Flickr/DigitailWag. Some rights reserved.
Since the signing of the first Economic Adjustment Programme in 2010, a growing number of independent documentaries have been produced and circulated online. At a time when austerity policies had been worsening media production within Greece, and neoliberal media agendas across Europe have been setting the propaganda machine against Greece in motion, documentary production was blooming. What is perhaps even more striking than the growth of independent media (and especially documentary) production is their public availability. Out of 45 documentaries of various lengths currently in the archive #greekdocs, the striking majority (32) are available online for free, for streaming or downloading. This of course creates both opportunities for the enhancing of public debate as well as difficulties in guaranteeing the sustainability of guerrilla documentary which often relies on crowdfunding, but also aims to attract a much bigger audience.
In this short piece, I briefly introduce the archive and contextualise its genesis. Meanwhile, I invite you to participate in the process of archiving by informing me of any documentaries that should be on the archive. Additionally, any ideas on how to improve this activist archive, and what aspects of media distribution under austerity it can support, are very welcome. There are several reasons to be wary of the demise of media under austerity, and plenty of reasons to invent and support alternative media production in spite of austerity.
