“National Resistance” (Maria Karavela)
Category: Visual Arts > Public space
| Artist: | Maria Karavela |
|---|---|
| Year: | 1979 |
| Genre: | Installation | Performance | Film |
| Place: | Athens |
Censorship incidents
| 1978 | Ban on the film Resistance 40-50 (1977) by Maria Karavela
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| 1979 | Ban on the art event «National Resistance» by Maria Karavela
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Description
The film Antistasi 40-50 (Resistance 40–50), better known simply as Resistance, was part of a multi-disciplinary spectacle – a synthesis of visual art, theatre, film, photography and music which required the participation of the public – was completed in the summer of 1977. It was a documenting of first-hand accounts of the Greek Resistance, which the pioneering visual artist Maria Karavela designed and implemented in cooperation with the ‘Group of 12’, a research-activist group of artists, psychologists and mathematicians from Vincennes University, whose activities were aimed at getting art out of galleries and museums and into urban public spaces. The ‘Group of 12’ was planning to launch its activities in Greece in the autumn of that year with a series of outdoor events in municipalities around Attica (Nikaia, Kokkinia, Kaisariani, Drapetsona et al.) on the subject of the ‘National Resistance’. As it turned out, the events were postponed due to the unseasonably cold weather.
In mid-July 1978, Karavela announced to the Press that she would comply with the censorship system by submitting the film for approval to the First-Instance Review Board of the General Secretariat for Press and Information. In the autumn, she was informed of the Committee’s refusal to grant her a permit, on the grounds that the film would ‘stir up political passions’. The committee had made a majority decision to reject the script on the grounds that the text:
1) was one-sided, 2) covered the period since 1940 and was thus unrelated to the Resistance, 3) had political extensions and took a stance against current political parties, 4) lauded the KKE and not the national resistance, and 5) stirred up political passions.
Karavela turned to the Second-Instance Review Board, which this time approved the script on condition that certain cuts were made: references to the Democratic Army, torture and executions, but also the impunity enjoyed by former collaborators and the extent to which the post-Civil War state was staffed by them, etc. Karavela refused, denouncing the fact that ‘a small group of people ride roughshod over the country’s intellectual life, reaching decisions on the basis of 19th-century criteria’.
Refusing to make the cuts which, she argued, ‘render the film useless’, Karavela ultimately ignored the ban and proceeded with the event in association with the Nikaia Cultural Centre on 27 June 1979 in Agios Nikolaos square, Kokkinia, screening the film illegally. This working-class Athens neighbourhood was the site of the “Blockade of Kokkinia” in August 1944 when, in reprisals against an uprising led by the communist resistance, German soldiers executed hundreds of people and sent more to concentration camps. A large number of local inhabitants took part, along with amateur actors, who followed a pre-set script under Karavela’s general supervision.
The event was given considerable press coverage and was described as a great success. Despite the event’s success, or rather because of it, the next scheduled presentation of the performance, in the Municipality of Kaisariani this time, was cancelled following the intervention of the police. The film Resistance was never screened again; it was destroyed in a fire in 1996.
Penelope Petsini
Sources – Bibliography
- I Avgi, 6/10/1978, 29/6/1979.
- To Vima, 6/10/1978, 12/10/1978, 6/12/1978, 25/1/1979.
- Eleftherotypia, 6/10/1978.
- Kathimerini, 6/10/1978, 12/10/1978.
- Τa Νea, 6/10/1978, 27/2/1979, 6/3/1979.
- Rizospastis, 19/4/1979.
- Maria Karavela’s personal archive.
- Irene Gerogianni, «Ζωντανή τέχνη για μια ‘νεκρή’ Ιστορία: Η Κοκκινιά της Μαρίας Καραβέλα ως εκπαιδευτικό (πολυ)θέαμα» in I. Gerogianni- Chr. Marinos - B. Papadopoulou (eds.), Maria Karavela, Athens, AICAHellas, 2015.
- Penelope Petsini, «Karavela Maria» in P. Petsini and D. Christopoulos (eds.), Dictionary of Censorship in Greece: Cachectic democracy - dictatorship - metapolitefsi, Athens: Kastaniotis 2018.
- Irene Stathis, «Political censorship, Art and Communication: The work of Maria Karavela» in P. Petsini and D. Christopoulos (eds.), Censorship in Greece. Athens: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 2016.
CIVIL Publications
- Petsini P., “Resistance 40-50: The banned film by Maria Karavela”, Archeiotaxio 22 (November 2020).
