Where is the Greek Michael Moore?
Social issue films, mass distribution missing on local scene

Errol Morris' "Fog of War"

In 1988, Erol Morris’s documentary on the 1976 murder of Dallas policeman Robert Wood, "The Thin Blue Line," led to the release from prison of David Harris, a 16-year-old who had been tried and convicted of the shooting. Tightly shot, the real-life drama became a minor hit; a year later, Michael Moore followed with "Roger & Me" in which he exposed the consequences of General Motors’ decision to close its plant in Flint, Michigan. Since then both directors have continued to push the documentary onto the big screen, Moore with "Bowling for Columbine" and Morris with the newly released "Fog of War," a documentary on the life of former U.S. defense secretary Bob McNamara.

"Documentaries can be edgy, exciting. Unfortunately, Greek documentaries are on their way to reaching that level," says a producer who has worked on both documentary and feature films.
Over the last decade, documentaries have garnered growing interest among audiences and expanded their niche among cinephiles. Indeed, documentary production has surged in the last decade, especially in Europe, where in the year the festival was inaugurated more than 1,200 hours of documentaries were produced in France alone – although the bulk of that production was for television.


More films, limited audiences

Mourning Rock

In Greece, credit for popularizing the genre among wider audiences goes to the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival- Images of the 21st Century, an event first held in 1998. Launching a festival dedicated to documentaries has had a direct impact on production: the number of documentaries produced with funds from the Greek Film Center has multiplied from two in 1999 to seven in 2001, eleven in 2002, and 21 this year. Yet few of these documentaries gain widespread attention or make it into the movie theaters. Two recent exceptions have been Stratos Stassinos’s "Epirus" (1998) and Philippos Koutsaftis’s "Mourning Rock" (Agelastos Petra, 2000)" – both of which won the audience awards at the Thessaloniki Film Festivals in their respective years. "Epirus" was a paean to this remote Greek region, one of Europe’s poorest; "Mourning Stone" centered on the blue-collar town of Elefsis, on the outskirts of Athens, where the Eleusinian Mysteries were held in antiquity.

"There’s the feeling that documentaries are boring because they deal with historical themes. Audiences think of documentaries as educational rather than informational, and Greek documentary makers fall into this trap," says a film editor.

Too much history?
Documentaries are a demanding form of narrative cinema that goes beyond the mere recording of events. Yet because of Greek documentary makers’ preoccupation with historical subjects – especially biographical or thematic issues – the genre lacks vitality. Directors’ failure to focus on social problems, especially those requiring a long-term view, has limited their subject matter and, by extension, stifled viewer interest.

I Like Hearts Like Mine

But filmmakers counter that this narrow focus doesn’t necessarily reflect a lack of vision or knowledge of documentary techniques, but is the result of financing schemes that demand a project be completed within twelve or eighteen months. Others believe that because the Greek Film Center, the main source of funding, is not a producer that seeks to make back its money, there is no pressure on it to consider the commercial viability of the projects it supports.

"The market for documentaries is dominated by television," says Electra Venaki, a film editor whose projects include Yorgos Zervas’s "I Like Hearts Like Mine" (2000), a biography of composer Markos Vamvakaris. "This means that projects tend to run under sixty minutes, and there is little incentive for developing feature-length documentaries."

The distribution quagmire
But for most documentary filmmakers the central issue remains distribution, domestic and foreign – a problem Greek documentaries share with the country’s fiction features. This has also hampered Greek documentary’s evolution, both in terms of theme and aesthetic, even though local documentary output in the last five years has included a number of projects on topics that would interest international audiences.
Yet despite the problems the documentary faces, Greek filmmakers are heartened by the occasional commercial success and the growing interest in this film genre. New, digital formats have reduced the costs of making a documentary: this will allow directors to undertake more projects or experiment with different styles although the digital format won’t solve distribution problems. The Thessaloniki Documentary Festival has consolidated its reputation as the premiere Balkan showcase for documentaries – and this has certainly been a boost for Greek documentary filmmakers. But perhaps, as several producers point out, what Greece needs now is a theater that only screens documentaries to prime audiences and provide a commercial outlet for such films.

Diane Shugart