27/02

Robin Vanbesien - Under These Words (Solidarity Athens 2016) (2017, 52’)

Three actors go on a journey through Athens. They seek to listen to fellow-citizens engaged in different organisations of the grassroots solidarity movement: a clinic, a pharmacy, a kitchen, a school. In the course of many conversations, the social dreams of the citizens unfolds as a living continuity. In the encounter with the Athinians, the idea of superposing an allegorical fiction of the ancient Greek tragedy upon the social present of Athens 2016 crumbled. The actors fell silent and withdrew into the role of listeners to the practical consciousness of the citizens, or what is being lived through organizing a society parallel to the Greek state. The encounter became the film’s leitmotiv, and the social movement’s adage ‘close to each other’ – the original Greek expression for what is translated to English as ‘solidarity’ – turned into an incentive for our hands-on heuristic method during the film process, both practical and political.

“Ben Russell’s film, which is drawn from historical actors’ investment in the divine power of dreams is greatly inspiring in regards to its proposal of a ‘dream cinema’. ‘Greetings to the ancestors’ focuses on a very disturbing reality, it suggests a kind of film-embodiment that stays close to the transitional social reality it struggles with, but without occupying it.”

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