Papaflessas

The film tells the life of one of the leading figures of the Greek uprising that began in 1821 against Ottoman rule. A man of the church, he works to persuade the local notables who opposed the rising and has a hand in the declaration of war; the account runs up to the battle at Maniaki. The film’s view plainly builds a narrative of heroism and is designed as a national epic; a reader should know this, because the other side is given no comparable room. The work was completed in 1971, during the period of military government in Greece. The account builds its events out of battle scenes and grand speeches and does not enter into a detailed argument about history. Dimitris Papamichael plays the lead in Erricos Andreou’s hundred and thirty minute film.