GR, US 2014, D Stavroula Toska, SC, P Sophia Antonini, Stavroula Toska, C Sophia Antonini, E Lauren Beckett Jackson, M Toa Zervas, N Olympia Dukakis, Print colour, DCP, 76 min, greek./engl. OV with engl. SUB
The departure point for this film is a series of notebooks created during the Greek civil war of 1946-49 and first discovered years later, under an olive tree. Inside their pages, diary-like, deported women recount their experiences in Greek concentration camps. Many of them were active in the resistance under Nazi occupation. Actress Olympia Dukakis, who serves as the film’s narrator, was also the individual who originally called director Toska’s attention to the unique documents.
„Stavroula Toska began doing her own research into this Greek history, which was previously unknown to her. She discovered that her own grandmother on her mother’s side was among the women deported to the island of Trikeri, one of several on which the women’s camps had been erected. The silence of the schoolbooks corresponds to the silence in the family. Stavroula Toska is confronted with the aching inability of the mother to speak, which renders the deep individual trauma palpable. The silence of Greece’s public institutions indicates the trauma to society that is still present today.“ (Nia Perivolaropoulou, Festival Publikation Views of History, 2019)
| Acronyms | |
|---|---|
| amer. | American English |
| b/w | Black and white |
| OV | Original version |
| SUB | Subtitles |
| +SUB | electronic live subtitling (below the image) |
| INT | Intertitles |
| Countries | |
|---|---|
| AT | Austria |
| FRG | Federal Republic of Germany (historic) |
| BLR | Belarus |
| DE | Germany |
| CAN | Canada |
| GDR | German Democratic Republic (historic) |
| EGY | Egypt |
| FR | France |
| GB | Great Britain |
| URY | Uruguay |
| BRA | Brasil |
| SWE | Sweden |
| UKR | Ukraine |
| PL | Poland |
| IDN | Indonesia |
| PRT | Portugal |
| HRV | Croatia |
| ECU | Ecuador |
| HUN | Hungary |
| AUS | Australia |
| IT | Italy |
| MEX | Mexico |
| IND | India |
Followed by a conversation with the director and Elli Nikolaou, protagonist and survivor of the greek women concentration camps
Hosts: Athina Petsou and Nia Perivolaropoulou
Born and raised in Sindos, a suburb of Thessaloniki. She is the creator, writer, director and lead actress of the drama series SWITCH, based on her life and several years of work as an undercover Dominatrix in New York. At the New York Women in Film and Television Festival, Switch was recently awarded first place in the “Suspense/Action/Thriller” category; Toska received the “Award for Outstanding Actress”. Toska's work also includes her award-winning directorial debut BENEATH THE OLIVE TREE, the short film based on true events IN THE VICE, the thriller PRONOIA, currently in production as a feature film, the comedy web series LIVIN' THE DREAM, co-produced with Kim and Mai Spurlock, and THE SOUNDING - a forthcoming feature film on which she served as executive producer. Stavroula is currently working on her memoirs and developing several projects with her company The Toska Matrix Productions. She is a member of the board of directors of the Hellenic Film Society USA, is the event director for Film Fatales in New York, a proud feminist and an advocate for women's rights.
Film scholar and passionate cinema-goer. Research and publications on film theory and
aesthetics, film and history, (film) history writing.
Editor of French editions of Siegfried Kracauer’s works Theory of Film, History: The Last Things Before the Last, and others.
