Kalymnos & the last sponge-divers of the Aegean
Danger and defying death has its own beauty for some people. It is grand and courageous. The Kalymnian sponge divers start when they are eighteen and devote their lives till they are thirty-five to their difficult and tough profession. In this documentary, filmmaker Demetres Anagnostopoulos takes a brave dive into the "sponge job" as Kalymnians call it, including all the factors that linked this profession to an entire island and this unique human race. Starting from Kalymnos, their island, and its surroundings, the boat yards where they built their boats, the traditional ways of sponge diving and the testimonies of the protagonists, captains and divers hit by the divers' disease, and moving on to show the sponge manufacture, the world-unique museum where they guard their tradition, and the folklore artists who chronicle it in their own way.
