Park Your Cinema: Νέα Υόρκη, Νέα Υόρκη (1977)

By nine o'clock the light is off the Saronic Gulf and the lawn has gone dark enough for the projector. You find a patch of grass, spread the blanket you carried in, and lie back as the SNFCC's widest open space becomes an open-air cinema for the night.

The film is Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1977), screened on 21 August 2026 as part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center's 2026 summer series Musicals under the Stars, curated by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Working from a screenplay by Earl Mac Rauch and Mardik Martin, Scorsese cast Robert De Niro as a saxophone player and Liza Minnelli as a singer — two musicians who fall in love in the big-band years after the Second World War. It was his homage to the studio-bound Hollywood musical, shot almost entirely on sets.

The film handed the world a song before audiences warmed to the movie. Kander and Ebb wrote "Theme from New York, New York" for Minnelli to perform at the finale — and only on the second attempt: De Niro rejected their first version as too weak, so the songwriters rewrote it in forty-five minutes. Two years later Frank Sinatra recorded it, and it became the song people now sing without recalling the film it came from.

| Aspect | Details | | --- | --- | | Setting | The lawn, open to the night sky, by the coast at Kallithea | | Vibe | Picnic-blanket calm — families, couples and film-buffs settling in before dark | | Sound | A 1977 big-band musical played out under open air | | Door | The screening begins at 21:00; arrive earlier to claim your grass |

There is no row of seats. People arrive while it is still light, stake out a square of lawn, unpack food, and let the dark do the rest. By the time the titles come up the chatter has dropped to a murmur, and a studio-built vision of post-war Manhattan opens over a field by the Athenian coast.

If you need a reclining chair, climate control and a guaranteed silence, an indoor cinema will serve you better. But if you want a sweeping musical romance under the open sky with the sea a few hundred metres off, the lawn is the room.

Admission is open — no ticket. The Cultural Center sits on the coast at Kallithea, reached by tram or bus and the center's free shuttle from central Athens. Bring a blanket or a low cushion; the grass is the only seating. The screening falls on 21 August 2026, beginning at 21:00.

One August night, one musical, one lawn between the city and the sea.