We have selected only a small sample of the many impressive short and medium length feature films that appeared in Greece after 2009 having the family as their main subject. What is impressive is that they focus on so- cial context and formal experimentation in a way that is not always obvious in their feature length counterparts.
Family returns in them as a site of malaise, enclosure, affective stagnancy, as well as a frame for a cinema of biopolitics (Washingtonia); familial memory is reiterated as explosive trauma (Malo); everyday family violence is rid- iculed as splatter (Profiterol); the woman’s body takes the centre in a discussion on “futurity”, “family happiness”, “social security”, but this time in the voice (and the humour) of the woman who sees her rights being denied (37 days). Last, but not least, familial heteronormativity emerges as the source of extreme violence and disavowal (in the powerfully simple Mum, I’m back), is denounced with gendered expressionism (in the video for the song A strange kid – written on the wake of activist Zak Kostopoulos’s shocking killing), and in a way is superseded with the childishness of a queer utopia (Goldfish).
- Dimitris Papanikolaou