Evo polemao, esu polemai, ecino polemai...
At the closing of this millennium, the verb that means “to work” in the Greek dialect of Apulia, is no longer conjugated in the present tense… The few survivors, long since retired from work, will carry along with them into oblivion this maternal language, which has been spoken for thousands of years in Southeast Italy, once known as “the Grater Greece”. it was Polemonta, that led two very young men, Dimitris Mavrikios and Lefteris Pavlopoulos, to discover the world through the lens, and Eleni Karaindrou to first write music for the cinema. And it was the first time any of us were to see these still unknown “Greeks” of Italy; to hear their dialect and their songs (the soon-to-be famous “andra mou pai” was actually filmed in the making); to learn, up close and through accounts in our common language, about the social problem of Southern Italy.
The film has received the Critic’s Award and the Audience Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 1975.
script: Dimitris Mavrikios
cinematography: Lefteris Pavlopoulos
Editing: Yanna Spyropoulou
music: Eleni Karaindrou, Francesca Korlano
songs: Maria Farantouri, Canzionere Grecanico Salentino
- Direction: DIMITRIS MAVRIKIOS
- Production: DIMITRIS PONTIKAS
