Good Evening everybody!
Well, first of all I wanted to say welcome to everybody, welcome to our second movies on the lawn of this summer. I’ll tell you a little secret, obviously it’s a little late for a summer movie but I’m very happy that we have summer weather, still so, Mary and I in particular.. like a lot of us in the Embassy, people put a huge amount of effort into our work this year at the Thessaloniki International Fair and as a result of that, a lot of people differ vacation, half of the Embassy is going away next week including me-very much looking forward to it- but we have also said that we are going to do everything we can to stretch out this summer so this second movies on the lawn tonight is part of the effort to stretch out the wonderful Greek August even though it’s almost the end of September..
We also have this evening a special treat for everybody on the way out. What is more associated with Greek summer than a Freddo? So, this is a Freddo cup with the logo of the Thessaloniki International Fair. I also have a permanent marker if you want to make your own marks, mine says “I heart Thessaloniki International Fair” others have said “I survived”, “I don’t heart”, “I’m glad its over”, but in any case we wanted also to use tonight to say thank you to many of you who were part of what I think it’s really an important event to remember, it’s a landmark event in the history of the U.S-Greece relationship. The TIF was a fantastic opportunity to highlight the breadth and the depth of the U.S-Greece relationship, to reaffirm our support for Greece’s economic recovery, but also to put a bright spotlight to some of the most dynamic aspects of our relationship – the technology, entrepreneur and startup relationship, our defense and security relationship and of course the people to people relationship. So we’re glad it’s over, we are very grateful for all your help but we are also very much committed to sustaining all of the goodness that happened around Thessaloniki at the beginning of September.
So tonight we have a wonderful movie, Black Panther- huge huge hit in the United States, kinda different from the other movies we’ve had. We got a younger crowd here tonight because its very much a younger person’s movie, but it’s also a movie that broke a lot of barriers in terms of diversity in Hollywood, with a large African-American cast, African-American directors, producers, and it was hugely hugely successful. So I hope, first of all, everybody will enjoy the evening in our garden — please grab some pizza, grab some pop-corn, grab a drink- make yourselves comfortable, enjoy the movie.
I was also asked to warn everybody that the end is not really the end, there are credits but there are two other scenes that happen after the credits. So be patient at the end, and Eleni or somebody will tell us when it’s really over.
And again thank you very much to everybody who was involved in TIF, enjoy the evening, Ευχαριστώ Πολύ!
