Brides, 2004. Film directed by Pantelis Voulgaris. Script: Joanna Karystiani.

Executive Director: Martin Scorcese Introductory Comments Evangelia Tastsoglou Saint Marys University This is the internationally acclaimed film of the Greek director Pantelis Voulgaris in collaboration with the American director Martin Scorcese, with a script by Joanna Karystiani, well known and respected Greek writer. The film is loosely based on real stories of mail-order brides from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkan regions, mostly ethnic Greek from different places not necessarily parts of the Greek kingdom at the time, but also Russian, Armenian, Turkish and others. The 700 brides aboard the SS King Alexander have set out for New York, the New World, where they will be meeting their spouses-to-be who are waiting for them, in arranged matches. The year is 1922, and the impossibility of sustaining any longer the Greek front in Anatolia has become clear in May, when the SS King Alexander sets sail. The last scene of this tragedy is the military debacle and the violent uprooting of the Greek populations of Asia Minor, the process known as the Asia Minor Catastrophe. This ultimate exodus is about to be played out later that summer. The voyage of the film is one of hundreds across the Atlantic in the later part of the 19th and early 20th century, from various Mediterranean and European ports, full of immigrants for the New World. What is unique about some of these trips, like the SS King Alexander, is that they are full of young women who, pushed by poverty and war from their ancestral homelands, are seeking a better life for themselves and their families behind, by marrying men who have already crossed the Atlantic before them and have settled into their new life. The film however is not only about a sea voyage, but also an internal voyage, of people traveling through various emotions, as they leave familiar places and faces behind and are about to embrace new ones. It is about a crossing of geographical borders, but also a crossing of cultural borders and the film masterfully highlights the transition of feelings, the sadness, the doubt, the resignation, the hope, the anticipation, the realization of no return, the mutual learning about and understanding the other although one may still keep on the more familiar side of the border. I do not want to give you the story of the film, nor to comment on its artistic value about which international critics and festivals have already spoken significantly. As a sociologist I will limit myself to making a few, brief comments on transatlantic migration of Greeks in that era, i.e. the early part of the 20th century, and also a few comments about the particular type of migration the film focuses on, i.e. what we might call in contemporary language marriage migration and more specifically mail-order brides. There were about 370,000 Greeks who emigrated to the US alone between 1880-1920 (Tsoucalas, 1982). According to other estimates, this figure reaches 500,000, if one takes into account those arriving from non-Greek territories who, according to the American Census Bureau, were ethnically identified by their place of birth, which could have been Turkey, Egypt, Russia or another European country with large Greek communities. During the same period, immigration to Canada was very limited. According to the Canadian Census the numbers of Greeks in Canada were much smaller, less than 10,000 in 1931, with about half of them born in Canada and rest having emigrated from Greece (Chimbos, 1980). While generally men outnumbered women migrants in the US during that era, with a ratio of men to women standing at 121 to 100, , for Greek immigrants this ratio was 443 to 100 (Vlachos, 1968). This predominantly male composition of the Greek immigrant population is one of the atypical features of early Greek immigration to the US (Tastsoglou and Stubos, 1992). From 1899 to 1910, 95% of the Greek immigrants to the US were men (Saloutos, 1964). In 1920 only 10% of Greeks who migrated to the US were women (Psomiades and Scourby, 1982). The situation in Canada was somewhat different in terms of gender balance, with a ratio of Greek women to men 1:2 approximately. Marriage migration is the type of migration that is associated with getting married and starting a new family. It is not a new type as it has existed historically at least for most of the 19th and 20th centuries. Although it has historically been women who primarily travel and cross borders in order to get married, (reflecting the predominantly male composition of earlier migration movements), this type of migration can involve, and has also involved, men moving for marriage and

family re-unification purposes. Historically, this has been, for example, the case in female-dominated, domestic worker movements (such as that of Greek domestic workers to Canada in the 1950s and 1960s, Tastsoglou, 2009). There is a significant difference between older types of marriage migration and contemporary ones. In more recent times, marriage migration involves marriage being a tool so that people can migrate to desirable destinations (marriage for migration). This does not mean that the marriage is fraudulent, though it can be and Canadian authorities have been increasingly on the alert for marriage fraud. In older times, by contrast, migration itself was the tool so that marriage could take place for women who would otherwise remain unmarried, become old maids and spinsters, and be financial burdens to their families, in eras and cultures where women could not marry without a dowry and could not be financially self-supporting or contributing to the familys economic survival. Migration for marriage then was a family strategy aiming at family survival under scarce resources. In addition to not having to provide a dowry (land or a trousseau) because of migration, the woman who was sent away in order to marry, by family decision (which she dutifully obeyed) was responsible for her siblings and her extended family who could rely on her for occasional relief, sponsorship of other family members, and, less frequently, regular support. One should not lose sight of the fact however that it was marriage that was the desirable goal, not migration. The latter was only the grim and necessary means to achieve the socially desirable status of a married woman in a patriarchal society. Greek culture has historically referred to emigr ation as a calamity, the last resort for the most desperate. As the demotic song and proverbial saying goes: , , , , , (Emigration, becoming an orphan, sorrow and love, all four were weighed, and the heaviest was emigration, authors translation)i. The films brides stories are sad stories and, sometimes, even stories of desperation. Furthermore, the match would be arranged on the basis of photographs exchanged and friend or relative recommendations, and, occasionally, by agents. These were the New Worlds mail- order brides. As the bulk of immigration to New World destinations, including the US, Canada, South America, was primarily male labour migration, the Greek men would eagerly wait for marriage and starting a family till a suitable match from the old country was located and sent to them. This is the backbone and context of the story that unfolds in the Brides. References Chimbos, Peter, D. 1980. The Canadian Odyssey. The Greek Experience in Canada. Toronto: McLelland and Stewart. Psomiades, Harry, J. and Alice Scourby (eds), 1982. The Greek American Community in Transition. NY: Pella Publishing Company.
Saloutos, Theodore. 1964. The Greeks in the United States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tastsoglou, Evangelia, 2009. The Temptations of New Surroundings: Family, State, and Transnational Gender Politics in the Movement of Greek Domestic Workers in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s, in E. Tastsoglou (editor) Women, Gender and Diasporic Lives: Labor, Community and Identity in Greek Migrations, Lanham, M.D.: Lexington Books, 2009, pp. 81-114. Tastsoglou, Evangelia and George Stubos, 1992. The Pioneer Greek Immigrant in the United States and Canada (1880s -1920s): Survival Strategies of a Traditional Family, Ethnic Groups, Vol. 9, pp. 175-189. Tsoucalas, Constantinos. 1982 (Orig. 1975, in French). Dependence and Reproduction. Athens: Themelio (in Greek). Third Edition. Vlachos, Evangelos, G. 1968. The Assimilation of Greeks in the United States. Athens: National Centre for Social Research.

Taken from: http://diasporic.org/2011/01/batsikanis-nikos/%CE%AD%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%B7%CE%BD%CE%B5%CF%82%E2%80%93-%CE%BE%CE%B5%CE%BD%CE%B9%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%AC/. The site was checked on February 28, 2014.