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Silencing a journalist is not less violent than his beating or arrest

04 May 2011 / 00:05:29  GRReporter
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Anastasia Balezdrova

I know almost no young journalists who would not like to join the team of Yorgos Avgeropoulos. Since 2000, the calm voice of the famous Greek journalist has been informing the Greek audience about events happening at different places worldwide. The documentaries by Yorgos Avgeropoulos and his team acquainted the viewers with the Niger River Delta, where thousands of barrels of oil are produced but 70% of the residents live on less than one dollar a day, with the Agora monks in India for whom it is said that eat the remains of burnt corpses thrown into the sacred Ganges River, with the beginning of the global financial crisis, the collapse of mortgage lending in the USA and with a number of other "distant and strange" stories. The films of the Eksandas series participate in international film festivals and are often awarded.

On the occasion of the International Day of Press Freedom GRReporter decided to present to its readers the "unconventional" journalist Yorgos Avgeropoulos, who loves to be there where he should not be.

Tell us about your experience as a war correspondent.

I was a war correspondent from 1992 to 2002. This was a very useful and interesting period in my life. I was fortunate to live through major events of the Balkan history. People often think that journalists go where they should not be at the peril of their lives for money. This is not true, first, because there is no money, and secondly, because nothing could compensate the loss of life. The only thing that makes you go to the battlefield is your personal curiosity to see how history is written, because for better or worse, it is often written through the wars. My other colleagues and I have witnessed events that are being taught in history classes now and we have personal opinion about them.

In addition, I learned many important things. Here, no one but the people who are aged 60-70 years now has lived through a war. But older people and war correspondents that covered the reality of war and worked on the battlefield can go deep into human values. To appreciate very ordinary-looking things like being able to calmly drink a cup of coffee with friends in a sunny day and realize that nothing is certain in life and that the situation could change very quickly.

The most impressive thing during a war is the way people change and turn into beasts. There you see the most extreme manifestations of human nature and psyche. I would say that my experience was very valuable from this perspective.

Given this experience, do you think that a journalist could be more threatened in his or her country when investigating a topic than on the battlefield?

Let me put the question another way: A person is more at risk in his or her country if he or she is riding a motorcycle in downtown Athens, for example. I really mean this, because I move this way. It is no exaggeration and I will explain why.
 
When there are victims on the battlefield, this is an accident, because war correspondents almost always have the same fear as everyone else. Nobody is a hero, or Superman. All seek to return intact. People assess the things based on their experience and take measures. For example, by moving after the one or the other side or by going to places that someone has recommended, etc.

If things take a bad turn and, for example, the road convoy gets ambushed or the pilot of a plane decides that the car is the enemy’s and shoots it then it is bad luck. In fact, this is the heads or tails game.

On the other hand, there are journalists who were threatened in their own countries while reporting not only in Greece but also worldwide. Irregardless of whether physical violence has been exerted on them – they were beaten to death or killed, for example, or because they were subjected to other violence, which is often worse. This is the attempt to silence a journalist by not publishing his or her materials. This is violence too.

How the Eksandas (Sextant) series of documentaries started?

Eksandas started in March 2000 as an experiment of а private broadcaster. On the occasion that we were entering a new millennium, the management of the television station assigned me with the task to prepare a chronicle of the 20th century of Greece. I made it. It lasted about two hours and because they liked it and it had a good response by the audience they told me "Could you do something like that every month?". These were the exact words and I was very much impressed because "something like that" is a very general description.

Meanwhile, I got tired of working for the news, especially after I had worked abroad, on the battlefield. I realized that I had treasures in my hands that could not be properly used in the news broadcasts, where the reports continue 1-2 minutes. I had an open offer for a broadcast which I had made several times, but there was no interest in it. Meanwhile, I had gained the experience needed to work abroad and I had realized the fact that Greece was not the centre of the universe. I had realized that the important decisions affecting our lives were too often taken outside the country. This is something we can notice very clearly today.

Let me mention also that I was ready to leave journalism a few years earlier. At that time, my wife and I had started to travel in Latin America. We were in Peru when a hotel keeper offered us to work in his hotel La casa de mi Abuela in Arequipa. We wanted some time to consider his proposal, to return to Greece and then to respond. But then, we decided not to go. I was made the proposal for the broadcast and so, this experiment started.

Eksandas started as a small plant and continued to grow very quickly. Here I must say that the people who supported us were not the journalists but the viewers. The majority of journalists are "embedded" with the Greek reality. There were people saying "Why would you go and deal with Argentina, which is failing as an economy. You’d better go to report on the Greeks in Astoria." They told me that this project has no future, etc.

The interest of the viewers showed the need to learn what happens outside. There were people who understood that nothing is so far away and that everything is close to us. That was our motto then, and it is the same now. Because what happens far away and it seems at first glance that it is not of our concern ultimately matters to us. In 2003, I was returning from filming a documentary in Iraq. The taxi driver who took me from the airport asked me where I was. When I told him that I came back from Iraq, his reaction was "Why do you go there? See the things that happen here." I replied that he should care because the diesel fuel in the tank of his taxi comes from Iraq and the topic affects him in a degree. So, this is how the things happened.

Tell us about your international awards.

At one point we reached the external market abroad, the big world that extends beyond the boundaries of Greece. We have seen that there was serious response to our work there. We received our first major award at the important international festival for audiovisual programs in the French city of Biarritz in February 2007. We have won the second prize there and it was a great success, because the participants are many. From that moment on, the people in Greece who had never spoke to us and thought we were "strange birds" suddenly became very friendly to us.

How do you choose the topics that you develop?

Surely, our main criterion is neither whether the topic is commercial, nor is it associated with the rating of viewing. Our main criterion is what we would like to do and what we would like to see on the screen. What we want to do and what intrigues us. We go from there. Then, we discuss whether the idea is financially feasible, and finally whether the topic concerns not only the Greek audience, but the people around the world.

I do not think about the Greek audience when I write the screenplays and direct a film. I do not think the film is only for the Greek audience, but for the world, because according to me, all active citizens in the world are interested in the same topics. This is something I have noticed in our participations in international festivals. After the screening of a film I hear the same comments I have heard from the Greek spectators. Such topics are the privatisation of natural resources, the environment pollution and the responsibility of major oil companies, etc.

I remember the film about social racism towards homosexuals in Mexico ...

We often try to break other stereotypes. Muses of Huchitan was one such film. We shot it in a small town in Mexico, where men have the first and last word. The film was first presented at the festival of documentary cinema in Thessaloniki. There were people who were affected and left the room. They were not many, but there were such. Some others watched it until the end and asked us why we addressed this issue, which they believed was not serious. I think that when a society refuses to accept and closes its eyes to issues such as sexuality, homosexuality, euthanasia and the death and continues to feed their taboos it is worth pushing to show that things are not just black or white. There are many of shades of gray around them in life and they must be gathered and presented.

It is clear that a team lies behind your work. It is not possible only one person to do all this work. How long does it take you to develop a topic?

We work nine months for each film on the average; as much as it is necessary to bear a child. There are topics on which we worked over a year and others which were developed within four months. It depends on the topic, the difficulties we face and other such factors.

Some believe that we gather in October, think, think and the topic is already ready at the end of the month. This is impossible. Only the cutting hours for each film are often over 300. Not to mention the preparation needed to enable someone to go and shoot a report in the Niger River Delta or in a peaceful country like Guatemala, the preparation for which continued for about four months.

It is all about a "roll of the dice." We do not shoot in Greece to have the luxury to go there several times, if something goes wrong. We have to be always sure that we will have a report and it will be good. We are often faced with serious problems and always cooperate with local people. At first, four people work on a topic in order to shoot a report lasting 25-30 hours and to process it back in Athens.
 
What in Greece is known as the Eksandas broadcast abroad is called a series of documentaries. People often ask me what the song at the beginning of a film was and they do not know that we compose the music of each film. I eventually think that people do not want to know how long it took us to make the film. They only care about the end product which should be good.

Moreover, I often feel that people think our work is "incompatible" with the Greek reality. In my opinion this should not be so. I believe that we do not lack anything in Greece that our colleagues abroad have, except funds, but this can not be such a serious obstacle.

Today is the International Day of Press Freedom. Do you think that journalists enjoy complete freedom in their work?

Journalists are often not free to work even from a physical point of view. It has happened to me not to be able to work freely in countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya and Egypt. There is a guide standing around you and telling you what to shoot and what not to shoot. In Iraq, this guy had even ordered me: "Shoot! Stop! Shoot! Stop!" You just try to do your work in the best possible way under such circumstances.

I think there are two kinds of freedom generally. There is the lack of direct freedom in countries ruled by regimes that prevent the freedom of speech. But press freedom is a topic of much discussion in developed countries too. I do not know how free the journalist "X" is in his work, when finding something that affects the interests of his employer. I do not know whether the employer would allow the journalists to publish his findings.

I think this is something we see in Greece. Not that there is no press freedom. But what I see mostly on private television channels is that the "uncomfortable" topics such as the situation in Keratea are not shown or are presented completely partially. From this point of view, I believe that press freedom is a controversial issue in developed societies, and here I do not mean only Greece, but many other societies around the world. And I think that every journalist decides for him/herself how to respond and to oppose the restrictions on his or her freedom of expression.

Tags: MediaDocumentariesJournalistsPress freedomEksandasGeorgios Avgeropoulos
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