The screening of a gay themed documentary at the First Documentary Festival in Chalkida caused many rude remarks and comments by school students

It was surprising how successful the first documentary festival in Chalkida was(10-14/10/07). More exactly the organisers were caught unawares, because they did not expect such a massive inflow of schools at the morning screenings which is more known as the "dead zone" between 10.00 and 13.00. There were schools attending not only from CHalkida but from other parts of Euboia as well such as Aliberi and Kymi.

The packed houses goes to show that there is a great part of rural Greece, especially its youth, that are thirsty for movies. It was discovered that several of the third grade high schoolers were upset by the documentary "Chip and Ovy" by Panagiotis Evaggelidis which is about the homoerotic relationship between two disabled boys that grew up in an orphanage. There were rude comments. The documentary caught the young students unawares who were not used to such "advanced material" as the artistic director of the festival, Stabros Ioannoy, commented. He says that had he known about the school's attendance he would have altered the program.

What should have preceded the screening is perhaps a discussion between the teachers and the students so they would have been better prepared but for something like this to happen the teachers must have been made aware of the content of the film.

Giannis Zoumpoulakis