SALONICA
A film by Paolo Poloni
www.salonica.ch
Switzerland 2008 – 87 mins
Distribution:
Xenix filmdistribution
Tel. 044 296 50 40
distribution@xenix.ch
www.xenixfilm.ch
Press and Promotion:
publik service
Langstrasse 64 / Pf
8026 Zürich
Tel 044 296 80 60
info@publik.ch
Pictures can be found at www.xenixfilm.ch
Start: 3rd April 2008
Synopsis
SALONICA is about Thessaloniki, the northern Greek city at the crossroads of the Orient and Europe,
the Balkans and the Mediterranean. The film tells life stories, resembling short novels, which unite to
relate a more general story involving many protagonists and interwoven plots – resulting in a cinematic
narrative of Thessaloniki.
What makes this city historically unique is the fact that for 450 years it was mainly Jewish and the
predominant language was Spanish. This is because Thessaloniki was populated by the Jews who
were expelled from Catholic Spain in 1492 and who subsequently found refuge in the Ottoman Empire
– up until their almost total annihilation by the Germans during the Shoah in 1943 .
The history of the Jews of Salonica is an unfamiliar, yet profoundly European story. It is a story that
echoes across the whole Mediterranean region from Spain to Italy and from the Balkans to Turkey. It
is unique, because there has never been another predominantly Jewish city of this size anywhere in
Europe.
Against this background, SALONICA takes a close look at the city today, meeting very different people
– Jewish survivors, Russian immigrants, gypsies, Greek-Macedonian nationalists – thereby telling of
the city’s modern reality, a display of historical layers and stories. From a great variety of real life
stories SALONICA paints a cinematic fresco of a place and a century torn apart by violence.
The film deals with a loss that hangs unseen over the city, an absence which hovers over the city und
oppresses it. It also tells of the power and burden of the past, of personal and cultural loss and of the
individual and collective search for an identity.
SALONICA is the portrait of a city as well as that of an unknown Greece, away from holiday
stereotypes.
The Ladino language
The Sephardic language, or Ladino, is the traditional Romance language of the Sephardic Jews. In
the 1990s there were still about 150,000 speakers of Ladino, two thirds of these in Israel. The
language has no official status, although there are Ladino newspapers and radio programmes.
Outside Israel and Turkey there are quite a few native speakers in Greece and Bulgaria, as well as to
a lesser extent in some places in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Macedonia.
(Source: Wikipedia)
For further information on the history of the Ladino language:
http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Spanish-Ladino/index
The Music
The song «Salonica», which can be heard during the film’s final credits, is performed by the Greek
singer George Dalaras. In his home country he has released over 50 extremely successful albums
and is considered to be one of Greece’s most popular musicians.
The idea behind the film
Initially there was a poem.
Una llave de Salonica
«Abarvanel, Farias o Pinedo,
arrojados de Espana por impìa
persecuciòn, conservan todavia
la llave de una casa de Toledo.»
A key to Salonica
«Abarvanel, Farias or Pinedo,
chased out of Spain through unjust
persecution, still possess
the key to a house in Toledo.»
It was in this poem by Jorge Luis Borges that I first came across the name Salonica. Salonica? And
what did Borges mean by the key to a house in Toledo? There were many unanswered questions.
Subsequently I came across Salonica whilst reading Primo Levi’s «Ist das ein Mensch?», in which he
relates how he survived Auschwitz.
«I believe that thanks to my nocturnal excursion, the Greek rather overestimated my capacity for being
„débrouillard et démerard“, as one so elegantly put it in those days. In my case, I must confess that I
principally relied on his extensive experience as well as on his qualities as a Salonica Jew, which as
anyone in Auschwitz knew were synonymous with an aptitude for trading and the certainty of making
the best out of any situation».
I also well remember being deeply impressed on reading Elias Canetti’s autobiography «The tongue
set free», in which he describes his childhood in Rustschuk, Bulgaria, before the First World War:
« Apart from the Bulgarians, who often came from the countryside, there were also a lot of Turks, who
lived in their own neighbourhood, one that adjoined ours - the Spaniole neighbourhood. The
Spanioles’ loyalties were somewhat complicated. They were devout Jews and community life meant
something to them. However, they considered themselves to be special and this was related to the
Spanish tradition. In the course of the centuries since their expulsion, the Spanish they spoke to each
other had changed very little.»
Salonica, or Saloniki, refers to Thessaloniki and the Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from Spain
by the Spanish inquisition in 1492 and who found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. These Jews spoke
Spanish, the Spanish of the 15th century, and they settled in various places within the Ottoman
Empire from Istanbul to Sarajevo, from Corfu to Izmir.
But Thessaloniki became the most important city for the Jews from Spain.
Historical digression
Up until the 1920s Thessaloniki was not a Greek city. After Istanbul it was the second most important
city of the Ottoman Empire and birthplace of Mustafa Kemal, later Ataturk. The Jews were the largest
population group - before the Turks, Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, Armenians and Levantines. Ladino,
their medieval Spanish language, was the lingua franca of the city and on the Sabbath day the city
stood still.
When David Ben Gurion, later prime minister of Israel, visited Salonica just before the First World War,
he was convinced that a Jewish state was feasible. The Jews of Thessaloniki were living proof that
they were not merely merchants and bankers dealing in financial business, but that they were quite
capable of running a community. Of a population of 150,000 in 1910, 110,000 were Jews; workers
from the docks and factories, skilled artisans, physicians, rabbis businessmen – in short, all social
classes and professions were represented. That was unique in the history of the world.
The decline of the Jewish population began after the defeat of the Turks and the loss of Thessaloniki,
which now became Greek. In the course of the Hellenisation of the city, many Greeks settled here (the
so-called Pontic Greeks). They had entered the country as refugees from the Ottoman Coast, from
Istanbul or from the Black Sea Region in exchange for the Turks who were living in the city at that
time.
This whole colourful Jewish world disappeared sixty years ago. Within two months a 500-year-old
civilisation was extinguished: 56,000 people were deported and destroyed in Auschwitz between April
and June 1943.
I went to Thessaloniki with this knowledge
If you stroll through Thessaloniki, it feels no different to any other ordinary nervous Greek town.
However, if you know anything of its past you start to see the city through different eyes. You can feel
that something is missing.
I was disenchanted: there was no trace of the former «Jerusalem of the Balkans». Of the 32
synagogues only one remained, of the grandiose Jewish cemetery only the stones were left, and
these now served as a road surface.
I was appalled to find that nothing could be seen or felt of this splendid history. A pathetic monument
that had finally been constructed in 1997 at the insistence of the European Union was the only
reminder of the Jews of Salonica. This is where I decided that I would like to make a film.
Initially I imagined that it would be a historically comprehensive film exclusively about the Jewish
history and based on archive material. I also imagined portraying Jews originally from Salonica, but
now spread all over the world in Argentina, France, Israel and USA.
But then I lived in the city, got involved in the city. I discovered a nervous, agitated city, whose
inhabitants went out of their way to emphasise their Greek-ness or Macedonian-ness. As if something
had not yet been resolved with regard to the Greek national identity and as if everything were still very
fragile and new.
And this identity continued to be defined by the fact that a considerable number of inhabitants were
descended from the Greek refugees, who had swarmed into the country in their hundreds of
thousands after the defeat of Greece in Asia Minor.
Slowly but surely my original plan was modified. I decided that the film would play exclusively in the
city and only in the present and that it had to confront the modern reality of Thessaloniki.
Paolo Poloni, January 2008
Some thoughts on aspects of the film
There is one main plot in SALONICA, the Jewish history of Thessaloniki.
In my head I still hear a television producer’s reaction to my project: «Yet another Holocaust story!»
I absolutely believe that this story must be told again and again for all eternity: the events too
monstrous, too inconceivable and too impossible to comprehend. Too great is the historical, universal
impact for all humanity for us not to continually address this issue and to confront younger generations
with it.
In my view, the holocaust survivors have always been depicted without regard for topical social
context and have been elevated to something unique, heroic and in a sense holy. Their portraits often
became cinematic or literary monuments. I have attempted to show them as they are now: old people
living difficult lives in a city which has no memory of their past or their suffering.
The film focuses on the Jewish question, but in the context of the modern reality of the Greek city of
Thessaloniki. The fate of the Holocaust survivors is not narrated independently of their surroundings,
but rather by means of portraits and stories that coexist on a daily basis. My primary concern is a
different presentation of the Holocaust. When you are making a film, you have to assume that there
have been many films on the same subject and that viewers are already acquainted with certain facts.
I realised that I did not want to narrate the Holocaust in a conventional manner.
The story of the Jews in Salonica is an unknown, yet profoundly European
story.
It is a story which echoes over the whole of the Mediterranean region, from Spain to Italy, in the
Balkans, in Turkey and in the Near East. This story is unique: not even in Eastern Europe had there
ever before been a predominantly Jewish city of this size, the stetl in Poland and the Ukraine were
small villages.
With the demise of the Sephardic Jews of Salonica a whole culture was destroyed. It is not so much a
film about contemporary Jewish life in the city, but rather a film about loss, an absence of people and
culture, which hovers over the city and oppresses it.
Thessaloniki is near and yet so far.
The film portrays sentiments from a country situated not far from us, one that seems familiar to us, but
only from its sunny side. Thessaloniki is part of Europe, close to the important centres and anything
but exotic. But is it not the seemingly familiar that brings us face to face with things which are
unfamiliar or disconcerting? It is this ambivalence that fascinates me. The film focuses on something
we think is familiar, on European reality, and in so doing discovers the unfamiliar.
Paolo Poloni, January 2008
The film’s protagonists
Moishe Bourla is 87 years old and lives in the Jewish old people’s
home, Saul Modiano, in Thessaloniki. He has had an eventful life: at 13 he became a communist, at
20 he fought as a partisan against the Germans. After 1945 the right wing Greek government
banished him for seven years to a penal colony, before finally extraditing him to Israel. He
subsequently lived in Russia and in 1990 he returned to his hometown, Thessaloniki. He says that
whether he was Greek, Italian or Jewish was of less significance to him than being a communist and
having a free spirit.
Sofia Leviti is a care worker in the old people’s home, Saul
Modiano. She grew up in remote Kazakhstan, where she was an English teacher. Her family is of
Greek descent. In the former Soviet Union there were several hundred thousand people of Greek
descent. Many emigrated after 1990, the majority to Greece, many to Thessaloniki and Sofia is one of
these.
Yaacov Handeli was 15 years old when he was deported to
Auschwitz. He comes from a wealthy family. After the war he went to Israel, because he did not want
to get involved in the Greek civil war. It was only many years after the concentration camps that he
conquered his shame and began to talk of his experience.
Olivera Shaquiri is an Albanian Roma, who begs for a living. Her
family lives in Albania. She is 20 years old and has a six-year-old daughter. The gypsies are a part of
life in every town in the Balkans.
Jiannis Kiriakidis is a reporter and has photographed all the
local events in Thessaloniki over the past 50 years. He is a quintessential Thessalonian and his family,
like many of his fellow citizens, is from Asia Minor, he is a Pontic Greek, as the Greeks from the Black
Sea Coast are known. But he is also a fervent Macedonian and patriot, who feels that his identity is
being threatened by the new Republic of Macedonia.
Oscar Florentin is descended from a poor Jewish family and was
18 when he was deported to Auschwitz with his family. He had just finished grammar school and
intended to go on to further studies. But as he said: «The Germans have sent me to a much better
university... to Auschwitz!» He talks of the dismissive and indeed disrespectful reception that he and
other survivors received at the hands of the Greeks on his return. This seems to cause him pain even
today.
Dani Sevi is 13 years old. He is preparing for his bar mitzvah. He
and his brother, Baruch, belong to the youngest generation of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki.
In total there are about 500 Jews still living in this once predominantly Jewish city.
Davico Saltiel has been the chazan, or cantor, in the Thessaloniki
synagogue for the past 25 years. He is the only person who is still familiar with the traditional,
Sephardic way of reciting the psalms. He was originally a shoemaker and is descended from a very
poor Jewish family. His father was a socialist and partisan. In 1942 he fled with his family to the
mountains, where he survived the war and the deportations.
Devin Naar is a history student from New Jersey. His ancestors
originate from Salonica and emigrated to the USA in the 1920s. In the process of tracing his family
history he came to Thessaloniki, where with the help of the little surviving archive material pertaining
to the Jewish community he is researching the history of his family and that of the Jewish community
as a whole. He is particularly interested in the fusion of the Ottoman-Turkish, Spanish, Jewish and
Greek lineage in the city.
Biographies
Paolo Poloni (director, editor)
Born 1954 in Lucerne, film maker since 1989.
Filmography:
2008
2008
2004
2004
2003
2002
2000
1999
1998
1995
1994
1991
1989
Héritage, feature documentary, in preparation
Salonica, feature documentary, 87’
Die Ratte, Die Stadt, das Gift, documentary, 52’, ARTE
Eine Strasse namens Josef, documentary, 52’, TSI
Viaggio a Misterbianco, portrait, 17’, TSI
Mit allen Sinnen, documentary, 30’, TSI
Giorgio Orelli, feature documentary, 87’
Asinara, documentary, 30', TSI
Fondovalle, fiction, 80', SRG
Rites de passages, documentary, 45', TSR
Asmara, feature documentary, 80'
Witschi geht, feature documentary, 60'
Volver, documentary, 60', DRS
Matthias Kälin
(cinematographer)
Born 1953 in Aarau. 1974 - 1979 INSAS (Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle), Brussels.
1980 - 1987 cameraman for TSI and DRS. Since 1988 freelance cameraman for various feature films
and documentaries. Since 1991 regular teaching work at various film schools. 1994 award from the
Federal Office of Culture for his work as a cameraman. 2002 UBS prize in Solothurn.
Filmography as co-director:
2007
1987
Josephson Bildhauer
Douleur d’Amour
Filmography as cinematographer (selection):
2008
2007
2007
2007
2005
2002
2002
1993
1993
1989
1989
Salonica, by Paolo Poloni
Trophäen der Zeit, by Barbara Zürcher and Angelo Lüdin
Die Tunisreise, by Bruno Moll
Hardcore Chambermusic, by Peter Liechti
Maria Bethania, by Georges Gachot
Epoca, by Andreas Hoessli and Isabella Huser
Les petites Couleurs, by Patricia Plattner
Le Hibou et la Baleine, by Patricia Plattner
Ludwig 1881, by Fosco and Donatello Dubini
Hyenes, by Djibril Diop Mambéty
Yaaba, by Idrissa Ouedraogo
Minos Matsas (music)
Studied at the Athens Conservatory, the Juilliard School and the Columbia University in New York.
Producer for EMI, has his own music label «Messogios». 1996 founded the Odeon Studios in Athens.
Minos Matsas is a musical composer for film, TV, live stage productions und song writing.
Filmography:
2008
2006
2006
2005
2005
2005
2005
2004
2004
2004
2004
Salonica, by Paolo Poloni
Eduart, by Angeliki Antoniou, awarded a prize at the Thessaloniki Film Festival
A Different Tune, by Amanda Campbell.
Obscura, by Andreas Lascaris, Northampton Independent Film Festival
Making Life Work, by Maximilian Jezo-Parovsky, Kurosawa Film Festival Tokyo
Sleepwalking, by Tatia Pilieva
Left At The Rio Grande, by Kevin Abrams
Res, by Maximilian Jezo-Parovsky
Looper, by Maximilian Jezo-Parovsky
Second Coming, by Darren Campbell
Sian Ka’an - Angel In The Rainforest, by Raoul Garcia
Doc Productions GmbH, Rose-Marie Schneider (production)
Doc Productions GmbH, Zurich, founded by Rose-Marie Schneider in 1997, is an independent film
production company, exclusively producing documentaries. The focus is on humanitarian, social and
cultural themes.
Filmography:
2008
2007
2007
2006
2005
2002
2002
2002
2001
1998
Salonica, by Paolo Poloni, 87'
Living in Transit, by K.Naraks & M.Litscher, 53’
Sonic Mirror, by Mika Kaurismäki, 79' (co-prod. CH/Fi/D)
Er, der Hut, sitzt auf ihm, dem Kopf – Robert Walser shorts, by Walo Deuber, 53’
Coca – The Dove from Chechnya, by Eric Bergkraut, 86' & 53’
Writing against Death, by Rolf Lyssy & Dominique Rub, 57'
Last Minute – stories about death, by Reno Sami, 51’
Ricco, by Mike Wildbolz, 120’ (co-prod.CH)
Stanislaw Vincenz, by Waldemar Czechowski, 57’ (co-prod. PL)
Fading Traces – Postscripts from a Landscape of Memory, by Walo Deuber, 79' & 54’
Credits
Participants:
Eliahu Shitrit
Dani Sevi
Silvia Sevi
Thanassis Tambouris
Iannis Kiriakidis
Oscar Florentin
Davico Saltiel
Katerina Kosidou
Yaacov Handeli
Olivera Shaquiri
Moishe Bourla
Devin Naar
Demetrios Vakarios
Evgenia Florentin
Sofia Leviti
Katerina Leviti
Director:
Cinematographer:
Music:
Song (final credits):
Editor:
Co-editors:
Paolo Poloni
Matthias Kälin
Minos Matsas
George Dalaras (music: Minos Matsas, text: Isaak Soucis)
Paolo Poloni
Matthias Bürcher
Florian Siegrist
Kriton Kalaitzidis, Theodoros Koutsoulis
Daniel Almada
Kriton Kalaitsidis
Theodoros Koutsoulis
Hans Künzi
Rose-Marie Schneider
Doc Productions GmbH
SF DRS, SRG SSR idée suisse
Bundesamt für Kultur, Sektion Film (EDI)
Zürcher Filmstiftung
René und Susanne Braginsky Stiftung
Euroinfo Schweiz Media Desk
Migros-Kulturprozent
Succès Cinéma
Succès Passage Antenne
Sound:
Sound editor:
Location manager:
Production manager:
Sound mixer:
Producer:
Production:
Co-production:
Support:
www.salonica.ch