The article published on the website www.guardian.co.uk on March 23, 2013 is headlined “Film student
in UK at heart of Greek neo-Nazi storm”. The article
reports at length that a British-based film school graduate who filmed
rightwing extremists making inflammatory speeches had found himself at the
centre of a political storm in his native Greece after his footage prompted the
first official investigation into the neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn.
It’s an open secret that in the runup to last year's general election,
Konstantinos Georgousis followed members of Golden Dawn, which was on its way
from relative obscurity to winning support at a national level for the first
time. As a result, the party won 7% of the vote and 18 seats in parliament.
Analyzing the situation, it is necessary to note that since then support
for the party doubled amid a crippling austerity regime and rising unemployment
rates, which have seen a third of Greeks fall below the poverty line.
There is a lot of comment on how excerpts from the documentary were
broadcast on Greek TV, and the footage was considered so incriminating that the
country's criminal prosecutor had launched an investigation. The group's
membership was said to have doubled in the past year as many working Greeks had
seen their standard of living plummet.
In resolute terms, the author of the article gives details that the party
condemned all acts of violence. The group had put a statement on its website
claiming that the documentary was illegally filmed with a hidden camera, and
that in fact its members were "joking".
The article draws the conclusion that Golden Dawn members featured in
‘Cleaners” were also fully aware of the fact that Konstantinos Georgousis was a
student at the National Film and Television School in England, and that film
footage of their electoral campaign would be edited and submitted as his
graduation film. The NFTS fully endorses the authenticity of the footage and
the fairness of the final film."
As for me, I think that Greek is a bit over-proud by its ancient and
contemporary culture and unfortunately now cinema is not something worth as it
was earlier.
