CONTEXT

«And he would be told about Dragons and the faithful dog. About the Beauty’s journeys and the big bad wolf. But my child never liked fairytales»
To my child,” Manolis Anagnostakis Having overcome the strains of Occupation and the Civil War, Greek cinema attempted to acquire a recognizable and legible identity. Melodramas and slapstick comedies began composing the
scene of domestic cinematography.
Yorgos Tzavellas, Ntinos Dimopoulos and Alekos Sakellarios produced their first comedies, offering to audiences the best ever medicine against the hardships they had suffered: LAUGHTER.
At the same time, melodrama offered a peculiar way out of the anguish caused by the turbulence of war. The wage of horror, destiny’s deadends, orphans and social injustice were some of melodrama’s characteristic themes. Themes that brought tears of relief and redemption to audiences! This is how Italian Neorealism entered cinemas. Grigoris
Grigoriou’s Bitter Bread and Gregg Tallas’ Barefoot Battalion would never be forgotten.
Gregg Tallas opted in bringing children’s gaze to the forefront, conveying thus a universal anti-war message. Inspired by a group probably living in Thessaloniki through-out Occupation, he addressed the issue of wartime children surviving on their own.
Prior to Barefoot Battalion, The Youth of Athens (or Saltadoroi – Takis Bakopoulos 1947) and Bloody Christmas ( by Yorgos Zervos, Asimakopoulou-Spathopoulou 1951) were released. Apart from being a source of inspiration, the loss
and loneliness, experienced by the children, had become a way for expressing social outrage. The creators’ engagement with child psyche was considered to be imperative.
In 1943, during the Occupation, the Germans seized the orphanage in Thessaloniki and left 160 children homeless. According to myth, these children came together and made Barefoot Battalion.

THE DIRECTOR REMEMBERS

The following excerpts can be used before film screening, so that students understand the creator’s motives and intentions.

..the idea for the movie came from Nikos Katsiotis, an actor at the National Theater. When we were in the USA, he recounted a bunch of rugged people who parcicipated in the celebrations for Thessaloniki’s liberation in November 1944. They were holding a banner reading “Barefoot Battalion.” This was, he said, a group of children that used to
loot German warehouses during the Occupation. They distributed food and other supplies to people starving, while at the sam time they supported Resistance…
…The only professional actors in the film were Nikos Fermas and Maria Kosti (the interpreter, Alexandra). Most children, either protagonists or supporting actors, were found in orphanages and welfare programs…
…Apart from Thessaloniki, the other city where filming could take place was Naples, which bears a funny resemblance due to its seacoast, narrow alleys and roads. These two cities seem to have a similar atmosphere. At first, I considered the option seriously. But then I thought, “Why shall I do this? For what reason? Let me check first Thessaloniki and then I’ll decide.”
…63 out of the 66 children, starring in the film, were found in correctional facilities in Athens and Thessaloniki. During filming, these children stayed at a hotel and were accompanied by a guard. They never caused a problem. I had converted an underground building into something that looked like an old church or a catacomb. This served as
the film’s hideout of Barefoot Battalion. Whenever I filmed there scenes that didn’t involve children, I would send them away: “get out of here,” I would say, “go upstairs, get out and play in the sun, don’t stay in here, in this rubbish filled dungeon”. At first, they would listen to me and leave. Soon afterwards, though, I would see them return: one after the other would creep back. In time, I realized that they felt the basement as their home! This made me feel awkward.
…Barefoot Battalion is the movie I love the most. I have put all myself into it. Even the film’s opening credits have given me more satisfaction than anything else I did, They expresses my personal poetics. Distinct from the rest of the movie, the opening credits function as a singular poetic utterance within the overall creative context. The
scenes included were not part of the script. I came up with them after the filming. This was because of the children that had enchanted me. I came to love them as if they were my own children. And they loved me back. So, I felt I had to do something. I had to give to children prominence in the film. This is how the opening credits sequence
came about. In the early 1970s, when the film was screened again in Thessaloniki, a significant number of young people watched it. It was a great success. After the screening, two or three children, starring in the film, approached me and said how touched they felt.
…When filming was over, I collected raw footage and went to the USA. Before editing the film, we had to clean it off the dirt. The camera (an American 36 mm Bell & Howll, a 1924 model!), had gathered dust inside as Thessaloniki was full of dirty roads at the time. In the USA, the film was screened in a special event organized for members
of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. For two hours I have been answering the audience’s questions. They couldn’t believe how the movie was filmed with such poor technical equipment. Columbia’s sound recordist, for example, couldn’t believe that the movie was dubbed after its filming!
…My background on and my relation to Neorealism is grounded on Russian theater. Up until filming Barefoot Battalion, I hadn’t watched any Neorealist films. During the Festival of Edinburgh, I stayed at the same hotel with Vittorio de Sica. After watching my film, he said: “If you had filmed this movie before Bicycle Thieves, you would have been a De Sica already!”

AID PARCELS

The following extract can be used in support of Activity 2, to clarify the meaning of aid parcels.

The term aid points to the American organization “Greek War Relief Association”, created by United State’s Greek diaspora during WWII and immediately after the victorious advances of Greek army in Albania. A considerable part of this financial aid was intended for improving the children’s living conditions (children camps, “orphan aid” etc.). The implicit reference to this organization and its activity may be attributed to Petros Voudouris, the film’s co-producer. Spyros Skouras, the Head of National Theaters Corporation, which ran a series of film studios in Hollywood, was in charge of the Association while Petros Voudouris was responsible for the collection of donations from eleven States in the USA.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The following extract can be used in support of Activity 1 (question group 4).

When the Greek Civil War broke out, the political scene started changing. Within the context of Truman Doctrine, USA declared its intention to assume active role in Greece. Marshall Plan, which was a financial aid program, was set up to financially revive Western Europe and to reinforce USA’s political influence on Western European countries. Amidst general tumult, Greek diaspora’s donations got limited. The survival of children became all the more difficult. Thousands lived far away from their families. This was because of the relocation schemes the opposing political factions imposed. During the period the movie was filmed, three years after the end of the Civil War, the UN
was still involved in discussions having to do with the repatriation of children.
As a neutral observer, Tallas did not openly address ethnic or politicsl issues. He implied them through the way he portrayed the film’s characters. Tallas was mostly interested in revealing children’s fragile psyche, which could easily collapse under those inhumane conditions. In order to survive, children had to get together and fight for a shared idea, an ideology.
Within this context, criminal behavior was presented as an inevitable outcome, without though being legitimized. It was portrayed in such a way so as to reflect the emerging new values, the most prevalent one being that of collectivity. “Are you trying to mess up with Barefoot Battalion?” the children ask the smuggler.