Participants: Elektra and Olga Theodoridou, Konstantin Fischer
Music: Wolfgang Zamastil
Sound: Claus Wilbrandt
Sound Design: Klaus-Peter Schmitt
Color Grading: Matthias Behrens, WAVE LINE Berlin
Online-Editor: Domingo Stephan, WAVE LINE Berlin
Producer: Nicos Ligouris, with the support of the Greek Film Centre
Co-Producer: Jost Hering / Jost Hering Filme
80 Min., Color, 16:9
Synopsis
A cinematic essay that combines documentary, fiction and philosophical contemplation on the subject of the paradoxical interplay between the cultures of the European North and South, with the camera performing continual back-and-forth movements between Germany and Greece. Ethnography and historiography, culture and everyday life, political and personal experience all come together forming new references, in the course of what constitutes a journey through the labyrinth of recent European history.
Review by Kalliope Poutouroglou, CINEPHILIA, March 2017
“An enchanting dialogue among two civilizations through the pages of the diary of an “arts correspondent”, this filmic essay by Nicos Ligouris constitutes not merely a personal, but rather a universal cinematic project. Keeping the role of the narrator for himself, employing the first person and adopting a deeply confessional manner which is punctuated by continuous philosophical references and personal reflections, through scenes filmed in Berlin and western Crete, the director traverses the cultural history of Europe and especially the one of the ever-changing relations between Greece and Germany.
Prompted by a personal surprise realization, being a permanent resident of Berlin, he attempts an immersion in the value systems and characters of the two peoples, in a history of identifications and divergences of two worlds so visibly different. A perceptive observer, but at the same time an astute commentator, he thus juxtaposes the simple, easy το read, everyday street scenes that he has recorded in the course of recent years – especially during 2015 – with a more complex commentary, a distillation of personal experience but also a tortuous and multilevel philosophical quest. During this labyrinthine course, Ligouris, with candour and courage presents his list of German “saints”, his fixations, his agonies and his doubts, his amendments but also his reminders to self. Far from the banal juxtaposition of north and south, his aim is the observation of two regions as the differenet expressions of the human condition. An ambitious, far from easy venture, which he manages to complete successfully, despite its complexity, thanks to the sensibility, the deep knowledge but most of all the mental boldness that characterizes him.
What throughout remains the bond that connects his loosely narrated episodes, is the reminder that his subject is to be oblivion; not memory. But an oblivion which “does not repel, does not consume its subject“ but that preserves it unchanged for future generations. An oblivion that is heretic but necessary for the healing of historical wounds.
In a future world, in which this kingdom of oblivion and non-history will have been imposed, and in which the terrors and painful experiences of the last century will have been exorcised to their own kingdom, „to the land of myths and games“, Ligouris dreams of the utopian society. A society “of entanglement of the memories“ in which, according to his beloved quantum physics, the Lighthouse of Chania will shine in Berlin and the Victory Column of Berlin will send her light to the post of Chania. Only then will the world begin once again, in freedom.”
