Greek Film Archive: 
Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival

Since 2012, the annual highpoint of the Greek Film Archive’s activities has been the Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival (AAGFF). It is regarded as the only festival in Greece purely dedicated to avant-garde, experimental and hybrid film. Carefully curated, it brings together work that expand the boundaries and possibilities of cinema. As part of Arsenal on Location, a special program has been put together that explores the themes of migration, expulsion and memory. The selection of films follows a range of different formal and historical approaches, ranging from private archives to collective stories about exile and belonging. The following films from the Arsenal archive can be seen:  
PASSING DRAMA (Angela Melitopoulos, 1999) describes how the filmmaker’s family was forced to flee from their home, a story that stretches across three generations and four countries.
EKMEK PARASI – GELD FÜR’S BROT (Serap Berrakkarasu, 1994) shows women from Turkey working at a fish factory in Lübcek. They give an account of their lives, their worries, their sadnesses, their hopes and dreams.
NOW: END OF SEASON (Ayman Nahle, 2015) observes Syrian refugees waiting in Turkey. On the soundtrack, we hear how Hafiz al-Assad tries without success to reach Ronald Reagan by telephone, who is out riding.
WAS BLEIBT / ŠTA OSTAJE (Clarissa Thieme, 2010) consists of long, static wide shots of spaces and landscapes in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina: empty spaces created by war and violence.
BORROWING A FAMILY ALBUM (Tamer El Said, 2023) is the film version of an installation screened at Forum Expanded. Based on other people’s family photos, the filmmaker presents the story of his own family, which has deleted the time before his sister’s death from its memory.
Five further titles from the Greek Film Archive explore the experiences of people forced to flee their home countries: SPECTRES ARE HAUNTING EUROPE (2016) by Maria Kourkouta and Niki Giannari, MILAD – MY PLANET … (2015) by Menelaos Karamaghiolis, BREAKING ISOLATION IN THE CENTER OF BERLIN (2015) by Menelaos Karamaghiolis, FROM ARIS TO NEW YORK (1996) by Eva Stefani and INNER MIGRATION (1984) by Vouvoula Skoura. (3.–7.12.) (Stefanie Schulte Strathaus)