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Greeks and The City

18 February 2009 / 17:02:30  GRReporter
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The Greeks and Byzantium or they way they call it The City is the theme of the film “Fall Pain” directed by Tomreese Girityoglou based on the novel by Yalmaz Karagyoglou. The movie came out in the theatres in Turkey and is very successful. It is distributed in 92 theatres and only for one week it was seen by 300 000 people. The story is about the love between a rich Turkish and a simple Greek courtesan and the destiny of this love after the defeat of Greeks in Byzantium on September 6-7th 1955.


The tragic fate of the Greek population in Byzantium, which was banished from the Turkish country is one very well kept secret in Turkey and the film of Tomreese Girityoglou shocked the people in the country. The surprise and also the true repentance with which the movie was accepted found place in all European newspapers, including the Greek ones. The Greek publications note that this is the second film of the director, dedicated to the lives of the non-Muslim minorities in Turkey. The first one was shot 10 years ago and the script was again written by Yalmaz Karagyoglou and was dedicated to the property taxes, with which the non-Muslims in Turkey were levied during 1942.


“The movie starts in an exceptional way,” writes not anyone else but the director himself of “Hurriyet” newspaper,Ertuğrul Özkök. “A group of tramps are holding a bucket with red paint and in the middle of the night are writing red crosses on the doors of some houses. Throughout the world door marking of houses means one thing – dictatorship or genocide coming up.” Later on the author reminds that this was the practice of the Nazis in Germany and of the Ku Klux Klan in the USA and similar house markings we have also seen in Bosnia and Kosovo. He concludes that it is obvious that in Turkey similar things have happened. “Hopefully after 20-30 years we won’t need to make such a film. God protect Turkey from such embarrassment!” says at the end Ertuğrul Özkök.

It is interesting whether we will ever see a Greek film about the assimilation of the Slavic speaking minorities in Northern Greece…


 

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