At the age of fourteen, Vasilis Pisimisis is working various jobs in the commercial area of Piraeus; he knows little about the infamous Troumpa area. He begins to explore it systematically, collecting the fascinating stories of the women and men frequenting this legendary red-light neighbourhood and the cabarets that for some become a place of refuge and for others a living hell.
Interviewee: Vassilis Pisimisis
Interview by: Konstantinos Michail
Producer: Effrosyni Kyriazi
Sound Designer: Dimitris Palaiogiannis
Sound Editor: Nikolas Tsimplakis
Photos: Christos Andropoulos
Translator: Steve Lever
Voiceover: Christos Papadopoulos
Istorima is the biggest project of recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. Over 1,000 young researchers find narrators, listen, collect and save stories of people from all over Greece : Stories of their place, stories of love, stories that changed us or defined us, stories modern or old. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could be lost in time. Istorima is the co-creation of the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding donation from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) as part of his Youth Reboot and Empowerment initiative (learn more at www.snf.org). The more than 20,000 stories are being published in their entirety in stages at www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos or written stories at www.istorima.org