A Quick Message From Manousos...

Being off ill for such a long time has not stopped me from attempting to create something for my Media Portfolio. Through boredom as much as anything I decided to make a short promotional video for my documentary using what resources I could find. I don't think this is too bad considering it was done using only a webcam, a microphone, footage from the internet and windows movie maker. Obviously the real thing will be of far better quality, and prehaps the accent will be a bit more fluent when I am not as ill! Still, it was something I had great fun working on!

Slightly off topic, but..

..I thought I would post up this music video. It is again from the artist NiVo from Goin' Through and he is joined by friends and members of his record label bringing the bad state of Greek political afairs into their music. This music video makes a statement of how British and other global media view the state of Greek politics in the wrong way and mocks the government themselves as merely playing childish games. The video also has elements of governmental scandals thats have taken place in the past (i.e. sexism in the workplace, politicians in strip clubs, politicians lying on television etc). However, I believe that some of the strongest scenes in the video are of the gang singing the song about the poor state of politics in front of the Greek Parliament building in Athens. I just thought this was a great video and inspires me to do a good job in my own project, and I am a great admirer of NiVo for having the courage to create media like this. He deserves a lot of respect!

Second Script Version

I have made some quite drastic changes to the original documentary script. Here is the final form which I will be using in filming. Obviously if I come up with any other ideas before I start shooting I will post them up. I will also be posing up details of important things that have changed throughout the script at some point too.

Giasou Agglia. Me lene Manousos. Eimai 18 kai apo tin Athena.

Like many young people, I am a student and it has long been a dream of mine to travel to the UK and carry on my education at a good university. However, being from Greece it does not look like this is going to be able to happen. Don't get me wrong, my country is my favorite place in the world. We have the nicest weather... The tastiest food... The craziest sports… The hottest women... The most eventful history... And of course it is my home. I love it. The politics however, well... Welcome to my Big Fat Greek Politics. Pame!

Greece is a country that is filled to the brim with history and it is something that our people never forget. We find here that most of this history is glamorised in the eyes of the west by Hollywood, and even in western news accounts a lot of misinformation is given about our state of affairs. This means that many people fail to see past this glittering view of Greece that is portrayed on their television screens. They do not realise the vast amount that the people of this country have had to live and put up with over the years, with many of the problems even stemming from their own governments. It is perhaps this that gives Greek people in particular such a loud and rebellious and stereotype. But in context, we are a small, Eastern European country who has had many foreign invaders taking control and stripping us of our wealth, the Ottoman Turks and Hitler’s Nazis being the guiltiest parties. But this has proved merely a starting point for the economic problems currently facing Greece with modern issues making things even worse.

I am proud to say that we Greeks have always had a love of overthrowing oppressive regimes. This is not without reason. There is a strong feeling amongst the population that governments here work only for themselves, and not for the good of the people. Athens itself is of course the birthplace of democracy as we know it, so for the people to be so badly neglected here is a disgrace, as it would be anywhere else. During the 60s and 70s, the country was controlled by this man, George Papadopoulos, leader of a fascist military dictatorship. There was much violence against the people under Papadopoulos, and his oppressive methods took place mostly through use of the armed forces and the police. This soon led to a campaign of protests and uprisings amongst the people, especially young people like us. However; this government had no wish to change their policies and crushed many of these, mainly peaceful, demonstrations using in some of the most violent ways possible.

The most famous example of this is known as the Athens Polytechnic Uprising. It took place on 14th November 1973 and began as a mainly peaceful protest by students against the policies of the government. Personally I find what happened next was absolutely despicable. The students, protesting in a barricaded area were charged down by a tank, with twenty-four being shot dead, including one boy of only 17 years. As I have already said it is not in a Greeks blood to allow them to sit down and keep quiet about something like this. The uprising grew overnight in stature and in violence and by morning the fascists were gone. Now it is this same passion for the good of the Greek population as a whole I believe is being shown through today’s rioters and protesters against the present government in Greece.

The state of the Greek economy has become a joke in the eyes of many Europeans. Many do not understand why the people of Greece have such a problem with paying increased taxes in order to help the economy. After all they got themselves into these problems in the first place right? Wrong. The political situation in Greece became no less complex than it had been under military rule. The system is now made up (like in the UK) of two parties, PASOK and Nea Democratia. During the 1990s the newly elected PASOK government introduced what they described as new and modern liberal ideas. It all sounded very promising, but this modernisation of Greece included the entering of the country into the single European currency.

To be able to do this they needed to save money. This task was undertaken by severely cutting national welfare, completely neglecting the healthcare system and extensively privatising many of the nations businesses. The government claimed that this would be good for the country as a whole; however because of this the average wage for a Greek person ranges from about a half to a third of the amount paid to someone in the UK, with many people struggling to even buy food at regulated EU prices. The situation became so bad that after the year 2000 at least a third of the population were living at or below the poverty line. What happened next? More cuts with the education system being more or less completely destroyed. This is where my problems lie. Not only because of the poor state of the schools I have no chance of even applying for university, but should I even get the chance I will simply not be able to afford to go.

I have already told you that one of my dreams is being able to go to a good university and study. My friends at school always called me the Vivliofágos (the Bookworm) because I always used to have a book in my hand. Now I still read, but mostly on the internet to get a feeling of the outside world, perhaps too much. I have recently been reading about the British expenses scandal and the uproar it caused in the UK. I hate to say it, but in Greece and much of the rest of Europe this almost laughable. This is purely because the same thing happens here on a daily basis and on a much larger scale. Remember how betrayed and outraged everyone was over that one scandal. Now imagine this. In Greece we had almost fifty scandals of equal size and controversy from within our government as yours in only fifty four months. And people wonder why we are unhappy. This situation is made no better by the role of the police force. I have also recently seen on the internet, this footage from London of students being mistreated by the police. Again, this is another common occurrence in Greece with many people viewing the police here in the same light as they did under the military dictatorship. Their methods of dealing with even the most simple of situations have been described as brutal and thuggish, and in the main they are perceived as being puppet soldiers for the governments used to put down any opposition that may come their way, no matter how innocent or peaceful.

In fact it was this problem with the police that sparked recent rioting in the first place. Let me tell you the story of a Greek boy, three younger than myself, who was out on the night of December 6^th 2008 with his friends in the Athenian suburb of Eksarheia. He and his friends were doing what any young people would do on a night out; they were out laughing, joking, and (crucially) voicing their opinions. The boy and his friends were confronted by two police officers who disagreed with what was being said. The boy’s name was Alexandros Grigoropoulos and that night he was shot dead by one of the two police officers. Like me, Alex was a young man deeply frustrated by the poor situation he had been put in by his government and by letting his feelings be known he suffered the ultimate price. What kind of democracy is that? This tragedy proved to be the final straw for the Greek people and following his death began national unrest, strikes, protests and anarchism against the government who had been deemed responsible. A resurrection of the uprising in 1973 had begun. Scenes like this became common all over Greece and similar protests became common throughout other major world cities, including London, Paris, Copenhagen and Rome.

If the situation was not bad enough, by 2010 things were spiralling completely out of control. The economy was completely crippled. The government had made things no better in its lies to the people, through its corruption and through its over spending on needless projects. The issue of the police may even have been overlooked had the government invested in other areas of public interest, but this was never going to happen. On May 5^th scenes like these returned to the streets of Greece. The introduction of further austerity measures in exchange for a €110bn bailout merely worsened the situation. People who have no education, no healthcare, no jobs, no prospects and a future of depression and poverty were now being forced to take further wage cuts, face even higher taxes and have none of this money put back into the country. A mass demonstration and a national strike took place on this day in protest to these unfair requests. How can people who can barely afford food manage on less money and increased taxes? Would the people of the UK stand by quietly and watch this happen to their country? I don’t think so.

What angers me about what is going on here in Greece is the attitude taken by many western societies that we are morally wrong to protest. The idea that this movement is merely communist or anarchist is completely wrong and I am outraged that it has been portrayed as such by the global media. The protests and the violence in Greece are being fought against a capitalist regime which has completely failed to deliver freedom and democracy to its people. People have said to me that the Greek people are morally wrong to protest as they have done and that we are no better than the government itself if we do. All I can say in response is that if things are not drastically changed, things will never recover and ask in return how can we expect to see solutions and progress made by the very same people who caused to the problem in the first place? Whether you agree with what is happening here is entirely your decision, I have no influence on that. I will however say that if people are being mistreated, do they not have right to stand up and fight? Democracy here is not yet dead, it has only been forgotten and we need to again remind those at the top what is most important.

Kalinihta Agglia.

Epharisto.

Documentary Theme Music

Kaneis Lathos - Maro Litra featuring TNS

Another quick post today. I have decided to use the above peice of music as the theme of my documentary. It is modern, it has a good beat, it is Greek but apart from all of that it also has quite a dark edge to it. This is the sort of feeling I want to give the documentary. The music is special as it can be seen at face value as quite an upbeat song, but when used in different ways it can also bring in other emotions that correspond with images onscreen. This is why I believe it is the perfect peice to use. The title 'Kaneis Lathos' translates as 'Make no mistakes' which is quite relevent to the message being put across by the people towards the Greek government; to make no more mistakes otherwise change will come.

Development of Ideas

Given the uproar among students over the raising of University fees, I have decided to use this to my advantage in my documentary. As young people are my target audience and it is effecting them so much, I have decided to introduce a theme such as this to dwell on, giving them yet more in relation to the character on screen and more of a common purpose too. Whilst changing my script I will be taking developments such as this into account and putting them in when needbe to add another dimension to the programme. There are also other minor changes that I have made to the script which I will explain in a later post.