The film ‘Like Stone Lions in the Shadow of Night’, a unique documentary by the award-winning Swiss film director Olivier Zissou was screened at the ANAPLASI Medical Rehabilitation Center on Friday, July 5, 2013 at 6:00. It has been described as “a testament to lyric poetry in the face of brazen propaganda”. The film was constructed around the poems and diaries written by Greek national poets Yannis Ritsos, Tasos Livaditis, and Menelaos Lountemis during their exile in Makronisos. An eyewitness involved in the research of the era was Dionysis Georgatos, an inpatient of the ANAPLASI Medical Rehabilitation Center. In his introduction to the film, the Swiss Ambassador drew parallels between the indifference of the public, the diminished rights, and the marginalization of prisoners during that era, and the attitudes of the current era and the fate of today’s patients. On behalf of the director, his representative, Ms. Giotis, sent us the following message:
We would like to thank your clinic, which hosted the screening of the film “Like Stone Lions at the Gateway into Night”. It was very important for us to show the film to your patient, Dionysis Georgatos, a Makronissian who contributed significantly both to finding archival material for the film and to preserving the historical memory of Makronisos, through his long-term research work. The film contributes to this continuing remembrance, which we believe concerns the present much more than the past.’
