Greek Jewish odyssey
IT was a visit to the Greek island of Corfu about 30 years ago that sparked Melbourne filmmaker Carol Gordon’s interest in the Jewish communities of Greece, some of which have a history dating to the fall of the First Temple in 586 BCE.
“About 20 years ago I started thinking about doing a documentary and continued my trips and research,” she explains.
“In 2006 I decided to write a script based around a fictional story set against the backdrop of the Greek Jewish community.”
Gordon tried the traditional method of getting finance for the film, but faced a challenge as a first-time writer/director trying to produce an independent, non-commercial feature film.
However Gordon, who is the administrator of March of the Living Australia, was determined to complete the project and took a new tack.
“I had spent years researching the project and could not let it go to waste.”
So Gordon decided to publish the screenplay as a book and produce a 50-minute documentary titled Following Shira’s Journey: A Greek Jewish Odyssey, which follows the journey of the character in the script, and premieres at the Greek Film Festival in Melbourne and Sydney on the weekend.
Also part of the project is a photographic exhibition by acclaimed Melbourne photographer Emmanuel Santos documenting Greek Jewish Holocaust survivors and Jewish life in Greece today, which will be presented in the future.
With a film crew led by Orr Koren of Koren Films, Gordon spent three weeks on location in Greece in September last year to make the documentary.
The shoot involved visiting 10 communities throughout Greece including the islands of Rhodes and Corfu, and the cities of Thessaloniki, Trikala, Volos, Ioannina and Larissa.
In each community Gordon met Holocaust survivors and their families.
“We just put our head down and worked, as I had created a shooting schedule from hell. There was hardly a minute free because we were there to work,” she explains.
“What we achieved during that time was remarkable and the Jewish communities that we visited were so welcoming.”
Greece’s Jewish population numbers about 5000 with the biggest community in Athens of about 3000 people, followed by Thessaloniki with a community of 1500, with the remainder scattered throughout the smaller communities in the cities and islands.
“All the communities have a unique flavour and the people have interesting stories to tell,” she says.
“Corfu is close to my heart because that is where I first approached some Holocaust survivors.
“Some communities have only 30 or 40 people – it is quite sad. The woman in charge of a Jewish museum in Thessaloniki said she knows in her heart that many of the communities are doomed, as the young people moved to the major cities, even though she doesn’t want to believe it.”
Following Shira’s Journey: A Greek Jewish Odyssey is about a young filmmaker from Melbourne who travels to Greece to meet an old survivor who helps her in researching the fate of the Greek Jews during the Holocaust and in the process she finds the courage to make changes in her own life.
Gordon admits that there are elements of her own life in the documentary.
Now Gordon plans to edit all the interviews she made in Greece and include them in a DVD pack with the documentary.
“These interviews with survivors are invaluable because so little research has been done in this area of Jewish history,” she explains.
“I can’t just let the interviews sit in a box – I have to do something so that people can listen to their stories.”
She says the documentary and the testimonies are important for people studying the Holocaust. More than 85 per cent of Greek Jews perished under the Nazi occupation of Greece in World War II.
“My main objective was to get the word out about the Jewish communities in Greece through the book and documentary, but if a filmmaker is keen to pick up the script and make it, I would be delighted.”
Enquiries: http://shirasjourney.com
REPORT by Danny Gocs
PHOTO of Rhodes
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