Rembetiko

In 1923, a singer called Adriana comes off the stage of a taverna in Smyrna and goes straight into labour; her daughter Marika is born that night. Soon afterwards the population exchange sends the Orthodox of Anatolia to Greece and the Muslims of Greece to Turkey. Marika's family ends up in the shanty districts of Piraeus, counted as foreigners in the country they were sent to. Marika starts singing rembetiko as her mother did. This was always the music of the refugee, the poor and the excluded. Costas Ferris's 1983 film draws on the life of the singer Marika Ninou; he wrote it with Sotiria Leonardou, who also plays the lead. Stavros Xarchakos wrote the music. It won a Silver Bear at Berlin in 1984.