"Passing Drama", by Angela Melitopoulos

"Passing Drama", by Angela Melitopoulos, 1999,
Experimental documentary on refugee history of refugees from Asia Minor (1923) who fled to Greece and became work slaves in Hitler's Germany in WWII. The film translates the sound-picture of my family's migration history that was passed by voice from one generation to the next
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=5023106219120789424&hl=de
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pAqy4U0xjg
Short text
Passing Drama a videoessay directed by Angela Melitopoulos 66 min, PAL, Digibeta, 1999, (German and Greek language, subtitled in English) contact: nc-melitoan@netcologne.de
„PassingDrama“ is based on different recollections told by refugees. This videoessay is the woven sound picture of the migration of Angela Melitopoulos’family. Drama is the name of a small city in Northern Greece. The city is inhabited by refugees who are survivors of deportations from Asia Minor to Greece in 1923. In World War II their children escaped the Bulgarian occupation and became workeslave in Hitler’s Germany. Interviews with those refugees connected to Melitopoulos father’s recite of his departure from Greece to Vienna are tracing a diagonal path through Europe crossing four different national states. The homeland of these refugees was changing continuously. Their storytelling relates to the local condition of integration. To choose recites from people who have experienced an exodus nearly forgotten in European history meant to consider ways of making the process of forgetting a part in the process of notation (montage). Telling a story, which has been transmitted, retold, re-memorised from one generation to the next meant to make a film on the subject of refugee narration itself. Fragments of recorded interviews formed the voice level in that the story appears as a texture made out of different densities of concret or superfluous „thought-flows“. In their narration the refugees connected their own words with generated word-constructions of others. The recalled words of others intensified through the melody of their voices.

Award of the German Filmcritics for experimental video 2000 Award of the Council of Europe, VideoArt Festival Locarno Award of Internationale Mediafestival Medi@terra Athens
http://www.videophilosophy.de/
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0107/melitopoulos/en/#_ftn3
http://www.eipcp.net/bio/melitopoulos
http://www.videophilosophy.de/tc-geographies.net/workshops/istambul_03.html
http://www.projektmigration.de/
http://www.transitmigration.org/
http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/v2v/Timescapes_Angela_Melitopolous
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr1201/rcfr13b.htm
http://www.republicart.net/disc/representations/melitopoulos01_en.pdf
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/001760.php
http://freebitflows.t0.or.at/f/participants/angelamelitopoulos
http://www.fdk-berlin.de/en/arsenal-experimental/news-display/article/486/273.html?cHash=12ba233e05
Full Play is a Multimedia Installation performance that took place at the Villette Numerique, which means “Digital Village” at the Parc de la Villette located in Paris, France on September 24th thru September 29th, 2002. http://actioncamfilms.com/fullplay/fullplay.htm