Lost Monument

Lost Monument takes upon a controversial monument, a 4 meter bronze statue of former American president Harry S. Truman. The monument is located in downtown Athens, Greece, next to the historic triangle of the Acropolis, Greek Parliament and Panathinaiko Stadium.

Ever since its erection in 1963 as a commemoration to the Truman Doctrine, the monument has been a favorite target of citizens wishing to express their opposition to the very idea of placing a US president’s statue in the capital city of a country whose civil war was decided thanks to that very president’s intervention.

During the film, the statue is discovered by two farmers in a field and it seems impossible to identify who the man of the statue is. Moreover it has no value, which is obviously why it was thrown away. From that moment on, the statue begins a journey, almost like another Ulysses, which sends it to several different sceneries in Greece and Turkey where the individuals involved have no knowledge about the statue and eventually want to get rid of it.

The statue in the movie is more than just a prop or a protagonist, it becomes a representation of an unidentified moment in History and therefore it’s status as an art object reveals itself anew.

The title applies throughout the movie a feeling of loss and misunderstanding. Something that becomes even more vivid in the last scene where the real position and identity of the monument is unveiled.

More than anything else, Lost Monument is an allegory and a metaphor over a particular political moment in Greece’s and Europe’s contemporary history but at the same time deals with issues of culture and politics in an effort to question the dual nature of Monuments as representations of power and as works of art at the same time. —Stefanos Tsivopoulos

This short film formed part of the program for the Hors Piste at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.