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‘Super Paradise’ Follows Mykonos’ Path From Hippie Paradise to Party Island and Billionaires’ Playground
Steve Krikris' documentary traces the transformation of Mykonos from a hippie paradise to a notorious party island and billionaires' playground.
It would be inaccurate to characterize Krikris’ documentary as a lusty romp through the hedonistic heyday of “a scandalous place,” as another of the film’s talking heads describes it; indeed, the director, who spent summers on Mykonos throughout his youth, thoughtfully traces the island’s journey from an impoverished fishing community during the Second World War through its golden age as a hippie enclave in the ’70s, continuing onward to the velvet-roped excesses of today. Based on an original idea by Paul Typaldos, who shares producing credits with Dafni Kalafati, it’s an emotional return to one of the defining places of the filmmaker’s adolescence, the site of endless summers that also marked an “important milestone” by setting him on a course to make movies. Citing Nietzsche, the Greek writer and philosopher Yiorgos Veltsos says “tourism is a leper,” and to back that up, there are no shortage of talking heads in “Super Paradise” to testify that today’s Mykonos is “a supermarket,” “the Wall Street of Greece,” and “a degrading replica of the past.”
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