Ektoras Arkomanis is a filmmaker and a senior lecturer in Architectural History and Theory.

Ektoras grew up in Athens, Greece, and moved to London in 1998. He received his MA in Architectural Histories, Theories and Interpretations from London Metropolitan University, where he has taught since 2007. He has also lectured in the University of Cardiff.

His debut feature film, Another London, is a documentary about architecture and urban space in London. He is currently researching and shooting his second feature film, A Season in Elaionas, about the area of Elaionas in Athens (2014-present).

He publishes essays on architectural history and on film.

Ektoras is the coordinator of Critical and Contextual Studies, Architecture (Architecture BA), which introduces the students to architectural history and theory. He runs the dissertation studio ‘Imperfect theories’.

He teaches two courses in Professional Diploma in Architecture: Histories, which places emphasis on direct experience of architecture in London, and Cinema and the City, a course of anthropological interest in the context of film and urbanism.

Ektoras is a Senior Fellow in the Higher Education Academy.

Courses

• Architecture BA, Critical and Contextual Studies, Level 4-6
• RIBA Part 2 (Professional Diploma in Architecture)

Publications

• Arkomanis, Ektoras, ed. (forthcoming, 2018) New Cinema and the City – Migrations. London: Cours de Poétique
  
  
• Arkomanis, Ektoras (forthcoming, 2018) The Italian Peninsula: 1000–1400. Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture. (21st edition) London, UK: RIBA; University of London; Bloomsbury Publishing
  
  
• Arkomanis, Ektoras (forthcoming, 2018) Invented Memories: Notes on Filming Industrial Ruins in Eleonas, Athens. Making Visible: Architecture Filmmaking (London: Intellect)
  
  
• Arkomanis, Ektoras (2015) Invented Memories: Notes on Filming Industrial Ruins in Eleonas, Athens. Architecture and Culture: The Journal of Architecture and Humanities Research Association, 3(1) pp. 57-64.
  
  
• Arkomanis, Ektoras (2014) ‘Early Renaissance’; ‘Mannerism’; ‘Baroque’. Architecture: The Whole Story. London: Thames & Hudson. pp. 172-177, 204-207, 222-227, 230-231
  
  
• Arkomanis, Ektoras (2013) The Iron Horse; Bigger than Life; Accatone. Film International, vol. 11
  
  
• Arkomanis, Ektoras (2012) Some thoughts on recent Romanian cinema and Corneliu Porumboiu’s films in particular. Film International, vol. 10
  
  
• Arkomanis, Ektoras (2011) Films and cities: The World, Film International (online)

Filmography

• Director/producer: Μια εποχή στον Ελαιώνα (A season in Elaionas; working title) forthcoming, 2019
  
  
• Director/producer: Work / Memories of Work (Greece, 2017, 17 min)
  
  
• Director/producer: Another London (UK, 2014, 60 min)

Ektoras is interested in exploring cities through making films, writing, and teaching the course ‘Cinema and the City’.

A Season in Elaionas (2014-ongoing)

Ektoras is currently collecting notes, stories and footage for a film, about the area of Elaionas in Athens. Once known as the ancient olive grove of the city, Elaionas is now a post-industrial, leftover space with mud-roads, out-of-use factories and kilns, etc., and a vibrant area that hosts various minority populations, scavengers’ markets and small businesses such as tanneries. Elaionas is the city at its most entropic state. It may change soon, so Ektoras is trying to create a rich record of it before that happens.

This project has, since its conception, expanded into various areas: film, writing for conferences (Visual Anthropology and the City, UCL, 2016), taking part in the Derek Jarman Lab (Birkbeck University), organising a series of open lectures, etc.

New Cinema and the City – Migrations (2018, forthcoming)

Ektoras is currently editing a forthcoming publication about migrations, changes and displacements in the city, as seen on film, through the eyes of emerging filmmakers, artists and academics.

Another London, 2011-2014

Ektoras' debut feature film, Another London (2014), is a documentary about architecture and urban space in London, in collaboration with architectural writer Robert Harbison. This three-year-long project took the filmakers to many parts of London and its history, particularly those that are marginal, either geographically or in the city’s consciousness. The film includes stories about: Nicholas Hawksmoor and Baroque London; currently contested zones such as Deptford, with its atmospheric creek and its colourful high street; modern architecture in the form of Laban Centre, Deptford Library and the Stephen Lawrence Centre; and the river, still the thread through London’s narratives and vicissitudes.