Palikari, Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre

Awards

Best Greek Documentary of 2014 ― 8th annual Doc Fest, Chalkis

Best Original Score in a Documetary ― 8th annual Doc Fest, Chalkis

Official Selection ― Thessaloniki Documentary Festival

Summary

“Palikari” deals with labor relations in early 20th century America, as told through the story of Greek migrant and trade union activist Louis Tikas.

This year marks the centenary of his brutal killing during what acclaimed historian Howard Zinn called the “culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history”.

Director Nikos Ventouras and producer Lamprini Thoma chart the story of the great 1913-1914 coalminers’ strike and Louis Tikas’s murder, as it survives in oral and family traditions, as well as in official history. They interview historians and artists, some of them direct descendants of those striking miners. Labor movement emblem Mother Jones and industrialist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. also make cameo appearances in this palimpsest of memory, struggle and deliverance. Tikas’s story can but reverberate in our time, in view of what is happening with the rights of workers and immigrants around the world.