Mediterranean Stories
(Greek title: “Idan ta matia mas giortes”)
Images of the Mediterranean made of bread, oil and wine. In a single meal the history, geography, economy, climate, civilization and people of the Mediterranean. For centuries now the olive, the vine and the wheat have been bathed by the sun of this Great Interior sea. A close-up view of threshing fields, olive presses, mills, wine-presses, traces of an architecture that is centuries old. Dietary habits, production methods, everyday activities combine with the natural and structured environment to form the cultural body of, perhaps, the most interesting anthropogenic environment in history. A civilization that spans as a common homeland even the most seemingly different worlds as Greece, Turkey and Italy, where the Greek-Orthodox world, the Islamic East and the Roman Catholic West have supposedly established a history of difference. The Mediterranean emerges as a sea of controverse, of confluence, that does not however ignore the dynamics of diversity, that provides room for both innovation and tradition and that above all persists in celebrating after every good grape harvest, after the reaping is over, after the olives have been picked.
¨ Audience Award, Salonica Documentary Film Festival, 2000
¨ 2nd Prize for Best Documentary (State Quality Awards), 2000
Written and directed by: Stelios Haralambopoulos
Image: Yannis Varvarigos
Music by: Nikos Kypourgos
Edited by: Ioanna Spiliopoulou
Sound recorded by: Marinos Athanassopoulos
Sound mix: Costas Varibobiotis
Advisor: Leonidas Louloudis
Special advisors: Francesco di Iacovo (Italy), Niyazi Dalyanci (Turkey)
Executive producer:PERIPLUS
Producer: Thanos Lambropoulos
Narrator: Gerassimos Skiadaressis
Production: PERIPLUS – AMIP (France) – GREEK FILM CENTRE – GREEK TELEVISION ET-1 – TV 10 ANGERS (France) – LUMIERE TELEVISION (Cyprus)
2000 35 mm , colour, 77 minutes, Dolby, documentary
