all, famously announced that the unexamined life is not worth living. 

Humankind has developed festivals for people to gather and to somehow leave moved, elevated… perhaps, even changed.  Ours is no different. All our offerings have the power to inform and inspire whether they be through music, film, academic presentations, cultural dedications, poetry, comedy, theatre or art.

All of this festival is the work of those amongst us who are culturally devoted – from the sponsors who believe in our work to the artists and presenters who are conduits of ideas, thoughts, truth and beauty. We are grateful to you.  I personally wish to acknowledge and deeply thank the committee members of my board who bring their passion, imagination and confounding generosity. This festival is an invitation to raise your view and gaze at an ancient, still evolving operating system within and surrounding you … a liberating, expansive empire of the mind and a treasury of Greek ideas that, through time, has been coded into our bodies, psyches, languages, arts, sciences, cities, cultures, values, beliefs, our relationships…even the cosmos. So much of our life here is made OF Greece.

So many of our thoughts are the children of great thinkers – all of them an example and a reminder of the mastery and the majesty of one’s own thinking. Our hope is that the reflection presented back to you in this festival helps you discover more about yourselfie.

Adoni Fotopoulos

President