GREECE OF CHRISTIAN GREEKS.

UK 1972 , Colour 43 minutes.
A film by Kostas Chronopoulos, Simon Louvish, Jorge Tsoucarossa
Music by Mikis Theodorakis and Traditional Themes
A Contemporary Films Production

On 21st April 1967, a group of Colonels rolled their tanks into Athens and proclaimed themselves the saviours of Greece. "Greece of Christian Greeks" covers the events which led up to the 1967 Coup-from the Civil War of 1944-49 through to the mass popular unrest of 1965 when the people took over the streets of Athens for seventy days.

Shot in Greece last year, the film takes a wry look at the Colonels' Greece five years after 'the event' to discover what the New Order entails for the Greek people. Five years after the Coup no elections have yet been held and no opposition tolerated. Enemies of the regime still fill the prisons. The labour movement has been totally silenced. And in the rural areas, the age old rule of the military and the police has been tightened.

George Papadopoulos (Prime Minister, Regent, Minister of Defence, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Education, etcetera, etcetera), once said of his flock:

“ We have a patient who is lying in a plaster cast. We are trying to see if he can walk with the cast. Eventually the plebiscite will be a general test of the patient's abilities. Let us pray he will need the cast no more. Because if he does we shall put it back."

The question is who will survive into the future. The surgeon or the patient?