Greek Cinema - Hellenic University Club of Southern California

made for the Overseas Branch of the OWI
was built around a central idea, to make
friends for America." 3
The Soviets produced the documentary
One Day of War in 1943. Several cameramen
filmed the facts of what was happening
that day in the streets and in the war front.
Their second important documentary was
The Story of Stalingrand, another pure facts
documentary which was released abroad after
World War II ended. 4
In the post War period, the number of
documentaries from every European country
increased. The evidence indicates that documentaries
were of equal importance as the
entertainment feature movies. Documentaries
flourished in Europe, and to a great extent, in
the United States. 5
Greek producers, directors, and scriptwriters
were so preoccupied with the “New
Art-Cinema” and the entertainment feature
movies that they did not realize that a short
or feature documentary is easier to produce,
less costly, it can also use performers, and it
can deliver massages just as well, if not more
powerfully, as a feature movie. Documentary
is a powerful weapon for whatever the producer,
director and scriptwriter has in mind.
Greece is so rich with materials from her glorious
past as well as modern times that no
producer, director, or scriptwriter can ever
run out of themes for this kind of movies.
The main reason that documentaries did not
flourish in the first decades up to 1960 was
because there was no market domestically or
internationally for Greek documentaries.
The efforts to produce short or feature
documentaries were almost zero for the first
five decades of the 20th century in Greece.
The only exceptions were the “Newsreels” of
the Balkan War (1912-1913), World War I
(1917-1918), and Asia Minor War (1919-
1922) by cameramen Joseph Hepp, Demetris
Gaziadis, Giorgos Prokopiou, Demetris
10
Meravidis, and Gavrilis Longos. The World
War II (1941-1944) and Civil War (1946-
1949) by cameramen Joseph Hepp, Prodromos
Meravidis, and Filopoimin Finos.
The pioneer in that form was, as we have
mentioned in our chapter II, (Volume 1)
Charilaos Mavrogenis in 1911 who made a
serious effort to produce what are known today
as documentaries. He tried to produce the
first scientific documentaries that dealt with
insects and reptiles. In Balkans the pioneers
were the Greek Miltiadis and Joachim Manakis
with the documentary I Ifandres (i.e.The
Weavers) in 1905. The next pioneer was
Achilleas Madras who in 1922 produced the
documentary Prosfiges Tou Polemou (The
Refugees of The War). Other writers give the
title The Exodus of Refugees. It presents the
drama of a Greeks (Greeks) in Macedonian
cities, West Thraki, and Smyrna. It was never
released in Greece, but in Greek communities
in the United States and Egypt. In Europe, it
was released in France, Belgium, England,
and Switzerland. Achileas Mandras’s documentary
was an editorial review two hours
long (editing the journals filmed by the cameramen
Demetris Gaziadis, Giorgos Prokopiou
and Joseph Hepp), the director of the
Press Office, Konstantinos Kalapothakis, had
sent Joseph Hepp to record the historical
events in Thraki in 1919 and in Asia Minor
in 1923 for the exchange of prisoners. Joseph
Hepp, Demetris Gaziadis, and Giorgos Prokopiou,
filmed the whole historical and most
inhuman way the Turkish army treated the
war prisoners and civilians. Fortunately, these
documentaries are preserved in the “Elliniki
Teniothiki” (Greek Film Archives) in
Athens.
In 1928 the cameraman Demetris Meravidis
made an effort to produce three short
tourist documentaries. Two in 1928: Evia-
Karystos (Euboea-Karystos) and Tinos, and
the third one in 1933, Volos and Pelion. In
1938, another pioneer Mavrikios Novak,
founder of Novak Film Company, produced