Dimitris Indare’s documentary “Lenaki, two fires and two curses”, the revival of an old story and an unexpected journey into the past of a mountain community in the heart of the Peloponnese, will be screened on Sunday, March 10 at 6 pm as part of the 26th Documentary Festival Thessaloniki, in the John Cassavetes hall.
Filming began in the summer of 2020 while ERT’s Board of Directors had approved funding of 50,000 euros for the documentary, which focuses on the way collective memory hides and metabolises, pushing into oblivion some cases that disturb, some traumas that torment.
This is a documentary made in collaboration with the Kostopoulos Foundation and the Athens Leverage Association, and its starting point is the accidental discovery of a memorial for the burning of a tower in the Levartzi of Kalavryton, thus giving Dimitris Indare the opportunity to approach its history and traditions of the mountain community from which he has a distant origin. As the well-known director had pointed out: “The effort is to reconstruct the story with the minimal elements that exist in the sources and to detect the different roles played by history and tradition which are sometimes complementary and sometimes completely opposite” Dimitris had told us Indians.
It is regarding the revolution of Helen, who defended the forbidden love with the unthinkable for the time “a man owes a man, a man I got” reaches to our days as a forerunner of women’s emancipation.
Residents of three neighboring villages appear in the film: Livartziou, Orini (Mostenitsa) and Tripotamon. Selected musicians introduce us to the variations of the song of Eleni and Limazis: Giorgos Dalianis, Stavroula Daliani and their band, Anneta Georgoulopoulou, Polyvios Golfinou’s wife, Nikos Sofos and Zografos Bethanis, Yiannis Panagiotopoulos and Gogo Chrysanthopoulou, Vassilis Ravazoulas of Livartzinos…
On the map of the case we are guided by: Ms. Eleni Psychogiou, folklorist, researcher of the KEEL of the Academy of Athens, Mr. Leonidas Empirikos, historian, Mr. Petros Pizanias, historian, co. professor at the Ionian University, Mr. Stelios Mouzakis, culture researcher, Mr. Ilias Toutounis, writer-researcher, and Mr. Panagiotis Fragos, president of the Athens Leverage Association. Witches, fairies and elves also appear. Tatiana Loverdou and Kimona Venieri-Vassilakis helped with this. And of course Lydia Venieri.
As Dimitris Indares had told us when talking to us regarding the documentary, which also has a personal dimension: “With the outbreak of the revolution, to be precise with the signal given by the pre-priests in Agia Lavra for the uprising, a chieftain hastened to burn Aga’s tower, as the noblewoman was his cousin. And this chieftain had the same first and last name as me. He was my great-grandfather’s grandfather.” In fact, this action that took place on March 16, 1821, has special significance for many, but the interest for Dimitris Indare is why this event has been ignored. “And this why is a point of interest in the context of my approach, forgetting – memory. What is it that highlights some things and degrades others? It is one of the things that is of great interest to me in my approach,” he had emphasized.
Info
Screenplay-directors: Dimitris Indares
Director of photography: Dimitris Katsaitis
Artistic editing, animation: Lydia Venieri
Music: Nefeli Beri
Sound design: Kostas Phylaktidis
Editing: Dim. Indares with the valuable advice of Despina Kontargyris
Vfx-graphics: Kostas Dimitropoulos
Color corrections: Maria Tzortzatou
Producers: Dim. Indares, Fotini Economopoulou, Vasiliki Patrouba
Production: Dimitris Indares
Co-producers: ERT, OhMyDog Productions
with the support of YKK and the kind support of the I.F. KOSTOPOULOS Foundation
(poster: Costas Dimitropoulos. Lenaki: Kimona Venieri-Vassilakis).
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