Lecture by Chantal Partamian + Happy Day

Chantal Partamian, Katsakh: Mediterranean archives. Personal archives and political futures 

Katsakh is a living archive of small-format non-fiction film reels spanning from the 1920s to the 1980s, focused primarily on the towns and villages of the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond. Initiated in 2020, the archive emerges from histories of exile, genocide, and cultural loss. Rather than merely preserving the past, Katsakh reclaims suppressed narratives and activates forgotten images as raw material for artistic creation, political memory, and speculative futures. Through the recovery, repair, and public dissemination of this footage, the archive becomes a site of narrative resistance and imaginative possibility. It invites communities and artists to co-create counter-histories, where grief, memory, and futurity converge, and to reimagine the Mediterranean beyond imperial frames and erasures. (FR)
 
Chantal Partamian is a filmmaker and archivist.

Happy Day
Pantelis Voulgaris, Greece 1976, 100 Min., English with English subtitles 

Introduced by Maria Komninos

On a sun-scorched, windswept island, a camp of political prisoners awaits the visit of the “great mother”, the Queen, in honor of whom they have prepared a celebration. One of the prisoners, who steadfastly refuses to renounce his beliefs, disappears and is proclaimed dead. However, on the day of the celebration, the “dead man” reappears. A film about the absurdity of authoritarian regimes that portrays the daily rituals of physical and psychological violence in the camp, which are contrasted by festive moments for appearances’ sake. (FR)

Maria Komninos is President of the Board of Directors of the Greek Film Archive.