Happy Homecoming, Comrades

Shadow puppetry is not only part of the heritage of East Asia; Greece had its own traditional form of this popular art. In this leisurely drama, set in 1950s Athens, Antonis Barkis (Kostas Kasakos) is the master puppeteer for a traditional shadow show. However, although he is still making a living, it is clear that other forms of popular entertainment will soon supplant this one. This does not improve Antonis' temper, and his assistant's desires to modernize their entertainments only make it worse.

Frieda Liappa in this short film casts an alternative gaze on the notion of historicity. Loukia is a teenager currently staying at her cousin’s house in Athens. Unlike her cousin she is timid and quite stressed for the school exam. She studies history. Between the lines of her book the historical events sprung up in a multidimensional way. Liappa transverses the dimensions of the real the imaginary and the symbolic. She invites the viewer to consider the construction of the filmic as well as the historical text. She succeeds in making a film with an open end and to leave room for our own contingent constructions.

The story of a successful Greek immigrant, the restaurant owner Giorgos Kozompolis, who emigrated in the mid 1960’s from the poor village of Sotirianika, in Mani to the developed city of Heidelberg in the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Greek guest workers -gästarbeiter- in the industrially developed central and northern Europe in the mid 70s.

Greek internal migrants in Athens, after the Greek Civil War colonize the tops of the Tourkovounia hills.

The history of the ancient neighborhood of Colonus in Athens, by a novelist and script writer who lives in modern-day Kolonos.