Through the exclusive use of newsreels from Soviet archives, Fοtos Lambrinοs embarks on a historical retrospective, spanning from the dictatorship of Metaxas (1936–1941) to the Junta (1967–1974), in one of the most idiosyncratic “documents” of Greek cinema. This is not a historical film in the strict or even the broad sense of the term. Rather, Visit Greece – its title dripping with irony – is a bold satire that verges on an oblique, experimental ethnography. The film comments on and ridicules some of the most tragic moments in Greece’s recent history, as various “tourists” arrive – uninvited and, more often than not, armed – to impose a regime of their choosing. At the close of the 1960s, in the midst of the Colonels’ dictatorship, Lambrinοs leaves his mark on the reinterpretation of Greek-related newsreels, a field to which he dedicated a significant part of his work in collection and archiving. The film delivers a timeless message of resistance, addressing a hospitable country that has paid, and continues to pay, the price of exploitative tourism-driven development.
Fotos Lambrinos
He studied Film in Moscow (1965–1970). From 1970 to 1973, he thoroughly researched twenty-two governmental and private film archives in Europe and the United States, in search of newsreel material referring to Greece between 1911–1971. In 1973, he collaborated with Theo Angelopoulos on the scenario for Angelopoulos’s film The Traveling Players. From 1975 to 1997, he directed over 50 documentaries for the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT), including Panorama of the Century’s thirty-three 30-minute episodes narrating the news in Greece and the world from 1895 to 1940, based exclusively on newsreel material; a series of twenty documentaries on the disintegration of the Soviet Union (1989–1990); and a seven-episode documentary, Beauty Will Save the World (1991), which chronicled the parallel journey of the Russian State and the Russian Orthodox Church from the 10th century to our time. In 1981 Lamprinos filmed a feature-length documentary for the screen entitled Aris Velouchiotis: The Dilemma, about the Resistance during the German occupation. His fiction film Doxobus (1987) referred to the 14th-century Byzantine province by the same name and the civil war of that period. In 1995 he produced and directed Birthday Celebration or a Silent Balkan Story, a documentary dedicated to the centenary of cinema and made up of footage from Balkan silent movies (1895–1930). His films have received awards in Greece and abroad. Lamprinos created the first Greek user-friendly archive of old newsreels (1997–2000), which is housed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1993 to 2003, he taught about the “Relationship between History and Cinema” at various universities in Greece.