The contrasting of the thesis to the antithesis is a technique, which Tatsopoulos chooses to create the image of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, whom he describes to the readers as an antipode of the image of the archbishop Athens and the entire Greece Christodoulos. The author uses the well known to the public rivalry between the two men which existed for many years in order to leave the impression that: “So much energy is lost in a personal battle! If it was put in service of the religious people, Christianity would have been the most powerful religion nowadays”. Because in the long run why do these men compete with each other? One, because he wants to become a patriarch and have independent power because he feels humiliated every time he has to ask for an approval of his decisions from the Ecumenical neighborhood Fener, where was the seat of Bartholomew. The second because nevertheless that he is a patriarch he doesn’t have a congregation, the number of the Greeks who enter in the Constantinople decreases in geometrical progression and in stead of the soul of the believers he is forced to take care of the ecumenical problems like the global warming for example.

How trivial of both sides!

The German returns

A classic interview with questions and answers. This is the technique which Petros Tatsopoulos uses to introduce us the director Nikos Perakis. A very effective choice having in mind that Perakis shines with the genuine glamour of a virgin diamond. Nothing is required from the author, but to let him talk. Just what Tatsopoulos does. How are films made, not to be clichés? “In our time the visitors in the cinemas are at the age of 15 to 27, or 28 at most. My movies are viewed because I communicate with people from exactly this age and they don’t like clichés. I don’t teach them, I don’t ridicule them, but I have fun with them. Well, while we are shooting a movie even a bit more than them”. Your last movies you makes with a digital camera. Doesn’t that make them look cheap? “The price of a movie camera in Greece is extremely high compared to all other components in a production. If I have to choose between the movie camera and cheap actors or a digital camera and quality actors, I will always prefer the second”.

For his colleagues in Greece, Nikos Perakis will always remain “the German”. Not just because he has graduated in Germany, not just because of his blond hair (well, at the age of 65 it is already grey), his blue eyes and thin figure he looks more like a person from up north rather than a Greek, but because of his stubbornness and sentimentality which he puts brick by brick while building his works as perfect creations of a true film talent.

Of course a group protest of the new Greeks in the beginning of 21^st century could not survive without few certain categories of people. The player of Greek music (the author talks about his impressions from a concert of Giorgos Tsalikis in order to make us look from the funny point of view at the “Greek bouzouki”) is also there. The book can’t survive without the topic of “November 17^th” and the tolerance towards terrorism in this case presented as the image of one of the most famous researchers of the Greek terrorist organization Giorgos Kasimeris. I would be unfair not to give some attention also to the theater. And when we talk about the contemporary Greek theater there is no name more characteristic than Lakis Lazopoulos. And of course the immigrants. Sabina Lois could have been Bulgarian, Russian and Romanian. A beautiful girl who is trying her luck in Fame Story and couldn’t help to raise the question about the racism in the Greek society.