ABSTRACT
In his film, Brides (Nyfes in Greek) Pantelis Voulgaris deals with the massive waves of migration from Greece and Asia Minor to the USA at the turn of the last century.1 The film follows the journeys of women who, with a photograph in their hands and a wedding dress in their little bags, were making the long boat journey to America where prospective, but unknown grooms were waiting to meet them on Ellis Island. These men were Greek immigrants who wanted to marry women from their own country and often from their own villages or islands back in Greece. The film explores the struggles, the hardships and the risks that these women and men took in order to make a new life for themselves in a new country. In a unique and very delicate way, the film unfolds the issues of migration, war, poverty, family obligations and arranged marriage through the viewpoint of a woman who is forced to choose between love and her obligations towards her family. At the beginning of the film we see hundreds of women waiting in the harbour of Odessa for the boat that will take them away from their homes and families and towards an unknown future. Holding their few belongings, they already look displaced and disoriented, at the beginning of a migration journey with no return that is both ‘forced’ and voluntary. At the end of the film we see a similar scene — this time another harbour in another country, where hundreds of men are waiting dressed in their best, some holding flowers and the Greek flag, their faces showing similar feelings to the women at the beginning — anticipation and hope but also concern and fear. In this way the film looks at the social reality of human movements and the hopes and anxieties that they involve.
