CHILD OF THE DEATH CAMPS: TRUTH AND LIES

Direction: Christopher Olgiati. Cinematography: Milivoj Ivkovic. Editing: Malcolm Daniel. Narration: Christopher Olgiati. Sound: Michael Marduzzo. Producer: Wolf Gebhardt. Production: BBC Worldwide; Arts & Entertainment. Video Colour 63'

The film raises the painful question of whether it is always a good thing to find out the truth. Journalist Daniel Ganzfied, who accuses the self-declared Holocaust survivor Binjamin Wilkomirski of lying, applies a strong argument. If false accounts of the concentration camps are accepted, it leaves room for false denials. But camp victims who consider Wilkomirski their spokesman, feel that their own credibility is being undermined by Ganzfield. It was not surprising that his attack on Wilkomirski was embraced by those that dispute that the Holocaust even took place. Director Christopher Olgiati first follows Wilkomirski's own story, as written down in his international best-seller Fragments. Wilkomirski claims to have been born in Riga, where his father was murdered by Latvian fascists. When he was three or four, he ended up in the concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz. Wilkomirski himself was only kept alive as a medical experiment by the infamous Dr. Mengele. In Switzerland, after the war, he was given the name Bruno Grosjean. This name turns out to be the key to Wilkomirski's real past. Olgiati manages to trace former friends and relatives of Bruno Grosjean...

THE LABYRINTH OF TRUTH

Direction: Nitza Kakoseos. Screenplay: Nitza Kakoseos. Cinematography: Goran Gester. Editing: Goran Gester, Wilbert Dominguez. Sound: Michael Reiter. Producer: Nitza Kakoseos. Production: Electra Media AB; Swedish National Television. 35mm Colour 75'

Sofia, the daughter of a high-ranking colonel in the service of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, makes a journey back to post-revolutionary Nicaragua. She is determined to unravel the mystery surrounding the life and death of her father, who was killed by the Sandinistas. Through her search for the truth, which has been kept from her for close to two decades, we come to understand how war and ideologies divide not only nations, but families as well, and how only the truth can help to get rid of the demons which dwell within each one of its victims, ultimately leading to reconciliation and the overcoming of guilt.

UNWITNESSED MEMORIES

Direction: Athena Xenidou. Cinematography: Paul Swift, Constantinos Othonos. Editing: Marianna Ghioka. Sound: Markos Pastos. Music: Simos Simou. Producers: Anastasia Papadopoulou, Athena Xenidou. Production: Anastasia Papadopoulou, Athena Xenidou, Sigma Radio TV 35mm Colour 60'

Cyprus, the year 2000. A post-war generation, similar to those of Germany, Northern Ireland, South Africa, the Middle East; generations that have been scarred by the unsolved political situations of their homelands. A dividing line, drawn through their country by an occupation army, splitting it in two ever since they were born. Memories that float beyond the dividing line. These are their unwitnessed memories. The film is a social documentary that sketches the psychological profile of this generation, which talks about its fears, its hopes, its dreams and its nightmares for the first time. Eight representatives of this generation reveal the truth that lies behind the blows of daily life and the remnants of a war they didn't live through. Eight different stories; one common denominator.

FIGHTER

Direction: Amir Bar-Lev. Cinematography: David Collier, Gary Griffin, Jay Danner McDonald, Justin Schein. Editing: Amir Bar-Lev. Producers: Amir Bar-Lev, Jonathan Crosby, Alex Mamlet. Production: Zebra Productions; Next Wave Films. 35mm Colour 90'

Fighter tells the story of two elderly Czech Jewish emigres, Jan Wiener and Arnost Lustig. Both men left Czechoslovakia following the 1968 Soviet repression of the Prague Spring for America, where they met and became friends. The film follows the pair as they retrace the war-time escape route from Prague taken by Wiener, who fled the German occupation to join the Czech forces in Britain where, after many incredible experiences, including a spell in an Italian prison, he flew bombers for the Royal Air Force, helping to liberate his homeland from the Nazis. Lustig's war was different. He and his family were sent to concentration camps, where many died. Wiener's family also suffered: his father and German stepmother committed suicide in Yugoslavia on the day of the Nazi invasion, and his natural mother was murdered in the Theriesenstadt concentration camp. Bar-Lev's original idea to shoot a straightforward documentary following the feisty Weiner's path from Prague got diverted by the increasingly dramatic tension between the two old friends, who manage to agree on virtually nothing about their experiences.

LIKE EARLY CRISTIANS

Direction: Andreas Apostolidis. Screenplay: Stelios Kouloglou. Cinematography: Vangelis Koulinos. Created by: Stelios Kouloglou. Production: Lexicon & Partners. BetacamSp Colour 62΄

During the Greek Civil War, and in the years immediately following, thousands of communists were arrested and condemned to death. They could be saved only through signing a declaration of repentance, renouncing their beliefs. Most of them refused to do so and were led before a firing-squad. Just like the early Christians, they refused to abjure their faith. Nikos Beloyiannis was arrested and, when he refused to renounce his beliefs, was sentenced to death. An even more tragic martyr is Nikos Ploumbidis, who was branded a defector by the leadership of the Communist Party. Throughout Beloyiannis' trial, Ploumbidis had declared that he was willing to die in his place. In his plea, Beloyiannis remarked that even though communists didn't believe in the afterlife, they were willing to sacrifice themselves like the early Christians. One of the communists that was sentenced to death in the Beloyiannis case describes the ritual followed by those about to die before being led to the firing-squad. Another fellow-prisoner of Beloyiannis', Takis Lazaridis, describes his disappointment at escaping execution at the last minute, while Beloyiannis' companion, Elli Pappa, who was also sentenced to death in the same case, tells of her experiences.

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE HEROES

Direction: Andreas Apostolidis. Screenplay: Stelios Kouloglou. Cinematography: Vangelis Koulinos. Created by: Stelios Kouloglou. Production: Lexicon & Partners. BetacamSp Colour 58΄

Costas Georgakis was a student at the University of Genoa in Italy. On September 18 1970, Georgakis, then barely 22 years old, chose death by self-immolation, in order to protest the dictatorship in Greece. Although his act was concealed by the Greek state, it aroused international public opinion and turned the world's attention to Greece's military regime. This documentary reconstructs the main facets of the life of Costas Georgakis, his childhood and adolescence in Corfu, his spiritual and political concerns, his participation in the struggle against the dictatorship, his decision to sacrifice his life in an ultimate act of protest against the dictatorship. People who knew Georgakis are interviewed, including his family, his childhood friends, his professors, his comrades in the resistance movement, but also Genovese, for whom Georgakis is a part of history and a symbol of democracy. This film was screened to an audience of students from the University of Athens, who are the same age as Georgakis was when he made the big decision, and their reactions were also filmed. How do the young people of today view Georgakis' act? Do they consider it useless or pointless? For which issues would they be prepared to sacrifice their own lives?

IN OUR TIME

Direction: Tassos Psarras. Text-Historical Research: Vlassis Agtsidis. Cinematography: Alexis Grivas, Yiorgos Goutzioulas, Dimitris Anagnostopoulos. Editing: Spyros Tsichlis. Sound: Argyris Lazaridis, Yiannis Haralambidis. Production: ET3. Digital Beta Colour 45΄

One of the least known events of Modern Greek History is the persecution of the Greeks in the Soviet Union, which began in 1937 and ended in 1949. After the Asia Minor disaster, thousands of refugees from the northern shores of Asia Minor poured into Russia. The refusal of the Greek government after 1928 to allow these refuges to come to Greece (even though they were covered by the Treaty of Lausanne, forced them to remain in the Soviet Union. The Greeks living in the Soviet Union participated in all the phases of the soviet experiment, while at the same time they established a network of Greek schools, theater groups, and publishing houses, published numerous Greek periodicals and formed Autonomous Greek regions within the framework of the Soviet administrative system. However, they also suffered the consequences of Stalinism. Approximately 44 to 50 thousand Greeks were executed or died from exposure as a result of their persecution, while over 200,000 were exiled to Siberia, the Urals and Central Asia.