Following the itinerary of a travelling grocer at the depopulating mountainous regions of Northern Greece as captured in the ethnographic film documentary of Dimitris Koutsiabasakos O Manavis, this essay recounts time as it unfolds in the peripheral landscapes of Mount Pindos. Sensing their peripheral temporalities, it seeks ways of seeing time differently.

“The Travelling Grocer” was written for trans 42 Time, a semi-annual journal of the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich.

Dimitris Koutsiabasakos, born 1967, is a Greek film director, writer, and independent producer, known for his documentaries, series, short and feature films. He studied at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, in Moscow, Russia. He taught in several Drama Schools, including the National Theatre of Northern Greece and was a lecturer at the University of the Aegean. Since 2018, he is Associate Professor of Film Directing at the Film School of Art Faculty at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His work has been critically acclaimed and has received national and international awards.