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Crowdfunding

Let's build together our newest documentary "Construction workers, our heroic comrades...".

A few words about our documentary

After the end of the Greek Civil War, thousands of persecuted men and women guerrillas fled to the socialist countries or were sent to exile. During that same period young people migrated from their villages to the cities –mainly to Athens where fear and terror had reared their ugly head– in order to look for a better and brighter future. One of the trades they practiced was manual labor, for example construction work.


Meanwhile, in the mid-fifties communist prisoners started being released and also turned to construction work in order to survive. It was the one and only occupation that didn’t require them to have signed a certificate of social beliefs. They joined young people who had just reached the capital and together, using their experience in social struggles, they built unions in order to fight for better working and living conditions.


Their hard struggles and grandiose strikes lead to important achievements for the workers like social security, continuous working hours, benefits and allowances, and banning police presence from their assemblies. Meanwhile, the construction workers movement got heavily politicized by posing political demands as well as labor ones, concerning U.S. bases in Greece, the peace movement, the withdrawal of Greece from the European Economic Community, the Cyprus dispute, etc.


Construction workers were the vanguard of the labor and working class movement and set a great example of resistance and struggle in a bleak historical period.

Our reasoning...

Following our documentaries The Partisans of Athens (Athens Resistance 1941-44) and Newborn Sky: Women in the Democratic Army of Greece, we keep on researching historical facts and put them on film through oral history.


Our reasoning revolves around achieving our goals through self-financing our documentaries and crowdfunding campaigns.


Our recent experience with the successful crowdfunding campaign of Newborn Sky proved to us that we can count on funding “from below”, as it covered a large amount of production costs.

Tasks pending in order to complete the documentary

Shootings of our documentary begun in 2020, including interviews by people who participate by sharing their memories, and is gradually approaching completion. Our group’s goal, as was the case with our previous work, is to complete it and screen it in Greek and foreign film festivals, but also in cinemas, municipal centers, squats and social spaces.


So, we are asking for your assistance, in order to cover a part of the expenses already made, as well as the post production expenses, which will be made in the future. More specifically, the amount of money gathered will be used to cover the following expenses:   
 

  • Travel expenses in and out of Attica in order to conduct interviews

  • Fees for archive footage that accompanies the documentary’s interviews

  • Editing, audio mixing and sound design, and color correction expenses

  • Conversion to file suitable for film screenings (DCP)

  • Translation and subtitling fees

  • Promotion and information campaign (posters, web page, publications)

  • Participation expenses in Greek and foreign film festivals

  • Further expenses (books, hard drives for back up and editing)

Why you should put your faith in us

COLLECTIVE MEMORY, as mentioned above, has already produced two oral history documentaries to its credit, "The Partisans of Athens (Athens Resistance 1941-44)" and "Newborn Sky: Women in the Democratic Army of Greece". These documentaries were screened in various spaces, events and history film projections. Through them we have tried to do our part in documenting modern history.


Furthermore, COLLECTIVE MEMORY consists of a flexible group of people, both professionals and amateurs, who are interested both in history and in showcasing it through a distinguished artistic result. We have very limited funds, but also a firm belief that stories like these must be told, and shouldn’t gather dust in some drawer due to financial reasons.


As was the case in the past, after a first round of screening has been completed, the documentary will be uploaded for free. Your assistance will serve as a motive for us to continue our efforts to record history “from below”.


Finally, in case someone is not able to assist financially, they can help us by sharing and/or sending this invitation for financial support, in order to spread the word.

How to support us

Via bank deposit

GR45 0172 1260 0051 2610 0604 487

Piraeus Bank - BIC/SWIFT: PIRBGRAA

Owner: Xydas Ioannis

Via Paypal

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