In refugee literature, the first memories and interpretations of the collective injuries are tested, as prose writers from Asia Minor are witnessing this period of disgrace for Hellenism. They record, also comment and describe in the most convincing way their impressions of what they have heard and what they have lived.
The last century a lot of movies became famous because of the immigration problem. On 1922, lot of Greeks who lived in Asia Minor (Turkey) were expelled , in a vain way, to Greece. Through the century, people from Russia, Georgia and other countries of ex Soviet Union were moved to Greece as an immigrants. These faces were a spring of inspiration for a huge number of movies. Some of them are the following:
Theodoros Angelopoulos, Eternity and a Day (1998)
Eternity and a Day (Greek: Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα, Mia aioniótita kai mia méra) is a 1998 Greek film starring Bruno Ganz, and directed by Theo Angelopoulos. The film won the Palme d'Or and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. The film was selected as the Greek entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 71st Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Plot
Alexandros (Bruno Ganz), a middle-aged bearded writer, leaves his seaside apartment in Thessaloniki after learning he has a terminal illness and must enter a hospital the next day to perform more tests. He is trying to get his affairs in order and to find someone who would take care of his dog. He speaks in his mind to his dead wife, Anna (Isabelle Renauld), who appears still young to him.
Alexandros hides a young Albanian squeegee kid from the police who are arresting other boys like him at a traffic stop in order to deport them. Later, he pays a visit to his 22-year-old daughter (Iris Chatziantoniou), but he doesn't tell her of his diagnosis. Instead he gives her some letters written by her mother, who she reads out loud, triggering his memories of the time when their daughter was a newborn at her baby shower. He learns that his daughter and her husband have sold the family's beach house without telling him. Also, they refuse to keep his dog with them.
On his way back, Alexandros meets the immigrant boy again, and witnesses his capture at the hands of human traffickers who try to sell him into illegal adoption. Alexandros infiltrates the clandestine meeting and in a moment of confusion tries to sneak away with the kid but is stopped by the traffickers and must pay what they ask for him. He tries to put the kid on a bus and then a taxi, but he keeps running away, so he decides to take him across the border to Albania himself.
Alexandros sees at the snowy mountain border an eerie barbed wire fence with what seem to be bodies stuck to it. As the pair waits for the gate to open, they have a change of mind about crossing, when the boy admits he has been lying about his life in Albania. The two of them barely escape a border sentry and make it back to Alexandros's automobile.
The boy's perilous existence brings Alexandros out of his stupor and self-pity, and seemingly re-energizes him in his love for a 19th-century Greek poet, Dionysios Solomos (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), whose unfinished poem he longs to complete. The old man and the boy are connected by fear. The former over what lies ahead for him, and whether his life has had any impact; the latter over the perilous return trip to Albania on a path over the mountains lined with land mines, as well as traffickers.
Alexandros pays a visit to his housekeeper, Ourania (Helene Gerasimidou). She is manifestly smitten with him, but is in the middle of a wedding party and dances between her son and his bride. The scene plays on until Alexandros interrupts. He leaves the dog with her, and then the dance and music, which had stopped, resume as if nothing had halted them.
The boy goes to the ruins of a hospital, mourning another young boy, Selim, via a candlelight vigil, with dozens of other youths. The pair take a bus trip and encounter all sorts of people, from a tired political protester to an arguing couple to a classical music trio. They also look out the window as a trio of people on bicycles pedal by them, oddly dressed in bright yellow raincoats. The boy departs in the middle of the night, stowing aboard a huge, brightly lit ship whose destination is unknown.
Alexandros enters his old home. He looks about, exits out the back door, and into the sunny past where Anna and other friends are singing. They stop, ask him to join them, then they all dance, and soon, there is only the poet and his wife in motion. Then, she slowly pulls away, and he claims his hearing is gone. He also cannot see her, it seems. He calls out and asks how long tomorrow will be, after he had told her he refuses to go into the hospital as planned. She tells him tomorrow will last eternity and a day.
Theodoros "Theo" Angelopoulos (27 April 1935 – 24 January 2012) In 1998 his film Eternity and a Day went on to win the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 51st edition of the Cannes Film Festival, and his films have been shown at many of the world's most esteemed film festivals.
Nikos Koundouros, 1922 (1978)
Based on the book by Ilias Venezis "The Number 31328", the film by Nikos Koundouros unfolds through the personal tragedies of three characters, the Asia Minor Disaster and the agonizing travails of the Asia Minor Greeks who had been arrested and led to death by Kemal's troops and armed groups of Muslims. The wife of a merchant, a teacher and a seventeen-year old boy try to survive, following the column of prisoners into the depths of Asia Minor. The teacher will be murdered by a Turk, the wife of the merchant will lose her senses, and only the young boy will manage to survive.
Constantine Giannaris, From the Edge of the City (1998) (Στην άκρη της πόλης)
17-year-old Sasha and his family have emigrated from the Pontian area of the former Soviet Union to seek their fortune in Greece, only to find themselves despised as "Albanian." With few prospects, he and his fellow immigrant buddies resort to a lifestyle of petty crime, tomfoolery and prostitution. Sasha soon becomes the smoldering center of this gang of Pontian Greek kids who live on the margins of Athens. Sickened of the rent-boy existence, Sasha accepts an older pimp's offer to chaperone a beautiful Russian hooker, but when he inevitably falls in love with her, he must face the potentially dangerous consequences.
Famous directors and actors during the 20th century
A lot of greek actors were living in foreing countries before they came to Greece to work .
Some of them are :
Kostas Doukas (Κώστας Δούκας)
He was born in 1895 at Smyrna . The modern acquaintance knew him though his roles next to Kosta Hatzihristo(Κώστα Χατζηχρήστο) . He studied at the commercial school and worked at the Athenian bank . Later on he resigned from the post to follow he dream becoming an actor . He also was scenarist . He died in July 1967
Mairy Metaxa (Μαίρη Μεταξά)
She was born in 1912 at East Romelia . Characteristics are the roles that she played at the greek cinema as Constantinopolitan and most of the time she played the overprotective mom of Kostas Voutsas (Κώστας Βουτσάς) . Also Kostas was by her side till her last moments .She died οn January 1987 in Athens.
