FILMS   

GARLIC AND WATERMELONS

With the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics just over a year away, forty Gypsy families are forced to abandon their settlement next to the main Olympic stadium so that the land can be used for a parking lot. The film follows Prokopis Nikolau, a produce vendor who lived his entire life in this settlement, as he struggles to find a new home for himself and his family. The local mayor agreed to pay the Roma rent subsidies in exchange for vacating the land, but the money proves elusive and the families are forced to move from place to place due to evictions and sub-standard living conditions. Feeling angry and fooled, Prokopis becomes an unofficial spokesman for the forty families, fighting for both their dignity and the money they were promised. He meets with human rights activists, takes his battle with the mayor to the courts, and shares his story with the international media that descend on Athens in the weeks leading up to the Olympic Games.

CAMERON HICKEY, Co-Director BIO:

Cameron Hickey is a documentary filmmaker, animator, and web-designer living in Philadelphia, PA. He spent 2 years living in Greece leading up to the 2004 Olympic Games working on his first documentary film Garlic & Watermelons. His previous works include animations for Godfrey Reggio's Naqoyqatsi and Steven Cantor's Crossover as well as numerous commercial projects. In addition to developing public service web-tools for documentary filmmakers, Cameron is also currently working on his next film The Alphabet Book with partner Lauren Feeney.

LAUREN FEENEY, Co-Director BIO:

Lauren Feeney was born in Philadelphia in 1976. She studied non-fiction creative writing and photography at Bard College in New York and worked at several news and literary journals before finding her way into the world of documentary filmmaking. Lauren was an assistant producer for the Miramax production Naqoyqatsi and producer of The Making of Naqoyqatsi. Garlic and Watermelons is her first feature-length film.