ANGELOS' FILM

As a royalist, Angelos Papanastassiou's life in the thirties was mainly defined by the royalist/republican schism. As a result, he had to leave the navy and eventually become a successful stockbroker, factory-owner and, in the late thirties, an alderman of Athens. After Greece bravely fought off the first Italian invasion, Angelos, along with all his fellow-Athenians, was forced to witness the full might of the German war machine entering Athens. The population was shown little mercy. Somehow, Angelos realized that the full horror of these events should be recorded. He used all his resources to secretly acquire a stock of film, and then set about filming the rapid downfall of Athens and the terrible deprivation and atrocities the Athenian people had to suffer, knowing full well that anyone caught taking so much as a photograph would be sentenced to death. There was little that happened during that time that Angelos did not capture on his little camera. There is footage of the Italian invasion of Greece in 1940; the German invasion in 1941; the raising of the Swastika on the Acropolis; starvation on a massive scale; the SS execution squads; scores of people being hanged in the streets. At the same time, he kept on filming his family and gatherings with friends. Forgğcs ingeniously intertwines scenes of Greece's history with the day-to-day life of a young family.