9781474437059 Greek Cinema
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Greek Cinema and Migration, 1991–2016 66503_Phillis.indd503_Phillis.indd i 228/10/208/10/20 99:53:53 PPMM To my mentor Yorgos, For his precious teachings and unshakeable love of cinema 66503_Phillis.indd503_Phillis.indd iiii 228/10/208/10/20 99:53:53 PPMM Greek Cinema and Migration, 1991–2016 Philip E. Phillis 66503_Phillis.indd503_Phillis.indd iiiiii 228/10/208/10/20 99:53:53 PPMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Philip E. Phillis, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Monotype Ehrhardt by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 3703 5 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 3705 9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 3706 6 (epub) The right of Philip E. Phillis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66503_Phillis.indd503_Phillis.indd iivv 228/10/208/10/20 99:53:53 PPMM Contents List of Figures vi Acknowledgements viii Introduction: Greek Immigration Cinema 1 1. Looking Across (Greco-Albanian) Borders: Diasporic, Migrant and Supranational Filmmaking 35 2. The Anxieties of Transnationalism: Reception of Immigration Films 56 3. En Route to Fortress Europe: Migration and Exilic Life in Roadblocks 79 4. Tragic Pathos and Border Syndrome: Constantine Giannaris’s Hostage 103 5. Neither ‘Good’ nor ‘Bad’: Reinventing Albanian Identities in Eduart and Mirupafshim 125 6. Others/Mirrors 145 7. Our Own People? Repatriation, Citizenship, Belonging 172 8. Migration Without a Face 197 9. Documenting Crises: Raising Awareness through Documentary Film 224 Filmography 250 Bibliography 252 Index 265 66503_Phillis.indd503_Phillis.indd v 228/10/208/10/20 99:53:53 PPMM Figures 1.1 Panayotis, the Albanian restaurant owner, enjoying the service of his Greek employee Yorgos, in Correction 47 1.2 Saimir standing, forced to choose between his loyalty to his Greek and Albanian families, in Agon 52 3.1 ‘Don’t talk now. Shut up!’ Entrapment and clandestinity manifest in the back of a truck in Roadblocks 82 3.2 Ahmet kisses a letter from home in Roadblocks 93 3.3 An ‘empathic close-up’ of a Kurdish mourner in Roadblocks 97 4.1 Elion appears entirely trapped in the claustrophobic enclosure of the bus in Hostage 113 4.2 The postures of clandestine migration: Elion appears hunched behind a bush in Hostage 116 4.3 Embodied protest: Elion displays the scars on his body, in a close-up in Hostage 121 6.1 Yorgos finally manages to ‘break into’ Ornela’s apartment in Correction 150 6.2 Stavros appearing out of place in his own home, in Plato’s Academy 154 6.3 Marenglen appearing out of place in Plato’s Academy 156 6.4 Alexander is forced to buy the boy from the traffickers in Eternity and a Day 159 6.5 Alexander displays his paternalistic stance in Eternity and a Day 160 6.6 Alex addresses the refugees from a position that displays his hierarchical placement in Man at Sea 165 6.7 The refugees cut themselves, performing embodied protest in Man at Sea 168 7.1 An uncomfortable coexistence between indigenous and Ethnic Greeks in From the Snow 178 7.2 A monumental shot of the queer protagonists of From the Edge of the City 184 7.3 Sasha is confronted by his strict father before being beaten, while the mother watches complaisantly in From the Edge of the City 186 66503_Phillis.indd503_Phillis.indd vvii 228/10/208/10/20 99:53:53 PPMM FIGURES vii 7.4 Dany confronts the symbolic father in Xenia 192 8.1 A group of refugees tightly framed within immobile train carriages in The Suspended Step of the Stork 204 8.2 A Kurdish refugee slits his wrist in protest over accusations of betrayal in The Suspended Step of the Stork 208 8.3 Brechtian distantiation: the Kurdish refugee hanging in the distance in The Suspended Step of the Stork 209 8.4 An objective establishing shot renders the masses of refugees in essentialist terms in Ephemeral Town 214 8.5 Wretched ‘boat people’ departing again to open sea in Ephemeral Town 215 9.1 A close-up on a crying boy amplifies the drama and tragedy of the scene in 4.1 Miles 230 9.2 A close-up of Captain Papadopoulos in 4.1 Miles. At the back we can discern an icon of St Nicholas 232 9.3 The gross inequalities between tourists and refugees displayed in Greek History X: Summer on the Island of Good 235 9.4 A local man slaps an African refugee and threatens to deport him in Greek History X: Summer on the Island of Good 237 9.5 Golden Dawn members and followers make public displays of power like a Nazi militia in Golden Dawn: A Personal Affair 241 9.6 Haris Mexas proudly shows off his prized copy of Mein Kampf in Golden Dawn: A Personal Affair 242 66503_Phillis.indd503_Phillis.indd vviiii 228/10/208/10/20 99:53:53 PPMM Acknowledgements This monograph would never have been completed without the precious help provided by my family and especially my parents, Yannis and Nili. This book is a result of their material and emotional support throughout many years of studying film and media in higher education. I wish to extend my gratitude to the following scholars for their advice and support: Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Ian Goode, Lydia Papadimitriou, David-Martin Jones, Ipek A. Celik, Wendy Everett, Tonia Kazakopoulou, Maria Kokkinou, Igor Krstić, Rebecca Carr, Maria Chalkou, Albrecht Zimmermann, Alkistis Pitsikali, Christine Geraghty and George Souvlis. I am grateful to the filmmakers who took the time to discuss their work with me: Robert Budina, Yorgos Korras, Christos Voupouras, Stavros Ioannou, Kyriakos Katzourakis, Constantine Giannaris, Kimon Tsakiris and Sotiris Goritsas. I owe special thanks to Yorgos Korras for providing me with archival material and for DVD copies which would be otherwise unobtainable. Thank you to my friends at home and away from home. I wish also to deeply thank the editorial team at Edinburgh University Press for their precious help throughout the writing and processing of the book. Special thanks to my sister Anastasia for helping with technical matters. Last but surely not least, I must thank my loving partner, Fanny, who understands my love for cinema like very few. Her support and advice kept me going when I needed it most. P hilip E. Phillis 66503_Phillis.indd503_Phillis.indd vviiiiii 228/10/208/10/20 99:53:53 PPMM INTRODUCTION Greek Immigration Cinema In a chapter submission to Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg’s seminal volume European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe, Isabel Santaolalla writes that ‘[T]he increased vis- ibility of migrant groups and individuals is currently perhaps the most striking feature common to Spanish, Italian and Greek cinemas.’1 This monograph marks a first attempt to comprehensively map and investigate migrant2 representation in Greek cinema from 1991 to 2016 and to convey what indeed makes migration a striking feature in contemporary Greek film production. In her remark, Santaollala includes the southern European countries that transformed from senders to hosts of migrants, the axis of ‘Fortress Europe’.3 Southern Europe has been struggling to manage the large influx of migrants and refugees which began around 1989, following the col- lapse of the Eastern Bloc, the reunification of Germany and the signing of the Schengen Agreement in 1985.4 The agreement facilitated greater movement within the EU and simultaneously mandated fortification against ‘invasions’ of people from poorer and socially unstable countries, who generated great fears for public security, health and local economies, particularly in northern states.5 By 1994, roughly four million people had migrated across the porous borders of Europe, an estimate that does not include those fleeing genocide in the former Yugoslavia.6 For Stuart Hall, the new international order of migration after 1989 marks ‘the era of globalisation and migration’,7 indicating the inextricable links between migration and globalisation. ‘Fortress Europe’ is telling of a fortress men- tality, as exemplified by exclusionary citizenship policies and nationalistic public sentiments which underlie mass discrimination against newcom- ers. They are, in addition, met with a bureaucratic nightmare in countries like Greece, which are entirely lacking in appropriate infrastructure and integration policies. Rather than implementing European multicultural- ism, the Greek state has routinely resorted to strict exclusionary measures while mass media outlets conjure migrants and refugees as ‘invaders’ and an overall threat to the moral fibre of the Greek nation.8 Public anxieties 66503_Phillis.indd503_Phillis.indd 1 228/10/208/10/20 99:53:53 PPMM 2 GREEK CINEMA AND MIGRATION on shifting demographics started emerging as well in a country that saw ‘its own’ people feeling estranged at the dawn of a ‘new world order’. With this term, Vangelis Calotychos refers to the Greek state’s fierce moderni- sation agenda, which dictated that it ‘repositions and reforms itself in a new international environment’, manifest in the thousands of migrants at the Greek threshold.9 For Calotychos, fulfilling the mandates of Euro- pean modernity and multiculturalism ‘would demonstrate whether Greek society could reform itself and accommodate the changing populace or whether it would simply dig in its heels’.10 The new world order in Greek cinema can be pinpointed to 1991 with Theo Angelopoulos’s The Suspended Step of the Stork/To Meteoro Vima tou Pelargou, which mourns the tragic displacement of entire popula- tions and their stagnant lives in Greek refugee camps.