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Arkomanis, Ektoras (2016) Work / memories of work. [Video]
Filmed over ten years, ‘work / memories of work’ documents the last days of a tannery in the area of Eleonas, in Athens. The long, monotonous shifts of the tanners are set against a backdrop of work in the surrounding neighbourhoods – scavengers’ markets, old farmhouses, abandoned kilns, and people labouring away amid factory ruins. What emerges is a portrait of a place, its present image, and its histories of labour. Written on postcards which were never sent, the narration is a polyphonic poem with fragments of testimony, collective memory, ethnographic and literary works that traverse centuries: in ancient times, Eleonas was a vast olive grove; in the nineteenth century an infrastructural hub, and more recently an industrial zone. Eleonas has always remained on the margins of the city’s conscience, a wasteland where the city banishes the people and activities it would rather not look at. ‘work / memories of work’ laments the eventual disappearance of work in Eleonas; progressively the film itself becomes a ruin, a collection of images and memories that replace work.
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