Art is an astonishing vector of meaning; these fragments of thought and form from the past can be endlessly reactivated—palimpsests that absorb our present-day concerns and obsessions, as if they had been created for this timeless and ahistorical purpose.

Watching the little-known in Quebec film of Peter Nestler, a German filmmaker exiled in Sweden, one cannot help but see signs and warnings meant for the present. When the decentralized and unstructured Antifa movement was labeled a “terrorist organization” in the United States by Donald Trump—part of his effort to instrumentalize resistance movements against his increasingly aggressive authoritarianism (notably through the use of the National Guard, the politicization of the justice system, ICE raids, and the dismantling of social, feminist, and inclusive measures, etc., etc.)—it served to cast the far left as the scapegoat for the political violence said to “reign” in the United States. Warning signs continue to multiply and intensify, pointing toward a real and effective contamination by fascism, particularly through the rise of technology and the advent of the age of algorithmic capitalism*, marked by an unprecedented concentration of economic, political, and technological power.

Von Griechenland speaks to us of Greece, two years before the 1967 military coup that would lead to the dictatorship of the colonels (1967–1974). Through a commentary of surgical precision and concision, it recounts years of popular resistance against fascism and foreign interference. The present ends up overflowing the restrained framework of the voice, as Nestler films the student and workers’ uprisings of the summer of 1965, capturing the democratic fervor of the masses in real time. Von Griechenland tells us about struggle, independence, and emancipation. It tells us about resistance across the ages. It tells us about us. Today.

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk Artistic Director

* Jonathan Durand Folco and Jonathan Martineau, Le capital algorithmique, 2023.

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