Parko

In the middle of the neighbourhood of Exarchia in the city of Athens, there is now a bustling park with olive trees, community gardens and playgrounds where just a few years ago a commercial parking lot stood. A few months after the dramatic protests in December of 2008 that were set off when the police shot the 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos dead, residents and activists occupied the location owned by the city. They broke apart the concrete surface and began planting. What was once grey is now a variety of shades of green. Navarinou Park is also an experiment in self-organization and a platform for diverse political, social and cultural activities. Filmed over a period of several months in 2015, Parko by Clara Stella Hüneke (in collaboration with Jonas Eichhorn, Lukas Link and Stella Kalafati) documents the work of the park collective and observes how the daily misery of capitalism and the crisis in Greece is being confronted with a place of joy, exchange and refuge: a microcosm of resistance demanding a “city from below”.

Parko, Clara Stella Hüneke, documentary, DE 2016, 37 min