Timothysalmon's Blog

Dhiava: The Autumn Journey(Cirrus Films, 1997)

To buy the DVD click on the title. 

This is the DVD (PAL) of a fifty-minute television documentary made in 1997 with my friend David Hope, who did the photography and editing. Shown on Greek and Swiss TV, it follows the autumn transhumant journey from the mountains to the lowlands of the same Vlach shepherds and their flocks that I wrote about in The Unwritten Places.

Reviews:

“Dhiava: The Autumn Journey is very evocative and does a good job of conveying a sense of the former glory of Balkan transhumance as well as the sad state to which it has sunk today. Tsiogas and Vassilis reminisce colorfully on camera about the dhiava of the past, but ultimately this production is most valuable for portraying certain trends in contemporary Greece, a nation where technology is trumping tradition and transhumance is in a serious state of decline… It is a good film and one that should prove useful for teaching about a number of timely topics including culture change, modern transhumance, ethnic relations in Greece and transnational migration.”

Peter S. Allen, Rhode Island College, for Documentary Educational Resources, Watertown, MA 02472, USA.

“The interplay between the shepherds, whose views are often at odds but who pull together for an extraordinary physical challenge, is but one of the insights of this remarkable film, which records an experience of the bond between men and animals that has been so much a part of the Greek way of life.”

The Anglo-Hellenic Review, no.19.