In what is considered the most emblematic example of his pioneering approach to blending ethnography with scientific documentation, Roussos Koundouros entrusts the words of Nikos Gatsos to guide us – both as witnesses and as participants – through a nearly metaphysical tradition dating back to antiquity: that of firewalking. A “strange ritual” that the Anastenarides of Eastern Thrace carried with them across Macedonia – from Serres to Veria, from Drama to Thessaloniki. The bizarre, frenzied, Dionysian dance of the Anastenarides becomes the beating heart of a rigorously structured, ritualistic narrative. The film interweaves population movements, sacred icons of Saints Constantine and Helen, animal sacrifices, drums that seem to play by themselves, and bare feet stepping onto burning embers – heated to 500 degrees Celsius – without suffering pain or burns. In the few minutes of its duration, the film pieces together a Greece that still believes in miracles. More than just a documentation of an ancient custom, Firewalkers of Greece also captures the resilience of people who, in their moments of trance, touch something divine – the very God to whom they dedicate themselves. The film was screened at the Karlovy Vary and Florence Film Festivals, as well as at the First Week of Greek Cinema in Thessaloniki in 1960, where Roussos Koundouros was honored by the jury for his invaluable contribution to the field of documentary filmmaking.
Roussos Koundouros
Roussos Koundouros was born in 1923 in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, and was a physician and filmmaker. In the mid-1950s, he founded the Institute of Educational and Scientific Cinema, with the primary aim of producing scientific documentary films. In 1958, a collective was formed by him, along with Roviros Manthoulis, Fotis Mestheneos, Yiannis Bakogiannopoulos, and Heraklis Papadakis, with the purpose of promoting, disseminating, and developing documentary film. In 1961, he was appointed as special adviser in the field of cinema at the Ministry of the Presidency of the Greek Government, organising what was then the “Newsreel and Documentary Film Service,” whose operation was interrupted in 1967 by the Colonels’ coup d’état. He created a multitude of short films for state agencies on subjects relating to everyday life, tourism, and education. At the 1st Thessaloniki Film Festival, he was awarded an honorary prize for his contribution to the art of documentary. The themes of his works cover a wide range of subjects: from folklore and ethnography to medicine and technology. His film Aluminium of Greece (1965) stands as an example of an industrial documentary of high aesthetic quality through which the stages of bauxite extraction and aluminium production in Greece are recorded. He passed away in March 1990.