FoG09: Greece's counterpublic and transnational film movement in revision post economic crisis

This article takes a disparate theoretical approach to understanding The Filmmakers of Greece (FoG), a group that emerged in 2009 amid Greece’s economic crisis. It contributes to the field of Greek national and transnational cinema from 2009 by concentrating on its political subjecthood. It challenges the lenses through which FoG – as a group and a film corpus – has been interpreted in studies/juries/publications: the national cinema concept, the economic crisis as narrative allegory, and the ‘Greek New/Weird Wave’ label. These paradigms obfuscate the content of the films and the motivations of their creators. Instead, the article emphasises that FoG articulates autonomy; this is accomplished through the filmmaking process and the films’ narratives. While the films do not adhere to narratives of nationhood, FoG does not cast off ‘Greekness’. Where the Greek state has assumed increasingly neoliberal and technocratic modes of governance, the filmmakers’ ‘weird’ representational and technical approaches reveal the emancipatory potential of the screen. In this way, filmmaking practice becomes a critical arena for the performative assertion of autonomy in line with crisis-driven articulations of resistance. Ultimately, the article makes the disjuncture that FoG09 (a label coined) can be understood through two concepts: it is a counterpublic and transnational film movement. Similar to other youth movements and groups during the crisis, The Filmmakers of Greece represent a textual and paratextual opposition to the state. This opposition enables the filmmakers to affirm their citizenship figuratively: they make a return to the nation as ‘Greek’ filmmakers who make transgressive films.<b></b>