Agelastos petra

This is an amazing Documentary film. It took about 10 year to shoot. Persons, actual every day people, appear in various ages. It speaks about Greece ancient ruins, the way they speak to anyone of us, the philosophical consideration of our own existence, not relevant to ones education but the touching feelings of ancient whispering spirit. You can't talk about it. You have to watch it. No effort is needed. It speaks directly to you. The director follows the excavation steps taken to uncover a Necropolis (Cemetery) just next to our homes, flats, yards. Even though everything seems ordinary, the Toombs reveal bones and gifts for the down word undertaker. People irrelevant to the scientific world try to save the ruins from becoming a new profit cause of real estate. The fate is unbeatable. Ten years later all lost. Greece is full up of ruins. Ancient and modern. Dead with life and stoned living. Nothing in the filming is planned. Just a documentary shooting but with a big difference to discover.

not another documentary....Did you know that the Greek word for "truth" is "aleethea" which comes from "a" and "Lethe",meaning "the one that is not forgotten"? So true is something that you never forget, like your true love... A Greek cinematographer, films during a period of 15 or something years, the Eleysina area of modern Greece, mother place of the ancient apocrypha eleysinian mysteries,which nobody ,even in our days knows in what exactly they consisted of.. The place is a character itself, and even thought it has been altered irreversibly by the heavy modern industrialization, it remains ancient, morally clean, observing modern history, silently. The deepest message of the film thought, is in this: In its love towards the ordinary people that live in this area, that are born, play games at their childhood, get in love during their puberty,grow up, become old, and die.While watching the film we slowly realize that the ancient Greeks are not dead at all.Their customs, their problems, agonies,love for beauty and truth are still so alive. Every time i watch this film, i feel so beautifully strange..It is a film about resurrection after all...Have faith my friends..Have hope.

Focused on a 10 year span between 1989 and 1999 in the ancient site of Eleusis near Athens, Koutsaftis renders one of the most moving documentaries ever made on antiquities and ruins! Images speak of themselves in depicting the agony of the locals to preserve the little there's left of their historic site from modern man's ongoing exploitation. This is a really low budget film with enormous results. The viewer is brought very near to the everyday life of the locals as they are left to speak and tell their own story. Past and present, ancient and modern are skillfully juxtaposed. The narrator is observing in a knowledgeable and critical yet not in an assertive manner. This is a film about the survival of human dignity and civilization. Raw and eloquent at the same time!

Outstanding!!! Perhaps the best documentary ever shot in the history of Greek cinematography. With a humble and tender look the director takes a look at the life of people of Elefsina, a city divided between antiquity and modern times as shown through the ruins revealed each time a new building is raised, although the course towards modernization is irreversible.The film displays the dignity of local people as well as their pride of being residents of this historic site. It also displays their awareness of the historic importance of the place they live. This is shown especially as the director watches an old homeless man ,illiterate perhaps, who collected stones from ancient monuments and carried them to the the Archaeological Museum without anyone to tell him to do so. In my opinion every teacher should take his pupils or students to the cinema to watch it. Sometimes history lessons are not always given in the classroom!