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Contact |
ECOFILMS
E-mail:info@ecofilms.gr |
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Composers |
| | Text, Photography, Director: | Lucia Rikaki
| | Editing: | Yiannis Daridis
| | Music: | Jean Sibelius |
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Summary |
"The habit of ignoring Nature is deeply implanted in our times.
This attitude reminds me of people who never look in the eye; I find them disturbing and always have to look away."-Marc Chagall (1887-1985) Russian artist/painter.
There is nothing as valuable as life, there is nothing as worthy as the soul. We can have oxes and fat sheep, we can buy tripods and horses, but a man’s life does not go back if it escapes from his teeth… Achilles Rhapsody 1.
Fires in Rhodes 2008
160,000 stremmas were burnt.
Out of these, only 40,000 can be reforestated.
The Dodecanese Prefecture took several initiatives.
Planting of 50,000 trees (mostly pine trees).
The preparation of 90,000 small trees within the existing nursery so that they can be planted in the fall.
The creation of nursery garden for 30,000 new trees
In order to protect the Lardos area and the surrounding hotels:
14 works with a total budget of 3,7 million euro were commissioned including
River cleaning
Building of 5 new Dams
Backing of the river banks
Building new Bridges
4 new flexible fast response fire trucks have been bought to serve the area
The request for 2 Canadair planes always located in Rodos is still pending.
Also the Rodos Forestry anti- erosion works, amounted to 3,5 million euro, expenditure.
“I saw birds I had never seen before and deers running down the street”
Cry, South Rodos
The beloved place surrendering in flames
I like this corner of the earth with all the beauty and sorrow it carries…
The day today was unexpected.
Every day has something unexpected but this one was really something else.
We were touring in the burnt areas of South Rhodes and suddenly as we had stopped near Tharri monastery which – miraculously as some say - escaped the fires while the forest surrounding it burnt down… As we had sat down to eat, the Prefect receives a call “Another fire in Kallithies!”
We rush in location. We could see the thick smoke from afar, introducing us to the flaming landscape.
Not once had I been so close to the front line. I shoot as much as I can. My mouth is burning. I get tearing eyes. I can’t breath.
Some have gas masks on. There are no more gas masks in the drug stores and storehouses of Rhodes. A pharmacist brings the last 50 he managed to gather. My mouth is burning. The more daring ones, the Prefect and his colleagues, guide the trucks and volunteers.
“They are burning down our island!” a cry.
“I saw deers and rare birds heading towards the sea” another cry a few days earlier in South Rhodes. A great deal of ash is lifted every time the planes pour water. My eyes are tearing.
I can’t see the black spots of ash and water, a gray mud that fills the camera lens.
I cast a glance at the Prefect, in moments of agony, and with a gesture I let him know that we are still here while he and the guys, the volunteers, continue whipping the fire with olive tree branches so it can rest, put out, stop and hush.
Three hours went by, the fire hushed and we, soaked in sweat, sooty but smiling went to the village’s coffee place for a cup of lemonade.
It might have been the breeziest lemonade I have ever had!
I like this corner of the earth… with all the sorrow that it carries, its deformed but wonderful beauty, I like it.
We have chosen to live here and as long as we are fine we will be sucking every drop of beauty of this place.
I like this corner of the map.
My mouth is burning and when it is burning I remember the cry for the dreams we go after.
Nature is for free…
Is that the reason we don’t care when we burn it?
Its breath and rhythm shows where our heartbeat is…
The burnt landscape of Rhodes, burns my heart every day…
Last year I was here when the ash waters from Ilia were washed and we would drown our tears in the sea, remember? And you would say – your cry was like the trees – you’d say…
“What is the reason of living if your roots are burnt, the ones you rooted in the soil to hold yourself?”… “and now without roots and with your wings burnt how will you be able to face the horizon?” you said… And I didn’t know how to comfort your gray image … only with caresses and melodies full of tears… which watered your roots so you could blossom again…
Will you blossom again? Like that dream we colored with color pencils… when we were ready to face death… we though we’d hug life and brush aside the fact that with furry and frenzy it burnt down our roots.
See the sky, the power of the stone, the root in the rock.
With the puff of the truth and the wings of love we gain the power of the stone, the roots of the tree… our roots find juices in the steep rock of the island and hold themselves high like proud trees.
See that… whatever manages to root in the rock… defies the wind and turns its blow into music…
Will we ever learn? When I stop playing with fire, stop scratching the land that fills with marks and reminds us, like a map, every mischief.
I like this corner of the earth with all the beauty and sorrow in carries…
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Distribution |
ECOFILMS
E-mail:info@ecofilms.gr |
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