Director:Leonides Vardaorese. Greece 1998
Starring: Antonis Vissidis, Antonis Maibatz, Vassalis Koloves, Perikles Moustakis.
All of Us Effendi is a powerful film about the last stand of the Greek anti-fascist resistance on a small island in 1950-3. Made by veteran Greek documentary maker Leonides Vardores, the film is clearly sympathetic to the resistance (Communist Party of Greece-National Liberation Front or ELAS.) yet presents key criticisms of the party suggesting reasons for its downfall as well as presenting a moving portrait of the party's strengths at becoming a popular mass movement. The film shows the perils of clandestine organizing.
One of the opening scenes show the military taking over a social club in the main village where elderly men of the village play chess and backgammon. The military bring in a radio where a martial voice announces the defeat of the resistance the triumph of the military government, martial law and invites citizens to inform on resistance activists. Upon hearing this, one by one the men get up and leave the club in the middle of the broadcast. One man is followed out by the military where he is shot dead in the back in the middle of the street during broad daylight, symbolizing the treatment of the Greek resistance by the Allied powers and the Greek ruling class: a giant collective stab in the back. The scene also begins to show how there was no distinction between the insurgency and the general population where there was a great rift between the people and the military. Everyone including children and the elderly make sacrifices and risks in helping the movement. The military is a hostile alien force that had no roots and no sympathy with the general population. Later in the film when a hardline military commander takes over vowing to wipe out the insurgency completely in one year, he announces that he has failed and can only accomplish his mission by executing 13,000 of the village's 15,000 inhabitants.
The film highlights the sacrifices the insurgents make, forsaking their wives, families and lovers to be constantly on the run and living a precarious existence in mountain and jungle hideaways. The insurgents are badly outgunned and are trapped by the army. However, they are able to survive because of the great risks taken by their families, friends and supporters in securing provisions and supplies and acting as an intelligence network. The elderly women of the island are the intelligence, acting as the "eyes and ears" of the movement informing the insurgents of troop movements and military policy. They even infiltrate the police stations. Not one of the civilians who is interrogated talk.
One of the many poignant moments of the film occurs when a middle age fisherman is caught trying to bring in supplies to the guerillas by boat. The army gives him a choice of either informing or they torch his boat - which he depends on for his and his family's livelihood. With tears in his eyes, he remains silent as the army torches his boat.
The film criticizes the top-down centralized decision making of the party and the ensuing paranoia of who is an informer and who isn't. The central committee in Athens decides that one of the insurgents is an informer and must be shot after several of their escape attempts are foiled by the army. The second in command on the island decides the insurgent is innocent and hides him. He is indicted for insubordination. A few days later the insurgent is cleared by Athens who admit to a mistake in naming him as an informer.
Frustration runs high as the guerilla's admit to having done all they can. They ran a provisional government and popular democracy before the army invaded, creating co-ops, worker and community councils and a citizen's militia. The film places the blame for the destruction of the movement where it belongs: on the U.S., U.K. and USSR. The liberation radio station announces that the USSR is sending aid to China but not Greece, creating bitter disappointment among the insurgents.
Towards the end, one insurgent escapes and goes to Athens. He returns with bad news that the movement is in serious disarray from government repression and the paranoia over who is an informer. The insurgents begin attacking one another. The guerillas finally hire a boat and escape the island in the middle of the night to face a perilous and uncertain future on the mainland, bringing the film and this tragic chapter in Greek history to a close.
The film is also a successful and convincing work of social realism. A welcome respite to the fantasies and nonsense put out by most English language filmmakers. The fim reminded me of Ken Loach's *Land and Freedom*.
All of Us Effendi played at the European Union Film Festival in Vancouver, November 1999.
Sam Pawlett