Three films, three issues
Three documentaries which address different aspects of Greece’s social life and history are being screened at the Apollon cinema on Stadiou Street in Athens. The first, written and directed by Menios Ditsas and titled «Unplanned,» is about the Gypsy community in Greece, with a look at their history, the daily problems they face and their perception of the lives they lead. Ditsas defends the community, arguing that «they remain outside the system, while being a part of the Greek population.» The second film, «Kakolyri 5/44,» directed by Stavros Ioannou, revisits the village of Kakolyri in Evia which was decimated 60 years ago by the Nazis and the ensuing civil war, and allows the people to tell their own individual stories as they remember them. «Our lives and our actions have a continuity through time,» says Ioannou. «We would all be very different people if we didn’t live in relation to our pasts.» «Katsantonis’s Leap and Uncle Lambros,» is the third Greek documentary being screened right now and it is also the most interesting in terms of its directorial approach by Giorgos Kolozis. In this film, the director marries legend to reality today through a narrative that presents a hero of the shadow-puppet theater – Katsantonis, who was the bane of Ali Pasha – and an elderly highlander today who dreams of visiting the site where the folk hero made his stand against the Turkish occupation. The film represents a journey through time by two characters separated by three centuries. «It is not a juxtaposition, but a comparative study,» says the director.
