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The Eröffnungsveranstaltung / Opening 21.1.2016
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Do, 21.1.2016, 19:30 |
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Eröffnungsveranstaltung von Hellas Filmbox Berlin
Jasin Challah und vielen anderen sowie mit Vicky Leandros. anschließend Eröffnungsfilm des Festivals: Griechenland 2013, R: Pantelis Voulgaris; mit Pinelopi Tsilika, Sofia Kokkali, Aneza Papadopoulou u.a., DCP, 132 Min, OmdtU Eintritt 9,- Euro: TICKETS-ONLINE |
The Opening of Hellas Film Festival
When Anna and I went to the opening, we did dare a freezing cold (6 degrees below zero). First we took the S-Bahn from the Savignyplatz station to Alexanderplatz, and then we walked along Rosa Luxemburg Street to where Babylon Cinema is located.
Babylon Kino
It is an old building, indeed even a bit run down. The old glory no longer shines. A plate reminds of one Communist who used the cinema as place to organise resistance against the Nazis.
While the auditorium was being filled by people entering slowly to take their seats, one woman played the organ as if still in the times of silent movies being accompanied by someone playing on the piano. However, an organ has by comparison a much greater volume. No wonder when people yearned after a while that she would finally stop. Definitely she has become a part of the inventory of the house. Regardless the event, she plays.
At the front one person was sitting already. Smoking a cigarre indicates he stems as well from times when films were watched while smoke was curling up to be caught by the projector's light.
The opening can be sub-divided into two parts: the usual introduction elongated by the presentation of certain personalities of the film world, and then the screening of the film 'small England'.
I do not wish to hide my disappointment. How the Greeks presented themselves, it contradicted everything what they intended to achieve with the Film festival, namely to open doors and to initiate a dialogue between the Greek and the German side.
If true to the point, efforts should have been made to further a culture of mutual understanding. Hence stereo-typical images should have been avoided even when making fun either of oneself or of the other i.e. German. Yet steadily some gaffes were made which relied precisely on such over drawn images. Europe would fail if intercultural dialogues would be limited and contained by projections upon the other as if only the Greeks or the Germans existed in this modern world.
Due to resorting to usual clichés, the opening failed on two accounts: to entertain and to inform. It never reached a sophisticated level to make possible an artful presentation of what the films to be shown throughout the festival stand for: an expression of another way of dealing with the crisis.
For example, one German actor imitated a dialogue with Zorbas the Greek. He did it quite well but this image is so well known, why repeat it over and again? Zorbas is not Greece which entered the European Union and the Euro, hosted the Olympic Games in Athens 2004 and entered a crisis since 2009 when the political establishment had to confess to Europe that the state deficit was no longer sustainable!
The word 'struggle' would merely circumscribe what many Greeks of all walks of life have to cope with since. As a consequence of the crisis, the old a new diaspora has been added. For example, alone from one medical class consisting of 350 students 200 went to Germany. Many took flight from Greece in order to seek job and other opportunities abroad, but not only. Others fled so as to put their money into a safe deposit, if not they would invest in real estate in Berlin and elsewhere. They left out of fear what happened then in the summer 2015, namely Capital Control. It was invoked in Greece out of fear it could augment into a sheer run on all banks.
Knowing the Greek diaspora in Berlin, Kostas Papabastasiou, the tavern owner of Terzo Mondo, could not fail. He was dressed all in white. His son Marcus and another musicians waited to accompany him. Before he sang a poem of Ritsos, he reminded the audience that he has been living by now in Berlin for sixty years. He narrated that from day one he believed like all Greeks (one of the many generalizations made that evening) in what this song of Ritsos says. While he sang, the text in German was projected upon the silver screen. It is about seagulls which shall undo the chains which tie you to the rocks and which do not take on any rust.
Some spontaneity and humour made itself felt when two musicians played and sang a kind of hybrid of Blues and bouzouki melo drama. The audience tried to join in the beat but was most reluctant or hesitated for too long.
This holding back from any spontaneous expression of emotions was characteristic for the duration of the entire opening. Some things were simply too long. For instance it took ages to show one cut out from the film Medea by artistic director of the Hellas Film Festival, namely Asteris Kutulas. It depicted a girl walking over a bridge. For someone unfamiliar with the setting of the bridge, the meaning could not be grasped very easily.
Klaus Hoffmann came on stage with his guitar and ended up singing about Berlin. The song originated in the 1970s, and naturally he meant West Berlin. It meant that it was necessary for all to pass through Schöneberg, if they wished to take a charter flight to Athens for holidays in Greece and that meant taking the transit through former East Germany with all its border controls. Like so many others, he came back inspired by the music of Theodorakis and other Greek composers who had made poems into songs.
In some cases, Nepotism came into display. The daughter of the singer Vicky Leandros did her part in the moderation. She tried but it was so so the ability to communicate and to convince a highly sceptical audience by now. To keep always everything within the family is not unique to Greece. In Malta you have the same problem. Still the weak point is that it amounts to a kind of cultural incest. It explains the perpetuation of the same mistakes being made not only in the political but also in the cultural life of Greece. Over and again a dominant family clan with a name determines who is recognized. That over dependence upon a fake but established power hurts very much Greece from coming to terms on a self critical basis with what has to be faced: corruption of the mind and a lack of morality as far as payments are concerned.
One Greek man came onto the stage with a puppet. He lives in Cologne by now for thirty years and took a swipe at what happened there on New Year's eve. Apparently migrants attacked woichmen. The event has transformed completely the refugee question for Germans. Unfortunately he swiped at it in a way that some in the audience stood up and left out of protest against such insensitivity. He tried to transform what happened into something else with humour but failed since it is far too serious. The man let the puppet narrate that he was happy due to having received the news that his film was going to be shown at the Hellas Film Festival. He wanted to celebrate. So he went out, bought a lot of ouzo bottles and took them to the train station in Cologne, in order to celebrate there the New Year. He continued narrating through the puppet once there, that he got so drunk that he did not notice anything. When he woke up again, to his big surprise his film was displaced by many more films being shown now about Cologne. He was very angry that nothing was shown about him. The latter bit was meant to be the key joke. Instead it fell flat.
I do not need to go on. Beside me was sitting a German diplomat who had devoted a lot of his time to understanding Greece. He was clearly puzzled by what was put on display up front on and off stage. The group did not stay all the time on stage. Rather they wished to present themselves more or less as a chaotic group composed of many different but very creative artist – so the claim!
When Anna mentioned that the clichés and the bad introduction might be due to what are the typical problems of the Greek diaspora, it became a question how is the Greek community composed nowadays in Berlin. Another name given in Germany as to what might best circumscribe the problem is “die ewigen Gestrigen” (the permanent ones of yesterday).
The information was given that the Greek diaspora in Berlin has swollen from 10 000 to 20 000 during the past four years.
In view of a shallow presentation full of clichés while relying on old singers who had their days of fame, while using highly questionable sketches leave one asking if all this fits really with what the organiser of the festival did at the beginning. Asteris Kutulas read the well-known letter written by the youth after Alexandrous had been killed by a police bullet on 6th of December 2008. It is a powerful letter of the youth. They address their parents and the letter ends with the post script, "don't throw at us tear gas bombs, we are crying already by ourselves." He uses that same letter in his film Medusa. Given the seriousness and above all protest of the youth against a society having become corrupt, the failure of the opening was not to be consistent with precisely this set tone.
Sometimes film directors seize something to become political correct in a double sense. They seem to side with the opposition while already moving into the realms of established society. They risk not to do justice to anyone. More sadly is that the failure to answer the challenge of the youth becomes a lost opportunity to learn out of mistakes which have not been made just recently, but already for quite some time. Such a circumvention of the challenge by the youth leaves little space for someone else to alter the public presentation of the Greek reality abroad. Fortunately some of this was expressed by some young film makers e.g. when tracing through music a long forgotten ancient Greek language in Italy.
The opening was a clear demonstration of not knowing how to reach and to build up a new audience, even if part of the Greek diaspora. The pain of having left Greece was clearly silenced and the pretence to be connected to the land in retrospect over exaggerated. That is the inherent danger of an artistic Patriotism. It amounts to memories of the land which one has left becoming droplets which run simply along a rope pulled out of the water together. They become one droplet. Like one rain drop which shines in the sun, it can become a single spot light. However, when you hear the puppet saying to the one who guides the spotlight in the Babylon cinema 'malaka', even though meant to display the usual language boys and girls like to use in their daily exchanges of emotions, you know that you have just a bad imitation of a vulgar reality.
The film 'Little England' started very late. The introductions had taken far too long. People did not even want the break, but see finally the finally. But once the film started, people became very silent. The images of waves crushing against the shores of Andros captivated them. They even forgot that it hurts to sit too long in worn out chairs belonging to Babylon which had known better times.
Hatto Fischer
Berlin 26.1.2016
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