In 1943, the young Nikos Davanos sees his house and town destroyed in a German bombardment during the Second World War. Living in utter poverty, he wishes on a star that he might find a better life.
Interviewee: Nikos Davanos
Field Reporter: Fotini Pipina
Producer: Maya Filippopoulou
Sound Designer: Iasonas Theofanou
Sound Editor: Nikolas Tsimplakis
Photos: Dimitris Kokiotis
Music Composer: William Ryan Fritch
Voiceover: Antonis Miriagos
Istorima is the largest project for recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. More than 1,000 young researchers find narrators, listen, collect and preserve stories of people from all over Greece: Stories of their hometowns, stories of love, stories that changed Greece or defined it, modern or old stories. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could be lost in time. It was created by the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of its initiative to Restart and Empower Youth (see more on www.snf.org). More than 20,000 stories are gradually being published in full on www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos, or written stories on www.istorima.org.