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Mother
The Cyclades, the famous Greek Islands, receive thousands of visitors every year, arriving in search of some fun and relaxation in the green-blue waters of the Aegean Sea.
However, Tinos attracts a different kind of visitor. Believers from Greece and all around the world come to worship the Holy Icon of the Virgin Mary.
The Icon of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, found in 1823 after a vision of nun Sister Pelagia, is considered by believers to be miraculous. Pilgrimage to this icon is the most important orthodox peregrination in Greece.
Crowds of people visit the island throughout the whole year to pray before the Holy Icon, bearing offerings and requests, or thanking Her for Her holy intervention. The pilgrims ascend on their knees from the harbor to the Icon. The testimonies of believers express human pain and agony, but also faith and miracle.
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Maria
Life in a wheelchair might be utterly hopeless for some people; not for Maria.
Maria Liaskou is 23 years old, born with cerebral palsy; her days are a constant battle to get around in a wheelchair. In a city which does not cater to the needs of people with disabilities, Maria has managed to get more than around. Her charismatic personality has given her the strength to overlook the discrimination and to excel not only academically as a law student, but also as a passionate competitive swimmer who has represented Greece in major athletic events.
Maria is just one example among many; the number of people with mobility impairments has been rising in Greece over the last few years. A great part of it consists of cases caused by some kind of automotive accident. Faced with the lack of infrastructure and institutional support, Maria's struggle represents the struggle of many in a similar situation.
Maria's message is a clear and positive one: people with disabilities not only deserve a life like everyone else; they can claim it too.
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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?
