Loafing and Camouflage

1973, Greece. A group of young men doing their military service is assigned to the army's film unit. Their job is to shoot promotional films, take official footage and keep an archive. They have found the easiest way to get through a day in barracks: they look busy and are in fact idling. Outside, the junta is living out its last months and the students are about to come into the streets. Nikos Perakis's film is built as a comedy, but the Polytechnic events are in the background; while the young men idle, history walks past outside. The title says as much: skiving and camouflage in the army. When it came out in 1984 it drew extraordinary attention in Greece and became one of the most watched productions in the country; sequels and a television series followed. It does not make the junta years ridiculous, it only shows how ordinary life went on during them.