A queer reading of Alexis Bisticas’s To Harama ( The Dawn ) (1994): from diva citizenship to #MeToo

Abstract

Alexis Bisticas is probably more famous for his short films than his last work, The Dawn (To Harama), his only feature film, as he died of AIDS in 1995. The story follows the emancipation narrative of Vasso, a housewife who discovers her singing talent and liberates herself from an abusive relationship with a bouzoukia singer, Nikos. The movie can be read through a contemporary lens, informed by the recent #MeToo outbreak in Greece, to reveal persistent patterns of violence and exclusion of women from the public domain. The present study engages with The Dawn under a novel guise, incorporating a sexile perspective. Through a brief analysis of central and background narrative elements and lyrics, gendered representations of the mid-nineties Greece are paralleled with contemporary #MeToo struggles. The director’s viewpoint, his relationship with his lead actress, and other identification processes are also highlighted. The analysis concludes with the reappropriation and revaluation of the movie’s emancipatory force, in a Greek context especially reticent to acknowledge valuable attempts for social change. Given the gendered turmoil that has accompanied the post-covid era, the relationship between feminist causes and queer ways of seeing is accentuated as a line of potential convergence against heteropatriarchal dismissal.