Kalamata Creative Documentary Centre-Talking about Greek comics

A live discussion with creators Steve Stivaktis, Georgia Zachari, and John Antono is scheduled for Monday, June 23rd, at the Creative Documentary Centre.

In a special event, three well-known cartoonists from Athens will present their work and discuss their paths in the Greek comics scene.

Lila Gleggle will moderate the discussion.

Meet the creators:
Steve Stivaktis:
Steve graduated from the Ornerakis School in 2012. Since then, he has been working in comics, illustration, writing and tattooing. In 2021, he wrote the comic Spazorachoula (illustrated by Elena Gogou), published by Jemma Press, which won Best Screenplay at the Greek Comics Awards. Until then, Steve was best known for his self-published works, especially the comics Esme and Sketchuchtra. In 2022, he worked on Sifis Vardakis' award-winning documentary AKOE-AMFI: The Story of a Revolution (*To Sleep on His Chest). He has written and/or illustrated numerous comics, children's books, and role-playing games. He is known for his illustrations in a neo-traditional tattoo style, the queer fantasy theme of his work, and the outrageous numbers of stickers he produces.

Georgia Zachari:
She was born in Athens in 1994. She studied Art History at the School of Fine Arts, where she completed her thesis entitled "Representations of the Urban Landscape in Contemporary Greek Comics: Athens and Thessaloniki". Since then, she has chosen to draw comics with cities herself rather than write for others. She began publishing her work in 2017, and in 2019, she collaborated with Giorgos Gousis and Panagiotis Pantazis on the comic Festival for the 60th anniversary of the Thessaloniki Film Festival. In 2021, she adapted Alki Zei's Kaplani into a comic book with her friend Stella.

John Antono:
Yiannis D. Antonopoulos was born in 1985 in Marousi, Attica. As a student, he was taught Byzantine iconography while he studied sketching and illustration at the "Ornerakis" School of Applied Arts. He has also completed undergraduate studies at the Department of History and Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the National University of Athens and postgraduate studies at the Department of Political Science and History of Panteion University, specialising in the history of Greek cartooning. He works as a Sketch-Comics teacher for children and adolescents, as a caricaturist, and as a political cartoonist at the Editors' Newspaper, where he also writes articles (about comics and other topics). He has organised numerous cartoon and comic book exhibitions, most notably the series "Sketching Ennio" on the life and work of the Italian composer Ennio Morricone (in collaboration with his Music Friends Association in Larissa). In 2024, he co-curated, with cartoonist Spyros Derveniotis, the major retrospective exhibition "The Transformation of Cartoonists".