Loufa Ke Parallaghi

• 1984
• 1 hr 41 mins

• Watchlist

This send-up of the Greek military is especially acerbic and daring because it is set in the year 1967, when a military junta led by Georgios Papadopoulos started to rule the nation with an iron hand. In case an audience might miss the parallels, the lead army conscript is called Papadopoulos (Nicos Kalogeropoulos) and before he donned his army uniform, he was a talented cameraman at Finos Films, the largest movie studio in Greece. Once the army realizes who he is, Papdopoulos is called back from his banishment to an outpost on the Bulgarian border and installed in the Armed Forces television station -- a mistake for the army, it turns out. The conscripts at the station are forced to work on propagandistic news reports, and they translate foreign documentaries on such topics as shearing sheep that even the sheep would find boring. One of the crew at the station is a graduate of the "Tashkent Film School," and was born in the USSR to leftist parents -- his background gains him the nickname of Karamozov and all the scullery work at the station as well. The inventive privates decide to make a pornographic film in English titled "Maid in Greece" so as to have some gainful employment -- and everything is as light-hearted as possible considering that the military junta is about ready to take over and put an end to the creative insubordination.