(gentle music) - Hello.
In this video, we will explore the portrayal
of immigration in Greek fiction film.
While watching, please note the evolution
from stock situations in mainstream productions
of the 1950s and '60s to insightful reflections
on migration in auteur cinema in later decades.
In addition, consider the various migrant
groups that have been given central roles
in different genres and time periods.
To understand these changes,
let's first discuss migration during the 20th
and 21st centuries to and from Greece,
a small Mediterranean country highlighted in red on this map.
From the turn of the 20th century until the early 1920s,
Greece experienced a significant
outward migration to the United States.
Approximately 520,000 people, nearly a sixth
of the Greek population emigrated there as manual laborers.
A smaller number continued to emigrate until World War II,
many of whom were picture brides for Greek men in America.
A second mass movement occurred as a
result of the 1919-1922 Greek-Turkish War.
As part of the 1923 Lausanne Convention,
a population exchange between Greece and Turkey took place.
All Greek Muslims were forced to leave Greece and settle in Turkey,
while over 1,200,000 Christian Orthodox Greeks.
were forced to leave Turkey and settle in Greece,
which had a population of about 5 million at the time.
A smaller wave of Orthodox Greek relocation
from Turkey to Greece followed the 1955 Istanbul riots.
A third massive outward flow occurred from the 1950s to the 1970s,
directed towards other European countries,
mainly Germany, but also the US, Canada, and Australia.
Over 1 million Greeks migrated with 600,000 going to Germany alone.
An additional 65,000 left-wing Greeks
sought refuge in socialist Eastern Europe.
Following the left's defeat in the Greek Civil War.
As you can see in this graph, after the early 1970s,
many of these immigrants returned home.
After 1989, Greece became a major
destination for international migrants.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union
and other socialist states led to an influx of migrants
from Eastern Europe, especially Albania.
By 2008, Greece had also become the main gateway
for migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
In 2015, there was a huge increase in arrivals
with about 900,000 people, mainly from Syria,
Afghanistan, and Iraq, crossing the Mediterranean to Greece,
primarily seeking asylum in Northern Europe.
A recent development is the influx of Ukrainian refugees
fleeing the Russian invasion, who numbered more than 27,000 by 2024.
The migration of Greeks abroad in the 1950s and '60s
paralleled to the rise of Greek cinema,
which saw the production of over 100 films yearly in the mid-1960s.
Mainstream films of that period often referred
to Greeks who had emigrated to the West.
Film comedies primarily depicted
Greek-Americans who traveled back to Greece.
While comedy often poked fun at their foreign manners,
Greek-Americans were associated with money, success, and modernization,
and often portrayed as catalysts for solving local problems.
At a time when Greece relied heavily on American money.
In one famous comedy, for example, "The Aunt from Chicago,"
Kayopi Pappas, an open-minded Greek-American widow,
returns to Greece to help her brother find husbands for his daughters.
Her old-fashioned brother, a retired general,
rules his daughters with strict discipline.
In stark contrast, Kayopi brings about change
in every aspect of family life, from furniture to the girl's future.
Modernization brought about by the Greek-American
is clearly illustrated in a scene from
the film included in your resources.
Emigration to Western Europe appeared in melodrama films,
likely targeting audiences with experiences
of immigration in their own families.
These films intertwined the immigration motif
with melodramatic elements like accidents and illnesses,
before rewarding the virtuous heroes with a happy ending.
Nikos Xanthopoulos, the genre's most beloved
actor, starred in at least three melodramas
that depicted immigration to Germany.
One scene from "A Man of Conscience,"
available in your resources,
shows him in a German cafe where Greeks gather
singing about (speaking in foreign language) foreign lands.
In fact, songs about (speaking in foreign language)
were very popular in Greece at the time,
especially those performed by Stelios Kazantzidis.
Nikos Xanthopoulos also starred in two
films that focused on refugees displayed
by the Greek-Turkish War, "Uprooted Generation,"
and "The Odyssey of an Uprooted Man.
" Both also replete with melodramatic elements and songs.
The stereotypical portrayal of migration
was challenged by the filmmakers of the art-oriented New Greek cinema.
The most well-known among them, Theo Angelopoulos,
offered a distinctive perspective on migration
in his first feature film, "Reconstruction.
" Drawing from a real murder of an immigrant
returning from Germany to his village by his wife and her lover,
Angelopoulos delved into the impasses of contemporary Greeks.
The murder served as a backdrop
for a commentary on harsh life in the countryside,
on migration and fragmentation of family structures.
You can find the representative scene
from the film in your extra material.
The theme of mobility became prominent
in Angelopoulos' work after 1984.
With his contemplative slow style,
he created films of philosophical depth that presented protagonists
as if embarking on mythological journeys
and reflected on the concepts of homeland, borders, exile, and return.
"Voyage to Scythera" focused on a political refugee
who returns to Greece after a long exile in the Soviet Union.
The suspended step of the stork unfolds in a town on a border
where refugees await approval of their papers.
"Eternity and a Day" highlights a migrant Albanian boy
and the "Weeping Meadow" follows refugees from 1919
when they arrive from Odessa to Thessaloniki to the late 1940s.
After 1990, the influx of foreigners to Greece
also piqued the interest of other directors in historical migrations.
The highest grossing Greek films in the
country in 2003 and 2004, "A Touch of Spice"
and "Brides" respectively exemplified this interest.
The first focused on Greeks forced to relocate
from Turkey to Greece after the Istanbul riots in 1955.
"Brides" portraits the journey of mail-order brides
from Greece and other impoverished countries in the 1920s,
sailing to the United States to marry men
they only knew through correspondence,
aiming to support their families.
Nevertheless, most Greek films about migration
in the last 30 years have focused on contemporary migration.
Among the directors who have explored this
theme, Konstantinos Yiannaris stands out
for systematically placing immigrants and
repatriates at the center of his work.
Employing a dynamic, modern aesthetic,
Yiannaris crafts films that look at people's mobility
alongside issues of identity and sexuality.
"From the Edge of the City"
follows young Pompeian Greek repatriates from
Kazakhstan who live in a poor suburb of Athens.
The characters experience a divide
between an idealized past in the former Soviet Union
and the harsh Greek present characterized
by crime, prostitution, and drug addiction
as shown in the film's trailer available in your resources.
"Hostage" follows an Albanian immigrant
who takes bus passengers hostage, demanding safe passage to Albania.
The film, about which you can read in your resources,
interprets his motives in light of the emphasis of immigration,
challenges stereotypes, and highlights respect towards the other,
regardless of sex, color, and nationality.
"In Man at Sea," a ship captain defies orders
by taking on board undocumented Middle Eastern refugees.
Yiannaris, as he stated, aimed to depict the complex world
as a metaphor about Greece, about Europe, and about the other.
I hope this brief overview of immigration in Greek cinema
provided you with material for reflection
on the portrayal of migration in a country's mainstream
and more artistic cinema, on the various migration themes
that can be depicted on film, and the opportunities recent films offer
for exploring the complexities of life away from home.
Thank you.
(bright music)
(bright music fades)