One image of Greece is the beautiful country of
pristine beaches, white-washed villages, seashore taverns and wild joy. That is
the image projected by The Greek Tourist Organization and companies that want
to attract visitors to Greece.
The other image, the one seen on television and
described in other media, especially in the last ten years, resembles more a film noir, dark, somber, gloomy, and pessimistic. Violence in the
streets, sections of cities that look as if they had been bombed and people
that are fighting to survive or simply leaving the country. That is the “other”
Greece.
Producer and director Panayioti
Yannitsos has found an original and
brilliant way of examining his ancestral fatherland in his extraordinary film Freedom
Besieged. The documentary has a large number of people who appear on
camera with their diagnoses, commentary, ideas and remedies for the Greece of
today and far more importantly, the Greece of tomorrow. These are not people
who are trying to attract tourists or condemn the past. They are facing reality
and what can be done.
The film opens with as simple
question: what does it mean to be a Greek?
A substantial number of people are asked the question from all walks of
life and not one of them gives an answer. Yannitsos then turns to the shooting by
police of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year old student that resulted in
widespread riots and extensive property damage. Yannitsos presents a picture of
war-like confrontations and gratuitous violence by well-armed police (including
gas masks) against unarmed civilians.
The film moves onto interviews with young
people who express hardships, difficulties and at times hopelessness at the
situation where some forty per cent of them are unemployed and as many as six
hundred thousand leave Greece for good.
But Yannitsos has a far broader
concern and way of looking at modern Greece. He concentrates on the young and
not so young who are looking for a solution instead of bemoaning their outcast
state. The answer lies in today’s youth and the people who have ideas and
inspiration for them to achieve their potential as individuals.
One example of this is what a former
Torontonian named John is doing in his village. John runs a youth basketball
camp in his village where he trains, cajoles, yells at and simply inspires young
boys and girls as they train and play. He yells, entertains, mildly disciplines
but mostly inspires, at no small cost to himself, the young to do their
individual best.
Yannitsos finds centers of optimism based on
inventiveness and hard work. In the mountains of Euboea, young people have
developed a village that emphasizes sustainability. A 15-year old boy from Thessaloniki,
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as they say, has developed an online site for
teens to communicate with each other. There are examples where the key to
success is originality. The Ancient Greeks were successful because they were
original and that may be a good defining feature of a Greek.
There is a stunting array of people that
Yannitsos interviews on camera. Foremost
intellectual Noam Chomsky, Michael Dukakis, athletes Pyrros Dimas (Olympic
medalist), Yorgos Karagounis (star soccer player), Dimitri Diamantidis
(basketball star), doctors, psychologists, engineers, philosophers, and at some
length Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Prime Minister.
The film shows some panoramic views of Greek
cities and the countryside that are a pleasure to watch. But the most important
aspect is the commitment, the optimism, the dynamism and the enthusiasm shown
by the young director and the youth that he found to marry the country of
pristine beaches sand white-washed villages with a nation of achievement and progress.
A major accomplishment.
_______________
Freedom Besieged was shown on October
6, 2019 at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
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Website: http://freedombesieged.com/
James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press
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