A free film screening by MACG / Melbourne
Antifascist Initiative Palikari: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre
The documentary Palikari: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre (2014, Nickos Ventouras)
narrates one of the "bleakest and blackest" chapters in American labor history, the Ludlow
Massacre. ---- A 101 years earlier, on April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colorado, USA, a strike
for basic labor rights by exploited miners and their families, mostly immigrants, was
violently ended by state militia. In the fight, the strikers' tent colony was
machine-gunned and burned to the ground, leaving over twenty people dead, including women
and children. ---- Palikari: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre ---- A free film
screening in Melbourne ---- Friday 1st of May, 7pm ---- New International Bookshop ----
Trades Hall, Crn Victoria and Lygon Sts Carlton ---- The documentary Palikari: Louis Tikas
and the Ludlow Massacre (2014, Nickos Ventouras) narrates one of the "bleakest and
blackest" chapters in American labor history, the Ludlow Massacre.
A 101 years earlier, on April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colorado, USA, a strike for basic labor
rights by exploited miners and their families, mostly immigrants, was violently ended by
state militia. In the fight, the strikers' tent colony was machine-gunned and burned to
the ground, leaving over twenty people dead, including women and children.
Louis Tikas (1886-1914), a Cretan immigrant and union organizer born Ilias Anastasios
Spantidakis, was shot in the back in cold blood, as were two other strikers, trying to
negotiate. Still considered a politically volatile event, in fact a dangerous past for the
nation laying open the synergy of state and capital to brutally put down labor, Ludlow
does not commonly find a place in celebratory official memory.
Palikari adds a transnational as well as a global dimension to Ludlow's centennial
commemoration. It is the work of a Greek team, a journalist writer/producer (Lamprini C.
Thoma) and a novice film director (Nickos Ventouras). Filmed in several locations in the
U.S. and Athens, Greece, and also screened widely in these two countries and across the
world, Palikari enters Ludlow through a network of scholars, authors, and artists whose
perspectives structure the narration.
The bilingual story is organized thematically around twelve topics - Immigration,
Exploitation, Racism, Union, Strike, Women, Intimidation, Easter, Uprising, Rockefeller,
Legacy, and Memory - each visually animated with corresponding historical images and
footage. The documentary privileges the point of view of the interviewees who recount the
history and locate its significance. The film also functions as a historical document of
Ludlow scholarship, in addition to its work as a historical documentary.
The filmmakers of course do not remain neutral instruments of recording. In addition to
the angle of interviewing and narrative editing, they advance their own interpretative
version, evident both in the title and the presentation of their work in the media.
The film aspires to global and diaspora resonance, and it strongly locates its relevance
in relation to Greece as a nation-in-crisis.
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/28086
