Popular-Culture stories.
A documentary series by Nikos Triantafyllidis.

Summer 1953. In the aftermath of post-war Greece, survivors of the civil war live under the pressures of poverty, deprivation, and fear of political persecutions. Young people roam the neighborhoods of Athens seeking hope for the future and dreaming of a better life.

On a long narrow shack on Sarri Street, Simos Tsapnidis sets up his tent workshop. He is "raw," inherently generous, free-spirited, and handsome. He despises taboos and conventions, shaping his future through the doctrine of "Live each day as best you can, as long as you don't bother your neighbor." Simos reads Sartre, plays supporting roles in films of the era portraying marginalized characters, and passionately embraces new ideas and art. The shack quickly and "fatefully" transforms into the space from which springs forth a raw youth movement: that of the Greek existentialists.

The youth of the time, children of working-class families for the most part, respond to this unprecedented call and flock to Simos' "flying shack" swaying with dance, song, and youthful madness, which playfully winks at conservative Greek society. They wear their jackets inside out, with reggae replacing the conventional tie.

Simos the leader, Joe the philosopher, Andreas the lover, Pete the artist, John the unconventional, along with Haris, Fofi, Lilian, Beba, and many others, engage in an unprecedented "unlocking of the soul" in defiance of every dictate of respectability. The legendary parties, excursions, and philanthropies of the existentialists occupied the headlines with the "existential risk of youth corruption" testing the authoritarian reflexes of the State, leading to trials of the existentialists and the ultimate closure of the shack in 1956.

Today, the shack is a private parking lot. Yet Andreas Dimitropoulos (Vice President of the Diogenes Existentialist Association), Panos Koutroubousis (Artistic Director of the Diogenes Existentialist Association), Theodore Pangalos, Haris Papadimitriou (existentialist, Director of Ankara Publications), Panagiotis Kounadis (musicologist), and the other regulars of the "flying shack" take on the role of guiding us through its secrets, inviting us to an anniversary existentialist party.