Dimitris Indares coded what happened in December 2019 as “rooftop events”. “It already sounds like a project name…” I comment, and before I can even say a sentence, he pulls some very bulky material out of his bag. Notes on hundreds of pages. “My salvation,” he declares. “Words heal. Where emotions, despair, fear destroy your soul and brain,” he continues. “If I only stayed at events, I would go crazy. Imagine how sick we are from simple slander. Imagine if this state did this. Huge mechanism, you feel completely destroyed. We are now experiencing the consequences of this story. Of course, some still play with words … “.

In the early hours of the morning on Drakow’s pedestrian street in Kukaki, some passers-by give him furtive glances as if they recognize him. And do not think that “this is Dimitris Indares”, something reminds them of this. The exposure of him and his family over the past two years, after the episode with the eviction of the occupation of Matrosu 45, the neighboring house and their own unnecessary arrest, was very great and unbearable. A court recently acquitted him (and his sons). “The judges worked flawlessly, they deconstructed the indictment, they paid attention and time, and this was in addition to the acquittal and great relief,” he admits. “Will this story ever close for you?” I ask. “Inevitable,” he replies. “Can it be turned into something creative?” I insist. “One way is to shut up and try to ‘metabolize’ it alone, which is impossible. The other is to share it with people, but in a way that they can hear you. And always against the mainstream of throwing people and their stories into the news. Sometimes very serious things happen, and we struggle to cast out the fear and come out into the light.”

His own “spell” was a book based on Morya’s folk song (“Lenaki, two fires and two curses”), a documentary (“A Memory with a Tail”), and a second documentary he is already editing during this period. which is based on his book.

The accidental discovery of a stack of documents in his father’s house in Patras led him to search for seven generations. Among the papers, a church decree was found condemning the arsonists of the tower in Leivartsi Kalavryta, where, shortly before 1821, a romance between two non-religious people intertwined: Eleni, the daughter of Bishop Kir-Christodoulos, and Elmaz-aga. Mostenitsy. Eleni defended her feelings by saying the unthinkable for the time, “I owe a man, I got a man”, causing her father to leave the rector’s office and placing a terrible curse on her mother. A few years later, on March 16, 1821, the cousin of the noblewoman, ataman Dimitrakis Indares, burned down the Agha’s tower in Mostenica. The Key to Awakening, the folk song of Limasis, spread all the way to Pontus. “From the moment I discovered that my ancestor Dimitrakis Indares is the one who destroyed the tower of Elmaz and Eleni, I felt “guilty” … I set myself the goal of finding Eleni’s story and somehow lighting it. About a woman who has risen in spite of paternal and maternal dominion. It was yeast. I knew very little about Livarzi. During our many trips to the Peloponnese, my father told us every time that this is the road leading to Livartsi, but we never turned off … ”, the director and screenwriter comments.

With the “events on the roof” many masks fell. “When you get used to the monster, you start to look like him.” Who among us today remembers the words of Hajidaki?

“At that time the book was not yet a book. It was a careful diary of a journey through the past of my ancestors. Since at the borderline moments of our lives we instinctively go back, feverishly seeking strength from our ancestors, it was as if I already had all of them there and could look them in the eye. The first two parts of the book were written in 2018-19, and when I was finishing the third part, about plunging into the world of evil, superstition, darkness, the events on the roof took place here. I moved on to the fourth part when things calmed down a bit… The book helped me deal with the disappointments of the past. Enlightenment allowed me to understand. I’m always looking for ways to logically arrange the wounds that I don’t want to swallow, shut up, cover up.

“The tragedy concerns what we imagine life could have in store for Elena because of her break with her father and mother, the curse she received for her love for the non-religious Elmaz. This also applies to the beginning of the Revolution, which, with the weapons of Dimitrakis, expelled them from the paradise of their small territory. The regenerating power of love breaks down walls and prejudices, and this is what its sister folk song celebrates, which has established itself as one of the most popular wedding folk songs and has traveled to all places where our language was spoken. Therefore, no matter what difficulties life had in store for them later, the song lifted them up to the light. In this light, we met Lydia Venieris, who made the drawings, Pantelis Boukalas, who saw the book for the first time in my notes, and Eva Karaitidis, who offered me precious breath with her publication by Hestia at this particularly difficult moment for our home.

We all fight fear, relationships are what save us

– It is not easy to answer this. But he can choose a position. To say absolutely and unequivocally: “I refuse to enter into this vicious circle.” It is a fact that the cost is huge. Especially when you want to do it without trying to become invisible, but express it as a political position. See how, in recent years, careless critical thinking has been discredited as egalitarianism. How suspicious everyone becomes who raises reasoned objections to the prevailing doctrines. Fortunately, there are sober people and copperheads in this area too.

We all struggle with fear. We are trying to cast out the fear of death. It is the fear of death that connects us and runs to live. With knowledge, love, creativity, but above all our relationships with others. We suffer alone. Relationships are what save us. Relationships involve intelligence. And so, in the end, our relationship becomes the canvas of every story.

And since we’re talking about fear, let me say this too: anyone who tries to use it to manipulate is unacceptable. He should be ostracized. Because there are many types of terrorism, visible and invisible. The invisible ones are the most insidious.

– It was a painful and at the same time very revealing adventure. Because many masks also fell off. “When you get used to the monster, you start to look like him.” Who among us today remembers these words of Manos Hadjidakis? The monster has always been and always will be here. Because he lives inside each of us. Let’s keep this in mind and be careful.