“Athens, my love” is a 24-min essay-film which looks for material or immaterial mnemic traces of major political events inscribed in the body of the metropolitan entity of Athens. It focuses on case-studies of a counter-hegemonic history, from the mid-20th century till the early 21st century, in which the logos and praxis of individual or collective subjects have been suppressed till death. These are cases that an official History has either neglected or cleansed of their association with insurrectionist desire and potential.

The film develops around interviews with architects and historians, makes use of archive material (photographs and newspapers) and also employs fictional elements – all of which are contextualised by a voice-over dialogue. The film is also intended as an exploration of the variable limits of moving and static images in the process of formulating a political aesthetic against the imperative to forget what is already suppressed and, possibly, even repressed.

“Athens, my love” attempts to be a temporal memorial that oscillates between formal monumentalisation mechanisms (which claim objectivity) and personal fragments of memory (which often lie in the domain of subjective contemplation). This choice diverges from the usual practice of making monuments with hard materials while it contributes to the construction and visibility of a counter-public sphere.