Prism - Javier Merelo

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The Prism GR2011 is a collective documentation of Greece the winter of 2010, a multimedia experiment exploring new formats of non-fiction narratives and multimedia journalism.

The Prism is the creation of Nikos Katsaounis and Nina-Maria Paschalidou, both documentary filmmakers, producers, and friends.

In the winter of 2010, with Greece in the midst of a financial and social meltdown, Nina and Nikos returned home after having lived abroad for many years.

Their desire was to tell the story of the tormented country they witnessed through a new type of narrative. Through a process of creative collaboration and documentation, they put together a group of 14 photojournalists and videographers, mentoring and enabling them to make the transition to a multimedia storyteller.

Here you will find the outcome of the experiment: 27 multimedia stories, as echoed through the voices of people from various walks of life that have been affected by the crisis. In this critical time, we have the capacity to share stories from different perspectives like never before. The Prism GR2011 fuses these stories together with the hope that they allow us to reflect upon who we are.

The films will be gradually uploaded every week. Later this year, a feature-length documentary film will be woven together from all the short multimedia stories in a first attempt at open-source documentary filmmaking.

Please sign up to our mailing list to get updates of when the multimedia stories are uploaded. Become a fan on our facebook page and tell your friends if you like what you see.

What do you see through the The Prism?

Radical Youth

Marchers singing anticapitalist Soviet anthems and university theatres packed to watch Communist Germany black and white movies; Either History evaded Greece and the Berlin wall never fell or it is in the making in a Greece shaken by protests and rage against the political and economic elite. Radical leftist movements, all the spectrum covered, got about 30% of the votes in the November 2010 local elections. These groups are renewed with hundreds of angry and frustrated youngsters for reasons that escape the understanding of the casual visitor. Teenagers, sometimes as young as 12, throw stones against the Parliament, brand hammers, and justify the use of Molotov cocktails as valid means of protest. At a time when Greece has achieved its higher level of economic development, how does one explain this anger? Is this movement specific to Greece given its historical particularities or is it a signal of the rise of more active and aggressive leftist protest movements?