The Cinematheque

“A poetic allegory influenced by the director’s own experience as a political prisoner during the military regime in Greece in the 1970s.”

Jytte Jensen, MoMA

This controversial political allegory depicts the experience of political prisoners exiled to a small Aegean island during the military junta—and in particular, one prisoner’s refusal to submit. In a sun-scorched, windswept environment, prisoners await the visit of the ​“great mother,” in honour of whom they have prepared a celebration. One of the prisoners, who steadfastly refuses to renounce his own beliefs, disappears and is proclaimed dead by the camp’s authorities. However, on the day of the official visit, the ​“dead man” reappears. This restoration of Pantelis Voulgaris’s second fiction feature was showcased in last year’s marquee event held by the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes. Voulgaris was honored in the mid-’90s with a MoMA retrospective, in which his cinema was lauded as ​“intensely humanistic” in its rendering of ​“the social and political landscape of Greece.”

In Greek with English subtitles

Happy Day will be introduced by Spyros Sofos, assistant professor in the Department of Global Humanities, SFU. His research examines the interplay of social identities, collective action, insecurity, and conflict.