Shadow on the Soul dir. by Marios Polyzogopoulos and Dimitris Pliagkos, and: Kisses to the Children dir. by Vassilis Loules, and: Dowsing the Past: Materialities of Civil War Memories dir. by Kostas Kalantzis, and: Beneath the Lemon Tree dir. by Stavroula Toska (review)

The importance of film as a medium for imparting knowledge and affect, thus contributing to or even creating a social memory of historical events, is widely acknowledged (Berger 2007). As films, museums, and the press shape the popular understanding of the past, the engagement of academia with such modes of transmission of historical knowledge becomes imperative. The four historical films reviewed here all make references to major events of twentiethcentury Greece, the memory and current understanding of those events, and their connections to today's Greece. For those who know little about Greek history, these films provide an introduction to three traumatic episodes with long-term repercussions: the 1922 Asia Minor Disaster that led to the mandated Greco-Turkish population exchange which created at least 1.5 million refugees; the Holocaust; and the Greek Civil War. As I cannot claim any expertise as a film critic, I feel I have to make it clear from the start that my perspective is that of the historian. Nevertheless, I also review these films as someone who has an increasing interest in how histories are taught, internalized, and ultimately remembered.

For the most part, documentaries bring to the screen the words, voices, emotions, and personalities of individuals who lived through the studied events. This manner of presentation is an engaging and much more immediate way of learning, one that can particularly reach children. However, the immediacy of film and testimonies can also create prosthetic memories. All four films reviewed here bring together in distinct ways issues of collective and individual memory, addressing very painful aspects of Greek history. While the Holocaust has rarely been addressed in the Greek context (the only case I am aware of is the 2013 film, The Longest Journey: The Last Days of the Jews of Rhodes, directed by Ruggero Gabbai), the other subjects have been dealt with in both Greek and non-Greek cinema, as well as in historical documentaries. Shadow on the Soul deals with the 1922 refugees and their legacy, both in Greece and in Turkey. Experts interviewed in the film, including the eminent scholars Renée Hirschon and Dimitris Kamouzis, focus on the social issues concerning the arrival and settlement of the refugees in Greece and Turkey. They identify and elaborate on the friction between the host population and the newcomers, as well as the names that the latter were called by the former: "Turkish-seed" in Greece; "Greek-seed" in Turkey. It is bewildering to hear the Turkish descendants of the exchanged population mix Greek and Turkish words while speaking today—nearly 100 years after the event—a stark reminder of a past when the two languages and peoples inhabited the same spaces.

The refugees and their descendants interviewed in the film talk about the hunger, the disease, and the high mortality rate among the refugees following their arrival in Greece. But they also speak about the conviviality of the refugees, their passion for life, singing, and makeshift celebratory gatherings. We are told about the shanty towns that were initially erected in the greater Athens area and how they lacked running water in the early days and did not have a central sewage system until the 1970s. It should be pointed out that these deficiencies applied to most impoverished areas within Greece at the time and were not exclusive to refugee areas. The extensive use of credit when purchasing food from local grocers is mentioned; this too was not specific to refugees, but more of an attribute of the Greek urban poor.

It is interesting and rare to see in a documentary the differentiation that is made...