by Bill | May 21, 2017 | General, Thermopyles, Uncategorized
As moving as our first day’s shoot was at Tavros, it was just a foreshadowing of the amazing time we spent in Thermopyles, our first camp visit. Thermopyles is outside the city of Lamia, several hours north of Athens. It was well known as a hot spring resort, but had fallen into disrepair several years back and had been shut down. When the crisis hit, the borders were closed and it was clear that many refugees would be staying in Greece for longer periods. Journalist Yiorgos Palamiotis proposed that it be turned into a camp and within 48 hours, Yiorgos Bakoyiannis, head of the local prefecture had approved it and refugees were headed there. Here is a clip from our interview with Mr. Bakoyannis where he describes the local response to the influx of refugees.
Kostas Bakoyannis
I have visited refugee camps in many countries and this is the first one I would ever have wanted to stay in. The natural setting is stunning, under an almost mystical mountain. It’s very easy to imagine the Spartans there in their immortal battle against the forces of Xerxes. The camp itself is filled with pine trees and it’s green and cool, a healing environment. Beyond that there are no fences anywhere! Here, Aris Sohos, co-administrator of the camp, tells how it is different from other camps.
Aris Sohos
Our time at Thermopyles brought home for me yet again a basic rule of documentary filmmaking and journalism in general: Don’t rush and don’t push too hard. Take your time to get to know people and to let them find their comfort with you. No matter how ambitious your schedule or how pressed for time you might be, just to rush in with your cameras and start shooting will only alienate people. Fortunately, Zaphiri had been to the camp on a scouting trip and spent time to get to know most of the staff, so there was already trust there. As the days went on, more and more refugees came up to us to tell their stories.
Here are short clips from two of our people, Saddam and Omar, both from Syria.
Saddam
Omar
The last morning we were in Thermopyles, I managed to spend an hour alone, as the camp was sleeping. With so much time on their hands and no work outside their contributions to keeping the camp clean and to cooking and cleaning their own rooms, the refugees tend to stay up late and sleep late. At the entrance to the camp is an abandoned and derelict gas station and snack bar.
Built in the early sixties, it took me back to my first trip to Greece with my family, when I was 9 years old. How alien and wonderful Greece and Europe was to me then, how many times I’ve visited it since and the people I’ve known. Standing under that timeless mountain, breathing the gentle pines, thinking of the ancient Greeks, and how time moves on, reflecting on the loss the refugees have suffered in our time, I was very much in the present moment while feeling history rolling out before me. I felt my small but true place in this human unfolding.
by Michel | May 20, 2017 | General
For me this journey began back in February of 2017, when I was down in LA with my wife, visiting my in-laws. Bill and I have known each other for a very long time, since long before either of us had our now-fully-grown children. When I pass through LA, it’s a normal part of the routine to see if Bill is around, and maybe take a bike ride or grab a coffee together. We’re both a whole lot older than we were all those years ago, and there’s always plenty to reflect on.
During our February visit, our talk turned to the refugee situation in Greece, which I’d been following pretty closely for some time. Both of us have a long-standing interest in Greek affairs. Bill’s is proprietary; his last name betrays his Greek parentage. Mine is less direct but strong, nevertheless. I lived in Greece for quite a while many years ago and embarked upon a lifelong exploration of Greek culture, music, poetry – you name it. I’d also reported from Greece during the tumultuous period when the first socialist government, PASOK, took the reins of power.
I mentioned to Bill that I had been mulling over the idea of volunteering with one of the NGOs working with refugees in Greece. It was at this point that Bill mentioned his idea for this film. He sketched out the details and I immediately saw in it another way to engage with the same people I’d been thinking about. Bill mentioned somebody named Zaphiri and said a third collaborator might seal the deal. There was some discussion of my utterly insufficient Arabic and my better-than-average knowledge of Greece and the Middle East and then I stared out at the Pacific for a moment and said absolutely, yes, I’m in.
That began two months of prep work that, compared to my normal life in Portland, already represented a frenzy of activity. Zaphiri started providing updates, articles and other documentation – often in Greek – one or two times a day. I engaged nearly all my Arabic-speaking friends in a communal attempt to dredge my Arabic out of the ditch of oblivion into which it had fallen over more than 30 years. It really did seem like things had reached a fever-pitch, but, in fact, I had no idea. For all intents and purposes, I was still in the slow lane.
The fast lane came when I landed in Greece. Almost instantly we entered a maelstrom of activity, running out the door on 3 minutes notice for an unexpected shooting opportunity, bouncing around Greece between locations, going to sleep just before dawn and getting up just after – it’s been about as different from my life in Portland as one could conceive of. A week in, it’s already been a great learning experience, and one of the things it’s taught me is just how quiet my life back home had become. There’s a lot going on in the big world we live in, and a lot that can be done about it, if we’re willing to push ourselves. That’s one of the many things I’ve always admired about Bill – he lives that life. Now, after this first exhausting week, I’m thinking that working with Bill and Zaphiri, and getting to know the refugees – most of whom have endured unbelievable hardship just to try to find some peace, some quiet and some safety – will be a way for me to pay back the debt of the many years of peace and safety I’ve been blessed with while I brought up my children in our happy home in quiet Portland when so much of the world outside isn’t like that.
by Bill | May 19, 2017 | General, School #2, Uncategorized
Tavros is a working-class neighborhood of Athens that is home to many immigrants from different countries for the past twenty years. It was a natural choice for a school immersion program for refugee children living in the nearby Eleona camp. The program runs every afternoon after the Greek students finish their school day. Refugee children are bussed in from the camp to spend a year learning the Greek language to prepare them for mainstream schooling next year. For many of these children, it is their first school experience and love and hugs are the largest component of the program for these often traumatized children.
The principal is the wonderful Dimitris Fileles, who has been at Tavro for thirty years, most of them as a teacher. We interviewed him as well as a parent volunteer, Geli Vlahopoulou, who had been one of his students years ago. She told us of the efforts the local community has undertaken to make the children feel welcome. We spent time in several classrooms, as well as filming interviews with two teachers, the warm and remarkable Vanessa Livani and Adriana Gkota. We also watched Teti Nikopoulou, a dancer, lead the students in gymnastics.
A week before our shoot, Mr. Fileles sent permission forms home with the students and we filmed those students whose parents returned signed forms. Because we did’t want to take them from their classes, we did not interview any of the students. We are looking forward to our next shoot, when we will talk with refugees, as well as the Greeks who are working with them
We were moved by the special comfort given to all the children by the entire staff of the school.
by Zaphiri | May 15, 2017 | Arsis NGO, Eleonas Camp, General, Hotel City Plaza, School #2, Thermopyles, Uncategorized
At the beginning of February I got a phone call from my friend Bill Megalos in Los Angeles, asking me if I would like to make a documentary with him, about the refugees in Greece. I’ve known Bill since 1989, when I worked as his assistant for four years. We’ve stayed close friends and have worked on a number of projects around the world. We had had our first contact with the refugee crisis in 2015 when we covered it in Lesvos, for the International Rescue Committee.
Being in Greece gave me an advantage. I said yes right away and started to prep by calling friends.
The first was Matoula Papadimitriou, senior investigator for the Ombudsman for Children’s Rights in Greece. She started feeding me with information: the number of refugees, where they are located, what the situation is today and pointed me to the three sites we decided to visit. They are City Plaza in Athens, Thermopyles, and Hotel Rovies in Evia.
I visited City Plaza, a squatted abandoned hotel in downtown Athens, first and got the green light.
The second resource was Vicky Liondou, a journalist who helped open the door to the camp in central Greece located in Thermopyles. She introduced us to Ioanni Mouzala, the Minister of Immigration Policy. At that point, I started to believe that we might actually pull off this project.
The third location, Hotel Rovies, I found on my own and went to visit.
We decided to bring as part of our team Michel Bolsey, a journalist friend of Bill’s who had lived in Lebanon, travelled extensively in the Middle East and speaks Arabic. When Bill and Michel had booked their tickets, I started the scouting trip.
In Thermopyles, a camp administered by the prefecture of Central Greece, located in an old abandoned resort next to hot springs I found George Palamioti and Ari Soho running the show. On their desks were the nameplates Baba George, with a picture of a bear and Uncle Aris, with a picture of a dog, gifts of the 400 refugees living in the camp.
People were living 4-5 in a room in bunk beds, where they cooked their meals, passing their days in boredom waiting for their papers to move to the next country.
I drove next to Hotel Rovies, located in Rovies in northern Evia, a hotel that was rented by UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) to house Syrian families on programs for relocation and reunification. There I met Antoni Grigorako from Solidarity Now, the NGO that administered the hotel. Previously he had been a volunteer in Piraeus in 2015 and 2016, when there were more than 5,000 people living in the port. Together with Andrea Vasiliou, the owner of the hotel, he works around the clock helping 100 refugees have a close to normal life in a safe environment.
We immediately clicked and I saw what a great job they were doing over the next two days.
Driving back to Athens, with these prime locations in my pocket, I realized that I had taken on the task of being a producer for a big project and actually was delivering what I had promised to the rest of the team. I was excited to share my scout experiences in our first skype conference call where I met Michel, whom I liked immediately.
Christos Stefanou, a coordinator of the educational program of Eleonas, a large refugee camp in Athens, with 2,000 inhabitants pointed us to the Tavros elementary school. Some children from the camp attend this school. Vicky again proved her value when she got the permit for us to visit Tavros from the Ministry of Education. Doors continued to open that I could not have imagined when we started.
George Moschos, the deputy ombudsman for children’s rights, agreed to give us an interview, along with Philippe Leclerc, the representative of UNHCR in Greece.
The day after the team arrived in Athens in the middle of May, the telephone rang. It was Katerina Poutou, the head of Arsis, an association for the social support of youth. I had been trying to get in contact with her for two months. We rushed to her office where we had a three-hour meeting with her and her staff and they promised to help us.
Tomorrow our journey begins without us knowing where it will end.
by Bill | May 14, 2017 | General, Uncategorized
Michel and I arrived Saturday night/Sunday morning (May 13-14) and Zaphiri made two long trips to the airport to pick us up, going to a wedding party in between. We worked hard on Sunday laying out our schedule and Zaphiri related to us all the remarkable contacts he has made and all the research and planning he’s done on this, his first producing job on a project of this scope. We tested cameras in his flat in Athens and then realized we really needed to get them out in the field, so we joined friends in Tatoi, a lovely mountain forest outside Athens. They were picking wild asparagus, not enough for all of us, but we did manage to eat well, nonetheless.
Zaphiri getting an earful
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