PRESS CONFERENCE
WELCOME TO EUROPE / KHAIMA / SOUTH CENTRAL GOSPEL / OTHER WOMEN’S NARRATIVES
As part of the 13th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, a Press Conference was held on Saturday, March 19, 2011. Participating were directors Stelios Kouloglou (Welcome to Europe), Athanasios Karanikolas (Khaima), Maria Pesli (Other Women’s Narratives) and Chronis Pechlivanidis (South Central Gospel), whose films are participating in the International Program.
A common subject of the first three films is the issue of immigration, so the discussion began there. Athanasios Karanikolas, speaking about his film Khaima noted: “I began being interested in the subject in 2009. I knew that the destruction of the Afghani settlement in Patras was something that would happen soon, so I didn’t want to get involved with the time-consuming process of securing funding from agencies in Germany, where I live. I came to Greece in March, and the inevitable happened by June, that is, the authorities had torn the settlement down. It was important for me to find out what was happening there, since I had read various outrageous things on the internet beforehand, for instance it was being said that these people were criminals and bearers of diseases. They even called them homosexuals, because they couldn’t be with women due to the isolation they lived in”, the director said. Speaking about the difficulties he faced making the documentary he stressed: “The fact that I approached these people with a positive attitude doesn’t mean that they didn’t have difficulties speaking to me, since they had been badly treated, especially by certain news media. They often asked what meaning this whole project had, and I had to explain to them, every single time, that even if the film couldn’t help them, it could possibly help others in the future. I told them that people must learn what is happening to them, because, as the saying goes – and it is the truth– “we are all immigrants”. And since this issue is high on the agenda of not only Greece, but Europe and the entire world, I wanted to make this film, even in this way, making it by myself”.
Maria Pesli explained that she wasn’t alone on the journey of filming her documentary Other Women’s Narratives. With her were her three leading characters, immigrants who have been living in Greece for the last 15 years. “We first gave them some basic lessons on filming, editing etc., and then we gave them the means to film their personal moments themselves. The reason for this was that I was very interested in seeing their point of view, to learn how they themselves see the situations they live in, in this new country so far from their home”, the director noted. “People think of immigrants as an amorphous mass, not knowing what each of them carries inside himself or herself, whether this is knowledge or a cultural heritage. We are speaking of people who have been in Greece for a long time, who are living through the financial crisis the same as we are, and whose future is tied to that of Greece. What we forget is that they are already brave, since they have managed to change their lives once already, heading into the unknown”, the director concluded.
“Since I had the time to say what I wanted to say, I decided to avoid babbling on” Stelios Kouloglou said about his 11-minute film Welcome to Europe, which speaks about immigration using a well-aimed reversal in the script. “The film’s basic idea is that the images presented are not those of a European country, as our country likes to call itself, nor of the multicultural structure that Europe would like to call itself, but rather those of a fortress to protect the rich. So the general idea is that appearances are deceiving. From 1999, when I had screened my film Dirty Greeks at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival to today, the only thing that has changed is that the black sheep at that time were the Albanians, while now it is the Asians. There is the same mistrust, an allergy to the foreigner, a xenophobia that has worsened with the economic crisis”, the director explained. Regarding the recent hunger strike by immigrants, Mr. Kouloglou declared that: “In the beginning perhaps they had excessive demands, but the truth is that they brought the issue back to the surface and accomplished something important”.
In turn, Chronis Pechlivanidis, in his documentary South Central Gospel records the world of gospel in the South Central district of Los Angeles. He got to know this world very well at the side of his co-director Jim Whitney, who has been living there for the past 20 years. “South Central is an area populated by underprivileged African–Americans and Mexicans. There is a feud between the two sides, and even though we had permission to film, sometimes we faced certain obstacles on a practical level” the director noted. And he added: “We saw a magical picture in the churches we entered, something that I have only experienced in Africa. You went in, and by the time you went out you felt as if you had had a therapy session. Our connection with all this was musician Willy Chambers, who was the attraction that brought people into the specific church. His musical career has made him into an idol, perhaps a fallen one, but through his own choice. He was such an amazing personality as well as an incredible presence in front of the camera”, the director said. And he concluded by saying: “Blues and gospel, related musical genres, are the music of the soul”.
