Super Athens is a documentary essay film structured around rehearsals of selected parts of scenes from Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles. These were filmed around Athens and the port of Piraeus. In place of the choruses of the Greek tragedy are interviews conducted in Athens with three Palestinians, a journalist from Gaza, a poet and an activist. In addition to these three interviews in Athens are interviews conducted remotely with writers, psychoanalysts and intellectuals about ways of connecting the tragedy by Sophocles with what the filmmaker contends is the ongoing genocide of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The filmmaker visits the Athens’ section of the Gaza Biennale and speaks with the curator about the artworks and her own experience of working with artists in the midst of a genocide. A score of techno music composed by the Greek composer Anthony P for the film and a dance performance by dancer/performer Maria Vourou choreographed by Sofia Mavragani repeatedly return and powerfully bind the film together. Through the importance of the work of Freud for the de-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon, the film illuminates the importance historically of Freud’s conceptualization of antisemitism in Europe for Fanon’s theorization of anti-colonial resistance.

I have had the opportunity to make in Athens and elsewhere in Greece over the last ten years projects in the media arts that seek to generate reflections on reading the ancient literature, history and philosophy of Greece in the light of current debates around immigration that will in turn lead to political activism. As an extension of this work, when Netanyahu declared that in the future Israel would be Super Sparta, I decided in solidarity with the Palestinian people to make the essay film Super Athens. In the prologue I point out that Netanyahu’s statement draws on a long tradition within Europe since the end of the 19th century of portraying Ancient Greece as the origin of a white European race destined to colonize the rest of the world. In contrast to this, I point to the interpretation of Ancient Greek culture, particularly of Greek tragedy originating in Athens, as an important site for what I call, quoting Jacques Derrida, the irruption of the voice of the other. It is this interpretation that I argue is intrinsic to the fight against fascism that I evoke in solidarity with the people of Gaza.