GREEK CREATORS – 7 April
On Thursday, 7 April 2005, the Greek creators Yorgos Zervas, (“Now I Can Dream”), Thodoros Marangos, (“Black baah”), Yannis Katomeris (“The Greeks came from the ocean”) and Stavros Ioannou (“Kakolyri 5/44”) gave a press conference for their films which are being screened within the framework of the 7th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival – Images of the 21st Century.
Yorgos Zervas: Now I Can Dream
Yorgos Zervas’ film takes a thoughtful approach to the efforts of people who have joined various programs of 18OVER to rid themselves of substance addiction. The film follows the painful journey of these people through all the stages of the program. Characteristic moments out of their day are chosen, and emphasis is given to the beneficial influence of the artistic teams to their psychology, their relationships with others, and also the rest of the world. The way in which addicts slowly regain contact with time and place is demonstrated, how they begin to enjoy and be satisfied by various things, to realize their inimitable individuality, to win back their self respect, to dream, to draw closer to others discovering togetherness, to become emotionally adult, to stand on their own two feet, to reveal themselves, and to open up to people.
As the director characteristically said: “This film has a different approach to the subject of addiction and detoxification, far from moralizing and condemnation. It is an attempt that aims on the one hand to make society more tolerant of substance addicted people, and on the other hand for the film to prevent our children from losing 20 years of their lives.” Moreover he noted what a significant experience this was for himself, his crew and the people participating in the 18OVER detoxification programs. “When at the end of the shoot the kids made a ‘team’ to give a final account of the work they had done according to their ceremony and the usual practice, we also participated as a crew. It was a very moving moment and it is a shame that I didn’t manage to shoot it. But that is the way documentaries are.”
Thodoros Marangos: Black Baah
The film of Thodoros Marangos is made as a travelogue on Lower Italy, otherwise known as Greater Greece, and to the lost past of the sheepish Neo-Greek. The thematic axis of the film, are the papyri of Hercolanus, a treasure of knowledge and civilization, that were found more than 250 years ago in the digs under the lava layers of Vesuvius. For 250 years scientists from all over the world have been trying to reconstruct the charred papyri so that they can read their contents. And while the hopes of all who make the attempt it are pinned on the texts on Christianity, the revelations of the texts made thanks to new technologies refute them: these are about hundreds of texts on Epicurean philosophy.
What is odd and amazing though is, that in Greece, no one knows of this most important discovery, and as a result, no one has studied or researched it. Present at the press conference for the film was one of its leading characters, Aegistus, an Italian of Greek descent, from Naples, who said: “Thodoros has made a brilliant inroads into condition of contemporary Greek education and culture. Because for me, it is completely unacceptable for the Ministry of Education to also be at the same time that of Religion, because Christianity and the past of the ancient Greeks don’t get along very well”, he characteristically said. The director noted: “ The discovery, reconstruction and revelation of the contents of the papyri of Hercolanus is an important scientific event that carries great weight. To me however, the question was born, does a scientific event have to remain only and simply that? My interest did not concern the scientific part of the story – that is a document and it will remain as such. I was more interested in the approach of the artist to such an event, as well as the participation and processing of the artist. Mainly because I want many people to see this film, I didn’t want to make a dry documentary about a scientific discovery, on the contrary I tried, also through what piqued my own interests, to bring to the film all that I felt wandering about the once Greater Greece.”
Yannis Katomeris: The Greeks Came From the Ocean
The film is a travelogue on British Columbia, a large province of Canada, which begins at the border between Canada and the USA and reaches all the way to Canadian Alaska, where a hand full of Greeks live. It is a diary full of stories, memories, and moments of a lifetime, of first generation Greek immigrants through their personal recounting. “Their personal Odyssey is put forth as also the Odyssey of people in general who at different times abandoned Greece, either in order to find ‘the promised land’, or to save themselves from the political or economic persecutions that they had been subjected to in the 20th century.”
The director characteristically mentioned and added that: “It is about a travelogue of memory, narration, that examines the circumstances under which each of them was forced to leave Greece, as well as their personal Odyssey in that foreign land living under difficult conditions.” Speaking about what inspired him to interest himself with the Greeks of British Columbia, he explained: “For the first time in 1952 a Greek discovered that northern land (a seaman from Cefalonia, Apostolos Fokas Valerianos) even naming it the “Northern Indies” and – even more unbeliavable and surprising – a few centuries later some islanders from Scopelos went through the streight and found themselves on an uninhabited island where they founded a purely Greek community, for about 100 years. Today, within the framework of one of the largest universities of the country, the Chair of Hellenic Studies has been founded in the area, , which will be permanent. These two symbols as well as, indirectly, the stories of the Greeks there, were the reason for this film to be made.”
Stavros Ioannou: Kakolyri 5/44
Stavros Ioannou’s film is the story of a holocaust that took place in the village of Kakolyri of Evoia, during the German occupation in the Second World War. The documentary transports us to the Greece of ’44, and recounts the tragic events that followed the death of a German soldier due to the attempt of the resistance fighters one night to blow up the bridge of Skotini: the following day the Germans marched into Kakolyri, burned the houses and executed the 30 men of the village. “One reason I made the documentary is that I truly believe that our understanding of the Second World War is vague, no one has explored the events like Makrigianni in detail to see what exactly happened. Another reason is that I believe as film makers we have a duty to record these big or small stories. “ stressed the creator, while he added: “The whole film is source material, the narrations of the people who lived that torturous day. It is a recording, a documentary, very bleak, very sparse, it is based only on the people, for they are the documents.“
Speaking about his problematics during the making of the film, Mr. Ioannou noted: ”In recording, that which is of interest to me, is how one manages all that material, some people speak, what they say, when, how, what does the director choose from all that? This for me was a great experience and a great trial and I believe it succeed in the model that I attempted. It melded the content with the form I gave this documentary, a very multi-faceted issue for the specific genre, how you deal with every issue and in what form. “ To a question about how they would describe the average Greek as they saw him through their films, in which Greeks play the central role, Mr. Ioannou stressed: “ The average Greek has the tendency to not wish to remember, to want to forget, but these stories must never be forgotten, nor must the rationalization of ‘water under the bridge’ predominate.”
While Mr. Marangos characteristically said: “Today, I believe the Greek lives in the worst age. Once upon a time, when I made the film ‘Learn letters my child’, he was revolutionary, full of ideas and dreams. Today he is crushed, he is cut off from his past and he is lost. But the thing my film shows is the ‘possible’. When the right circumstances come around, all those things that we carry inside us they will come out.”
Referring to the same question, Mr. Katomeris noted: “ I examined the Greeks abroad, and a few decades ago they also were possessed by the same spirit, they dealt with their past as taboo, they didn’t want to turn back to those times they were persecuted for political and other reasons, they wanted to forget, they were ashamed of this past of theirs, but they also did not want to remember the difficulties they experienced in the foreign countries they had lived. They can talk about these things now, today. And I believe that the Greek abroad could possibly be the element that sparks an awakening of Greeks inside of Greece, who must not forget their past, where they come from, otherwise the future will be dismal.”
