work / memories of work

In Eleonas, Athens, the last days of a tannery unfold against the backdrop of work in the surrounding neighborhoods—scavengers’ markets, old farmhouses, abandoned kilns, and people laboring amid factory ruins and construction sites. Written on postcards that were never sent, the narration forms a polyphonic poem composed of fragments of literature, testimony, and collective memory spanning centuries: in ancient times, Eleonas was a vast olive grove; in the nineteenth century, an infrastructural hub; and more recently, an industrial zone. Yet, it has always remained on the margins of the city’s conscience.

Director: Ektoras Arkomanis

Ektoras Arkomanis is a writer and artist working with film. He uses film for its capacity to preserve and explore but is especially interested in what the medium omits—its inadequacy in describing things that no longer exist—and the narratives invented to fill these gaps. Ektoras is currently working on A Season in the Olive Grove, a long-term film/research project about the Eleonas area in Athens. He has written for and edited a volume titled Migrations in New Cinema (Cours de Poétique, 2020), and recently completed a collaborative installation titled Protea/Extraction, commissioned by the Anti-Apartheid Centre of Memory and Learning. Ektoras teaches architectural history and theory at London Metropolitan University.