Abstract

Salonika provides a case study to examine the significance of public memory and the social power of film. Using the pieces of a story that did not get selected, from a silent history that has been disregarded, and to consider this from a documentary that has not been made, my approach is theoretical. This multi-ethnic, polyglot city under Ottoman rule for 500 years, only became the Greek city of Thessaloniki in 1913 by establishing an official version of history that relegated all “other” voices to the margins. By considering what happens when we collect the edited out bits of the story, and how an erased public memory can be retrieved through the use of artifacts, specifically to be brought into the public realm through the creation of a documentary that looks for the presence of the absence, I consider the ethical implications of reinserting these voices.