All posts by Dimitra Kouzi

Lie to Me Interview with Bår Tyrmi and Dag Mykland

by Dimitra Kouzi

Bår Tyrmi, director and co-editor, ‘Lie to me’

Dag Mykland, producer and co-director, ‘Lie to me’

Dimitra Kouzi: What initially drew you to the story of the OneCoin scam?
Dag Mykland (D): It’s actually quite a story. I remember the date well. It was 6 June 2020, and I was walking to the office, when I got a phone call from an unknown number. I picked up, and this guy just told me: ’My name is Bjørn Bjercke. I’ve sent you two messages on LinkedIn. Google me, and I’ll call you back in 20 minutes.’ I remember thinking: ‘Who the hell is this?’

Bår Tyrmi (B): Yes, I remember you phoned me just after that. We both googled and decided this was extremely interesting.

D: That phone call sent us straight down the OneCoin rabbit hole! 

Bjørn Bjercke is a central character. How did you gain his trust and convince him to participate in the documentary?

B: We had previously made two other feature docs on blockchain technology: 'The Bitcoin Experiment' in 2015 and 'The Code of Trust' in 2019. They both screened on the national broadcaster NRK, and Bjørn had watched them. He liked our approach to the technology and how we  made documentaries. He basically chose us to make the film about his story.

D: It was how we portrayed and explained crypto technology that caught his attention. I guess making hundreds of movies for educational purposes back in the day really paid off.

'Lie to Me' follows Bjørn Bjercke for over three years. What were the biggest challenges in capturing his journey in terms of your or other people’s safety? Did you as filmmakers ever feel unsafe or under threat?

D: Bjørn has received serious threats to himself and his family, and is still living at a secret address. This meant we could never disclose the real locations when filming, and we had to keep the shooting dates and places secret.

B: I remember meeting Jamie Bartlett with Bjørn in London. He is the journalist behind the award-winning BBC podcast 'The Missing Cryptoqueen,' and has been researching the OneCoin case for years. He had his doubts whether Bjørn was exaggerating the security issues. But after Jamie started receiving threats himself, he told us he was so happy to be protected by the BBC. That made him think how brave Bjørn was to stand up to these people.

D: We have not received threats. But when we went to the Stockholm event in 2022 and confronted the OneCoin leaders, they were quite angry with us for spreading 'lies.' But it’s really Bjørn, Jonatan, Duncan, Layla, Daniel, and Amjad who have been the brave ones. And for us as documentarists, such discoveries are golden!

How did you distinguish the truth from all those lies while doing the research? 

D: That is really difficult because the information about OneCoin comes from so many different sources: social media, blogs, online newspapers, court documents, emails, chat groups… There are so many stakeholders. Some want to clear their name, some want their money back, some want to keep on scamming, some want to bring criminals to justice. They all have their own side to the story.

B: You have to double-check the information.  When the same facts appear in different places, different sources and stakeholders, you can kind of conclude that they are true. It’s very time-consuming, and you can never be one hundred per cent sure that what you’ve found is true. You have to go for what is plausible and most likely to be true.

D: I remember us saying, 'It’s hard to spot a scam in a room full of liars.' That was our working motto while researching this story. But after working on it for more than three years, we have formed quite a good picture of what really happened.

The film explores the psychology behind the scam. Can you elaborate on the specific techniques used by OneCoin to manipulate investors?

D: The people behind OneCoin were very clever; you have to give it to them. It was the first scam that really combined crypto with multi-level marketing. At a scale never seen before. Erica says in our film, 'Not only are you gonna get rich, but if you get your friend to invest, you'll get loads more money, and if you get other people to invest, you'll get lots more money.' It really hit people in a psychological weak spot. That, combined with the insecurity and hype around Bitcoin’s  investment potential – it really hit hard.

B: The combination of social psychology with branding, group and cult mentality, and prospects of getting rich quick was brilliant. If you just add a bit of scarcity or exclusivity to it, it creates a massive FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s all very emotional; it gets you hooked. And that cocktail spread like wildfire.

In terms of storytelling, can you elaborate on the specific techniques used to build the story? 
B: A challenge with ‘Lie to Me’ was that it is a complex, multi-character story. It stretches over a period of eight years, and the starting point of the film is in the middle of that timeline. But to fully understand who these people are and the plot, we take leaps forward and backward in time… We worked a lot with the narrative structure, when to provide and when to withhold information. Our editor, Jo Eldøen, has really done a fantastic job structuring the film.

We wanted to keep our audience in suspense throughout the 90 minutes, and make them feel the same way as we did while we worked with the film. When we thought we knew where the story was going, a new surprise would pop up out of nowhere. It is a real rollercoaster!

That emotionality was one of the things we tried to bring to the film through the use of archive footage and graphics.

D: It’s been a thrilling ride for sure. We also worked with the scriptwriter Siw Rajendram Eliassen as a consultant for the narrative. She really helped us figure out the main sentences of what we were looking into. That helped us when we had to make decisions on the fly.

B: I remember her saying, 'Somebody has to die in the fourth act.'

Does anyone die?

D: I guess you have to watch the film to find out.

The banker Duncan Arthur, a former OneCoin insider, is also featured. How did his perspective contribute to the film's narrative?


D: Duncan has been extremely important for the film. On one hand, he gave us a lot of inside information we could use to verify the actual story. He also made us realise that this story is kind of a tragedy for everybody involved, including the people behind it. Everybody loses on a scam like this.

On the other hand, his dubious persona impersonates the OneCoin scam, in a way. He’s selling, funny, open, and you kind of want to trust him – but can you?

The documentary highlights the international reach of the OneCoin scam. How did you approach filming across different countries?

B: The OneCoin scam is global, so we soon realised we would have to travel. We would research online, and reach out to people that had expressed interesting views in chat rooms or online publications. Sometimes it would take months to get a reply. A lot of people have been hesitant to participate. It is quite an undertaking to come forward in a case like this. It was also challenging because we never offered sign-off fees to participate in our film as many other production companies do. We wanted people to talk with us for the right reasons.

D: But when a person finally agreed, we would act fast to secure the shoot before they change their mind. This has been quite risky, economically, because we are a small production company on a low budget. Luckily most trips ended in solid stories and have ended up in the final edit.

'Lie to Me' is troubling because the scam persists despite being exposed. What do you hope viewers will learn from this aspect of the story?


B: Even if it can be shameful to realise that you have been scammed, it is never too late to pull out. Too many people continue just because they do not want to realise that they have been wrong.

D: It’s sad to hear and see all these people who have lost money but still have hope. I guess when you’re too far down a scam like this, it’s sometimes easier to accept another lie than to face the truth.

You mentioned the film utilises graphics and archive footage. Can you give some examples of how you chose them and how  these elements enhance the storytelling?

B: We wanted to reflect some of the tackiness and larger-than-life nature of the whole OneCoin environment in the visual style of the film. The OneCoin people live on lies, and that is reflected in how they present themselves. Gold, champagne, fast cars, Hollywood glam… but in a tacky way. This has inspired us in choosing the archive and the use of stock footage, and editing the sequences as compact film trailers.

D: Internally, we have referred to the archive sequences as 'film-poems.' We are not so concerned to illustrate exactly what the different persons in the film are talking about, but more about finding the feeling and deeper message in what they say.

The production spanned three and a half years. Were there any surprising discoveries or developments during filming? 

D: Too many! Basically we set out to make a retrospective film about a fake cryptocurrency already exposed as a scam, with the people behind it in jail or missing. Yet we ended up following an ongoing scam for more than three years… so the film was full of surprising discoveries for us. Even now, there’s new developments in the case against the leaders of OneCoin. This story never ceases to surprise us.

How did you work together as the  film’s two directors? 

B: Dag and I have been working together for almost 15 years, and for the last 10 years we have run the Hacienda production house together. In most productions, we cooperate on scriptwriting, production, directing, and editing. We have a saying that no ideas are too small, irrelevant, or crazy to be discussed.

Investigative documentaries are hard and expensive to make. What would make your work easier? 

D: We’re lucky to have a wide range of funding opportunities in Norway. But working with investigative documentaries, the lines between development stage and production are often blurry. It’s an ongoing process and story, and you never know what comes next – you simply have to be aware and throw yourself at what you believe is important to catch on camera. We all know shooting days are expensive, and I believe having access to more of the film’s total budget earlier in the process would make it easier and less financially risky for small production houses such as Hacienda. However, I must also give credit to some of the consultants at Norwegian Film institute and Sørnorsk Film Centre, who have been with us in every step. Especially how they are so open and helpful in creating the best story by adjusting budget, production plan, partnering in narrative and plot-talks along the way.

The documentary has already been acquired by TVE, NRK, SVT, and Al Jazeera. What is your vision for the film's future?

D: We hope the film can be screened in more festivals in North and South-America, Europe, and Asia. The topic is global, so I hope it would attract an audience that either wants to watch it or perhaps needs to watch it.

The ambition is that when financial opportunities like OneCoin or any other scheme come along, you’re able to see the red flags and keep away.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently in making this documentary?

B: There are always many things that could have been done differently. We should have aimed for a higher budget to allow ourselves more time in post-production. And there were some leads and possible shoots that we had to cancel for financial or risk reasons… Looking back, it would have made the film even more global.

'Lie to Me' goes beyond simply exposing a scam. What is the larger message you want audiences to take away?

D: If something looks like a rat, walks like a rat, and smells like a rat… it is probably a rat.

B: There are a lot of people and organisations that want our attention, time, money, and endorsement. We all need to be aware of the red flags. If something looks or sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Interview by ‘Silent Trees’ Director, Agnieszka Zwiefka, to Dimitra Kouzi

Dimitra Kouzi: You were impressively confident from the beginning about what you were doing, in a situation which was utterly chaotic. How was that? What drew you to Runa’s story?

Agnieszka Zwiefka: I try to follow impulses, instincts in my work. When I heard about the refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, I had an impulse to just go there. I had no idea whom I would meet and what story I would find. We started to volunteer in a refugee camp. I remember when I saw Runa and her family for the first time. They had just arrived, and their mother was still alive, in a hospital. I felt this impulse yet again. To follow them, especially Runa as a teenage girl. I immediately understood that showing the refugee crisis through the eyes of the refugee children is the most powerful way to tell this story. After all, they are the ones affected the most by this humanitarian crisis. From the moment I met Runa I knew she should be the main protagonist. She had this unbelievable strength in her, this silent resilience. I think it was love at first sight. I believe that you need to fall in love at first sight with your protagonist.

Dimitra Kouzi: You left your hometown, your daughters, who are teenagers, and went far away to the border to help. Is this how you normally operate?

No, I’d say it was a state of emergency in a way. Me and my friends in Poland were shocked by what was going on at the border – the refugee crisis we knew from the Mediterranean suddenly was ‘next door’. But what was even more shocking was the reaction of the Polish government, which immediately restricted access to these people. Volunteers, medical aid, journalists, no one was allowed to enter, no one was allowed to help. And for me, that was so inhuman that I knew I had to do something about it. I guess deep inside I’m a punk. And whenever someone tells me not to go somewhere, it becomes very tempting to actually go there, to tell the untold stories. So that was the beginning.

DK: When you met the family, you immediately started filming. We all know how difficult it is to gain the trust of somebody we want as a protagonist. How did that work out, with the DOP, the camera?

AZ: I’m always very honest with my protagonists. I told the family I was not going to be there for a week, or two, or a month. It’s a long, long journey together. I used the help of an interpreter through the phone, so they were aware of what I was planning to do. But we were filming without the support of an interpreter, following our instincts. Later, when we translated the footage, we discovered that in most cases our instincts were correct. I also choose my crew very carefully. My DOP, Kacper Czubak, is a very kind and empathetic person. On an everyday basis, it was just me and him.

Establishing a bond with documentary characters usually takes a long time and requires patience, trust. I am always prepared for that. But in this case, it all happened very quickly. I guess being together with someone during the most traumatic events of their lives creates this bond very quickly. We were together with them at the very moment they learned about their mother’s death. We cried together. Of course, we didn’t film everything. We tried to carefully choose what to film and what not to film. And this is also one of the methods of working in such situations. But just being with them in this groundbreaking moment in their lives, created a much stronger and deeper bond.

DK: On one hand, you are empathetic and on the other hand you need to create scenes, to find these moments which will enable you to build the story. How do you deal with these issues and the ethical questions involved?

AZ: One issue was that we filmed in a language we didn’t speak. We didn’t have an interpreter on set because access to this refugee camp was restricted. But I think intuition helped us. There is an international language of emotions. In some of the scenes with Runa and her father, we didn’t know what was being said, but we could sense it was important. That was the biggest challenge. You need to develop another sense to pick up these elements. Baravan, Runa’s father, is an amazing protagonist because he is totally sincere. He never tries to pretend, to be someone else. He’s the first protagonist of any of my films that completely doesn’t have any mask on; he wears his heart on his sleeve. That also helped us to have a little light in the darkness we were filming in, because it was really filming in the darkness.

DK: What other challenges did you face during filming?

AZ: Filming the most emotionally difficult moments – especially the mother’s funeral. They actually asked us to film it. I was filming it myself and I remember I wasn’t even sure if the footage was in focus or not because my eyes were so full of tears. I didn’t know what to do, grab the kids and hug them, or film the scene, which was very important for the story. This kind of schizophrenia, I think, is embedded in every work of a documentary film director that touches upon tragedies, traumas, dramatic events, because we have to be at the same time a psychologist who knows how to approach people and open them up, a friend who is there to support, an ‘engineer’ who takes care of the film’s construction, and an artist who has a vision. A lot to handle.

DK: You must also be distanced, not emotionally involved.

AZ: But very often it’s the friend who wins. And that’s when we put the camera away. I always try to explain why we need to film some scenes. It got better with time because the kids started to understand first English, then Polish. Now we have a fluent communication. In fact, they watched the film last week.

DK: That’s also another crucial moment, when they watch the film.

AZ: It was an amazing evening for us because Runa was enchanted by the animations. And when she saw her drawings come alive, she had her mouth wide open and told me, ‘That’s exactly how it was in my head.’

DK: Nice! What is the message you hope the audience will get by watching ‘Silent Trees’?

AZ: I wanted to show the human face of the refugee crisis. Not numbers, not distant stories. Now the European Union is debating legalising pushbacks. That means that people will be sent through the freezing forests, through the Mediterranean, back to their home countries because some bureaucratic system decides so. I wanted to give voice to the people that very often don’t have a voice.

DK: How did you work with animators to balance and bring Runa’s feelings to life?

AZ: The reason we created these animated parts was to enable the audience to see the world through Runa’s eyes, to enter her mind and experience the world through her imagination. Of course, animations are not realistic; they give us the possibility of creating worlds that don’t exist. But we based them very strongly on Runa’s drawings. She had a sketchbook filled with disturbing images, such as trees swallowing people and spitting out bones, a girl sitting on the verge of an abyss. We wanted to bring these images to life. I knew that this world, the sub-world of the film, had to be black and white, harsh but sometimes also poetic. We were visually inspired by Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel ‘Persepolis,’ which also uses a young girl’s perspective. Our animation studio, Yellow Tapir, is one of the top studios in Poland. They were very engaged with the film because of its subject matter, as they were also shocked by the refugee crisis. They studied Runa’s drawings, and we slowly developed a style based on them.

The way we worked on combining the two layers of the film is that we first filmed all the documentary scenes and only then started to work on animation. We were looking for documentary scenes that could lead into the animated world, places where animations can add something, at the same time taking care of their rhythm.

DK: You often focus on girls and women, on the female perspective. Is it a statement you want to make by telling their stories?

AZ: I think women are still not portrayed in films enough, and if they are, they are often shown as victims only. One could argue that Runa is also a victim of circumstance, yet she’s so powerful and strong, being the leader of her family and taking care of her brothers and father. This is why I fell in love with her as a documentary character, because of this strength inside her. I want to tell stories about strong women. But there is also another topic I am a bit obsessed with: outsiders. Actually, all my films in one way or another showed people outside of the mainstream – whether it’s a gypsy community (‘The Queen of Silence,’ 2014), female fighters from Tamil Tigers, an organisation designated as terrorist (‘Scars,’ 2020), or an elderly DJ (‘Vika!,’ 2023). The elderly are often outsiders as well. And Runa, as a refugee, is an outsider in our society. I think this comes from the fact that I also used to be an outsider. I was a migrant child as well, I emigrated with my family to the USA. It wasn’t the same situation Runa faces, but I found myself in a completely different world with no familiar ground beneath me. I think I empathise with people who are in situations like that. I understand what it’s like to suddenly have your life as you know it radically end.

DK: You also tell stories about stateless nations.

AZ: Yes. Roma, Tamils, Kurds…  They are also outsiders wherever they go. The need for a home is something that is very much present in my films. I think home is a basic human need, and Runa is willing to sacrifice everything to build a home for her brothers.

DK: What other aspect binds your main characters together throughout your body of work in your perspective as an artist?

AZ: I look for protagonists who have light inside them, this kind of light that shines even in total darkness. But it’s always a subconscious choice. It’s not like I set out to do an anthology about specific groups or countries. I think it’s intuition, really.

DK: Do you plan to continue making documentaries, in addition to the fiction film you are currently preparing?

AZ: Honestly, I think this is my last documentary.

DK: You’re a successful documentary filmmaker with a unique style, and now you’re venturing into fiction. Why abandon documentaries?

AZ: Because it’s just too demanding psychologically. I find myself deeply affected by the stories and characters I follow. My filmmaking process involves staying connected, not disconnecting, from the world I portray even after the editing is finished. This constant exposure to trauma is psychologically draining. We, documentary film directors, while not experiencing the same level of trauma as the victims of the conflicts we cover, are still affected by it. When you accumulate this over years and years, at some point it becomes too much. This story with Runa nearly broke me, especially being with the children on the day their mother died.

DK: Why did they ask you to film the mother’s funeral?

AZ: Their future was quite uncertain, and films can sometimes change people’s lives for the better. I don’t believe that we can solve global problems and humanitarian crises. But we can help individuals. And they felt that bringing attention to their fate, their tragedy can help them be more secure in Poland.

DK: Do you always work with the same team – the same cinematographer, editor, and composer?

AZ: Choosing a team is crucial. It’s like a marriage, working with the same people for many years as we always do in observational feature-length documentaries. With Kacper Czubak, my DOP, it’s our second film together, and we already have some new plans. But I am also open to new collaborations – as in the case of our composer. We are very lucky to have Niklas Paschburg on board. He is a very well-known musician, a true star of the arthouse music scene.

DK: What creative choices did you make about the music?

AZ: We wanted it to be subtle, minimalistic, and to evoke emotions. Through simple sounds, we wanted to make our audience feel the pain or the joy our protagonists are experiencing. It was more about subtracting than adding.

DK: How is Runa today? How is she today, how are things with her family, her father, and brothers?

AZ: Most of the film was shot in 2022. The situation is basically the same as you see at the end of the film. They have received temporary asylum. Runa is still going to school. Now she speaks perfect Polish. She still wants to become a lawyer.

Time heals, so they are a bit better now, but still moments come when this forest just enters Runa’s head, and I can see her disconnecting from the world around her. It’s a trauma that will keep on hitting back for years, if not for ever.

The film ‘Silent Trees’ is having its World Premiere at CPH:DOX in March 2024 and the Polish Premiere at Krakow Film Festival in May 2024.

passage to Europe 

Published in Greek in the local newspaper “To Galaxidi” March 2021[1]

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Save the date: 27 August 2021 Galaxidi

Film Screening: of passage to Europe by Dimitra Kouzi, WINNER for Best documentary, at the San Francisco Greek Film Festival 2021, Special Jury Award Documentary at the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival

Both by luck and design, a privileged choice, dictated by the pandemic, to stay in Galaxidi since late August 2020, offered us the pleasure for an even more unique in-person world premiere for my film, Good Morning Mr Fotis![2]Being in Galaxidi throughout this period gave us another blessed opportunity – to enjoy a swim in the sea almost every single day throughout the winter![3]

Everyone who was there at the October 2020 screening expressed their wish for something more.[4]

A few short hours after the screening, Mit[5] wrote a very helpful, to me, article/review, titled ‘Hosting Refugee Children in Greece’.[6]

The public’s response in Galaxidi, Mit’s review on the morning following the screening, a 5 month tutorial with him and later Tue's Steen Müller’s review, (two months later), prompted me to create a new film, during the lock-down.[7]

passage to Europe was selected to be screened at the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival on 10–20 May and at the Greek Film Festival in Berlin on 1–6 June (both events online).[8] The first live in-person screening in Greece will take place at Galaxidi on Saturday 27 August.[9]

Mit's text might very well have been subtitled: ‘A guided tour to the new Athens’. Viewers, including the Greeks who don’t live in the city centre nor pass by Vathi Square, where the film is set, embark on a kind of a ‘journey’ out of their bubble and to this neighbourhood, which has dramatically transformed in the last ten years. The area is now almost exclusively inhabited by immigrants and refugees. This is a common occurrence in many European cities, but in the suburbs;[10] here, it has happened in the very heart of the city. It is the neighborhood that is the context in which the story takes place, that creates the conditions, that made me think and make a film. My own setting, my environment, is what determines the conditions of my life; it gave me the opportunity to think about making a film; yet my broader environment in Greece was definitely not what helped me turn my vision into reality – or will help me to make my next film. 

The issue of a lack of a conducive framework often arises in our discussions. We are lucky here in Galaxidi to have a reference to a very specific and easy to grasp framework once in place in the village – a framework developed by seamen, which was the differentiating factor for Galaxidi. What would these seamen say after the second screening, in August 2021, sipping their coffee in the three cafes (Krikos/Hatzigiannis/Kambyssos) on the Galaxidi port? 

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Mit argues that in the 70 minutes of the original film there was not a strong enough link to the refugee issue,[11]especially for Northern European viewers who are not immediately aware of the connection, but will certainly face the issue eventually, as it is in Northern Europe that almost all the children in Good Morning Mr Fotis dream of living in ten years’ time.[12]

So my goal was to condense the action and highlight the immigration issue. Mit proposed me to give the film an open ending which I did without any further filming taking place. Mr Fotis should not be alone in carrying the load, when every year he welcomes a new class of children of multiple nationalities, often with non-existent Greek, making us complacent and creating the illusion that, as long as there are teachers like Mr Fotis, everything is fine. For the different end I used black and white pictures by Dimitris Michalakis.

Shorter durations are more ‘portable’. They afford much more freedom. It’s like travelling light.[13] Evaluation – what goes out, what goes in – is hard and puts you to the test, as it requires exacting standards and constant decisions. In passage to Europe, as the new film is called, the beginning changes, the end changes, and the duration decreases (from 70ʹ to 48ʹ). 

In fact, all children wish to leave for countries that do not have their own ‘Lesbos islands’, writes Mit (10/26/2020). This adds moral value to Greece’s efforts, he adds. He supposes that pupils may well take for granted what Fotis does (he agrees on this with Tue Steen Müller from Denmark and his review of the film);[14] viewers do, too, I add. At the same time, we all wonder, ‘Why aren’t there more people like Fotis?’ 

passage to Europe deals with the issue of immigration in the light of social integration, with respect for diversity, not in theory but in practice. 

Fotis Psycharis has been a teacher at a public school in the heart of Athens for 30 years. The majority of his students, as in the wider region, are children of immigrants and refugees from Africa, the former Soviet Union, the Balkans, the Middle East and Asia, who often see Greece as an inevitable stopover to other countries of Europe. Cultural differences, the lack of a common language, the overcoming of these challenges, Ramadan, Bollywood, the unexpected things that occur during rehearsals for the performance they are preparing to mark their graduation from primary school, the children’s dreams and insecurity for the future, all make up a unique everyday reality in this class, which consists of 17 students from 7 different countries. Aimed at an adult audience, the film provides a rare opportunity to experience life in a public school in today's Greece, which is a host country for immigrants and refugees.

It is an observational documentary. Both Mit and Tue agree on that. I observe a reality that makes me think. What does it mean to grow up in two cultures, in a country other than where you were born? What can we learn from similar cases in history? To create the present, Mit says, one must go back to the past, and from there to the future. To create the future it takes creativity in the present, rather than taking comfort in the past, I believe.  What does that mean for a place such as Galaxidi, a formerly vibrant shipbuilding, ship-owning, and seafaring town? 

In early 2017, when I started making my film Good Morning Mr Fotis, I was planning for it to be 20 minutes long, reasoning that ‘smaller’ meant ‘safer’. I sought to obtain a filming permit from the Greek Ministry of Education to film in the school.[15] However, I went on to shoot a lot of more good material. So much so that it is enough for a third film, if only funding is secured.[16]

During making passage to Europe, things happened that can only happen when you actually do something. Now I think, combine, see differently, take more risks. I have my gaze fixed on this issue, which seems to have fallen out of the news[17] but is bound to return with a vengeance, aggravated by the pandemic. In mid-March 2021, Turkey-Germany negotiations resumed,[18] with the former demanding compensation in order to continue to ‘keep’ refugees outside of the EU.[19]

I feel grateful for making this journey in space and time together with Fotis and for capturing this moment on film twice.  It's a diary, a proposal to look at a story that concerns us all in Europe. In the film, one school year ends and the next one begins. Yet, it doesn’t come full circle and end with the end credits. My intention was for it to be an open circle, a relay, encouraging viewer interpretations, continuities, thought and action.

Dimitra Kouzi
Galaxidi, March 2021


[1] Translated into English by Dimitris Saltabassis

[2] I would like to thank all viewers who showed up at the Youth House on 25/10/2020 to watch my film, Good Morning Mr Fotis, an audience of some 35 indomitable persons who braved the fact that the screening was ‘al fresco’ in the courtyard in the evening, with social distancing and masks, in a freezing maistros (mistral, the north-westerly wind). Not only that, but they stayed on after the screening for a lively Q & A! For me, this was a magical moment, and I would like to thank everyone who was part of our audience – an indispensable element to a creator! Even more so during a time such as this, when everything takes place online! I was fortunate to show my film to people most of whom have known me since I was a child, and my parents and grandparents, too.

[3] ‘Sure, the sea is cold,’ is the standard reply – and that’s precisely what makes a brief winter swim (5–15’) so beneficial! Let alone how great you feel after you pass this test! 

[4] Good Morning Mr Fotis, documentary, 70', Greece, 2020, written, directed, and produced by Dimitra Kouzi • goodmorningmrfotis.com, Good Morning Mr Fotis: Greek Film Centre Docs in Progress Award 2019 21st Thessaloniki Documentary Festival • Youth Jury Award 2020, 22nd Thessaloniki Documentary Festival • Selected to be nominated for IRIS Hellenic Film Academy Award 2021 for Βest Documentary. 

[5] Mit Mitropoulos, Researcher, Environmental Artist, Akti Oianthis 125, 332 00  Galaxidi, Municipality of Delphi [email protected].

[6] ‘Hosting Refugee Children in Greece’, To Galaxidi newspaper, November 2020.

[7] This ‘discussion’, which could only take place thanks to the fact that both I and Mit were constantly in Galaxidi due to the pandemic, was the main reason why I decided to make passage to Europe.

[8]  Earlier on, the film was screened at the San Francisco Greek Film Festival on 16–24 April 2021.

[9] passage to Europe, documentary film, 48ʹ, Greece, 2021. Written, Directed, and Produced by Dimitra Kouzi ([email protected], at the moment Parodos 73, 33 200  Galaxidi, Municipality of Delphi).

[10] Jenny Erpenbeck (author), Susan Bernofsky (translator), Go, Went, Gone, Portobello Books, London 2017. Set in Berlin, where immigrants and refugees have also been received, the book is based on a large number of interviews with immigrants and their stories. The main character is a solitary retired university professor, recently widowed and childless. One day he suddenly ‘discovers’ the existence of refugees in his city; through the fellowship that develops and the help he gives them, he finds new meaning in his life, which seemed to be over when he retired.

[11] The refugee/immigrant issue will historically always be topical – all the more so now that the revision of the EU policy is pending, which was transferred to the Portuguese Presidency that took over from the German one on 1/1/2021.  It is one of the most hotly contested issues facing Europe at a time when there are member states that call for ‘sealing off’ Europe to refugees and immigrants and only accepting people of specific ethnicities, cultures, and religions, according to Santos Silva, Portugal’s foreign minister (Financial Times, 2/1/2021, p.2).

[12] What’s striking to me is that refugee children wish to leave Greece for the very same reasons that Greek young people do: due to the lack of a framework.

[13] Like sailors, who never have a lot of stuff in their cabins. 

[14] filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4887, 25/1/2021

[15] The film Good Morning Mr Fotis was not funded by the Ministry of Education. I addressed a registered letter to the Minister, Niki Kerameos, on 4/2/2021, to inform her about the film and to suggest that Fotis Psycharis be honoured for his overall contribution as a teacher. I have not received a response nor has Fotis received any acknowledgement of his work – at a time when the need for teacher evaluation is increasingly felt.

[16]  See article footnote 5.

[17] In early March 2020, some 7,000 persons live in Kara Tepe, the camp that replaced Moria. More than 2,120 are children; 697 are four years and younger. ‘The Desperate Children of Moria’, Der Spiegel (in English), 1/4/2021, https://www.spiegel.de/international.

[18] At the time of writing (March 2021), Greece makes efforts to send back to Turkey 1,450 asylum-seekers whose application has been rejected. According to the United Nations World Food Program, 12.4 million Syrians live in famine and pressure Turkey in the form of an influx of migrants (currently holding, according to official UN figures, 3.6 million from Syria and another 300,000 from elsewhere). See Handelsblatt, 14/3/2021, ‘Deutschland und die Türkei verhandeln neuen Flüchtlingspakt – Griechenland verärgert, Die Türkei hält Geflüchtete von der Weiterreise in die EU ab. Das soll sie für Geld und Zugeständnisse weiter tun. Das birgt diplomatische Probleme.’  [Germany and Turkey negotiate new immigration agreement – Greece is annoyed, Turkey restrains migratory flows from continuing their journey to the EU. To continue doing so, it is asking for money and benefits. This creates diplomatic problems.]

[19] Handelsblatt: ‘New refugee deal negotiated by Germany and Turkey – “Greece upset”. According to information cited by Handelsblatt, the points that are most likely to spoil a new agreement are being discussed.’ To Vima newspaper, 14/03/2021

passage To Europe wins Special jury award for BEST documentary at los angeles greek film festival 2021

The film was also screened at the San Francisco Greek Film Festival on 16–24 April 2021. In San Francisco it won as BEST DOCUMENTARY the jury wrote about it: 'Passage to Europe' is an intimate portrait of Fotis Psycharis, whose passion for teaching is matched only by his compassion for his charismatic students. The filmmaker’s extraordinary access and skilled technique takes the viewer past the inflammatory rhetoric surrounding global refugees to open hearts and minds to the resilient children facing unimaginable hardship. https://grfilm.com/awards/

read more on how and why the film passage to Europe, 48', 2021, directed by Dimitra Kouzi was made after Good Morning Mr Fotis, 70', 2020 HERE

Art Crimes shoot in Greece

This is the protected Delphic Landscape and us (Jacob Stark, Stefano Strocci and Dimitra Kouzi) while the shooting for part of episode 3 of “Art Crimes”, a documentary series about some of the most spectacular art heists of the 20th century! The series is produced by Stefano Strocci (Unknown Media) in co-production with RBB/ARTE, SKY Arte and will feature dramatic reconstructions of thefts, with input from those involved: the investigators, prosecutors and some of the thieves themselves.

Episode 3 brings us to Greece and the city of Itea. This is the small Greek city (15 Klm from Delphi by the sea in Fokis) were the oil producer, Ephthimios Moscadescades lived. He and his brother requested the prestigious Renaissance paintings, including two Raphael artworks. The paintings were stolen by a group of Italian and Hungarian thieves from the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest in November 1983. After an anonymous phone-call the paintings were found in a suitcase in the garden of the Tripiti Monastery in Aigio.

We shoot (also with a super 8 camera) in Itea, the breathtaking area around it towards Aigio (on the Peloponnese) and then in Athens, where we interviewed the judge Leandros Rakintzis. Save the date the amazing series will be broadcasted in more than 15 channels across Europe in 2022.

https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/art-crimes-van-gogh-the-scream-picasso-documentary-arte-sky-1203410253/

Withered Flowers

Jahanbakhsh Nouraei is a renowned Iranian film critic and lawyer. He has written vastly on movies for many years. This is an English translation of his review of Radiography of a Family by is Firouzeh Khosrovani.

Two kinds of people use x-rays films: physicians, to diagnose distortions of the body —especially broken bones— and trouble- shooting locksmiths, to open closed doors. 

(They insert the x-rays film through the narrow opening that the naked eye may not see). 

Radiograph of a Family is Firouzeh Khosrovani's feature documentary that has both skills. It shows both that which is broken, and the opening of a door to the sad garden of memories. The break and the opening of the door are both symbols of a world wider than the family home and its four walls. 

The film goes from the particular to the universal and becomes the story of numerous other families. But the small and real world of the husband and wife of this family is drawn so softly and justly that similarities, and the visible and hidden looks at the tumultuous world outside the wall, fall into place naturally and without exaggeration. 

The woman and man's beliefs, attachments, and values slowly end up in opposition to one another. The beliefs of each one is not fake, but genuine. They emerge from within and inevitably drag the family into a war that, despite attachments, has no result other than the reversal of the man and woman's positions and their emotional separation. Both are flowers whose petals are scattered by opposing winds, in a marriage that began with love. 

The father has Western beliefs and behaviors. He is happy and filled with vigor. He has studied in Switzerland and become a physician there. The mother is religious, God-fearing, and worried about falling into sinful behavior. In between the two, their daughter is a neutral narrator who opens the faded notebook of days, and tells of the events and struggles, alongside mother's and father's voices.  

The father does not resist the course of events; as he loses everything that he loves, he slowly withdraws into himself and, with melancholy, prepares to leave a world that is no longer his. 

From the narrator's viewpoint, father and mother's union began with a visual attraction. The very first sentence we hear from her at the beginning of the film is "Mother married father's photograph." Father has taken one look at his future wife and mother has seen a photo of her future husband, they like each other and get married. But the photo portrait of the groom that takes the place of his warm body and breath at the wedding ceremony, bodes a cold future.

In this film, photographs are the instruments and links of a tense union between two different cultures and beliefs; the cracks in this union, brought about by a slow domestic rebellion, meanwhile find their wider reflection out on the streets that are brimming with revolt and social change. Home and outside the home are two parallel worlds that reflect each other like intertwined mirrors. The photos, aided by the spoken text and the simple, meaningful dialogues, communicate like the beads of a rosary, become memorable, advance the story, converse with the music, fall silent and finally collapse and surrender to being burned and torn to pieces. The broken-hearted father dies quietly in his sleep and the mother stays behind to move about in her wheeled walker, to seek refuge in her usual, old sacred ideal, and to have her life continue in this way. 

The walker as a real object acts as a cane for a weak human being; yet at the same time represents the paralysis of a rebellious soul, and speaks of the fate of a woman of traditional beliefs who was forced to go skiing in Swiss mountains, an act that damaged her body and soul — the damage that stays with her to the end, and is irreparable. This X-rays image aligns with father's profession, radiologist; and the real distortions of a wife's spinal column link symbolically to an intellectual and social current to which the mother takes part, finding broader meaning.

After her skiing accident mother said repeatedly that it was as though her back were split in two. Thus, she seeks peace of mind and the cure to a split identity in the therapeutic space of the Revolution. The ideals are expected to help her heal the spinal column of her oppressed soul, release her from the wounds of a foreign culture, and with God's help, to allow the withered flower to blossom again in the passion and zeal of revolutionary romanticism. 

The anti-tradition culture did not suppress her in Switzerland only. In the time that she was made to live in that country, where their daughter was conceived, the signs of Western culture began to influence and infiltrate her home land at great speed also. The land of her ancestors now looked like Geneva. 

Still, Fortune favors the mother, and her rebellious desire, after returning to Iran, finds a suitable outlet in the enthusiastic slogans of Dr. Ali Shariati, flag-bearer of anti-government religion. This revolt becomes more audacious daily, and a spring that had been pressured into coiling begins to expand. 

It does so within the family, it accelerates, the power equation collapses, and mother forces father — whom she often calls "monsieur" -- into sad retreat. The rearrangement of furniture according to mother's tastes causes father's decorations to fade, the balance of power is disturbed. Mother's progress is guaranteed just like the relentless victories of the trenches in battle scenes. The colors at home tend towards grey; a feeling of mourning and the absence of passion, delicacy, affection scatter over the home.  The re-arrangement of furniture causes destruction and renovation to intermingle, and recalls the verses of the poet M. Azad that: "From these rains – I know – this house will be ruined. Ruined." 

The climax of events occurs when the mother says good-bye to her unpleasant and "sinful" past in the effort to solidify her new position, and she tears up the photographs that, for her, represent giving in to sin and to foreign influences.  

Mother's act creates the impression that one of the aims and advantages of toppling values during revolutionary zeal is to deny the past and burn its signs, both in matrimonial life and in society. Here, the narrator's role becomes slowly more prominent and she does not remain silent faced with the ruin of the home and the removal of the past.  The narrator enters the scene and we witness her small hands connecting the fragmented pieces of the family's heritage and memories; if she cannot find a missing piece, she paints it in herself with the help of her imagination and her longings.  White and red and green, accompanied by engaging majestic music, take the place of the cold and empty area, and the space takes on a hopeful tone. It is as though the past of a family and a country whose to be recognized again wins over to be forgotten and thrown away. 

The form and narrative of the film do the same, by juxtaposing retrieved photos and faded old films, giving the past new life, making us look at it differently and ask where we stand. 

At the end of the film, which is a new beginning, the viewpoint changes and the camera looks from above, as though through the invisible eye of history, at the girl who lies in a white dress among an ocean of torn up photographs and is busy reconstructing and breathing new life into them. This delicate and effective scene can become a positive sign for a new generation, to bring one's home back to life; a home that, with all its joys and fleeting happy moments, in the end had nothing but bitterness and despair neither for itself nor for its wandering inhabitants. 

“radiograph of a family” wins IDFA’s Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary 2020 and best usage of archives

What I love most about working with a great film is that it enables me to learn things as well as to become passionately involved with it – I can’t sleep at night, for behind the film there are people. It’s not a question of marketing; in the case of documentaries, things are more complex. It’s not a question of sales, either: It’s about making the community aware of the film – of its relevance to people’s lives and perceptions of the world. It’s about making people watch a film, appreciate it, feel passion, compassion; about making them get up and call their mother after the screening, about change for an evening, perhaps for a lifetime.

That’s what art is all about, isn’t it? To give comfort, strength, life, inspiration? To educate, as well. And it’s also about getting important news through stories, and responding emotionally to it, as the narrative resonates with your own experience. News, in this context, is everything that the film was intended and made to convey; but more than that, it’s a complex weave of multilayered narrative strands.

To return to the subject of the people behind the film: It’s the filmmakers’ interaction and chemistry that informs every sequence, every word. And my job, first of all, is to identify and then communicate all these elements by designing and implementing a strategy that conveys the film’s DNA to the media and the public. Such a complex project must be codified; every detail counts. You need to be able to see things from other people’s perspectives.

Firouzeh wrote to me about the two IDFA awards (IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary 2020 and best usage of archives) she received for her latest film, Radiograph of a Family:

‘As Truffaut said: “For you this is nothing more than a film. But for me it is all my life.”
I experienced the greatest invincibility, patience, and failure in the years of making this film. But it was not without pleasure. This film made me. And it continues to do so.’

When I received this, it brought a tear to my eye. 

I’d like to thank Firouzeh, her mother, Tayi, Bård (Bård Kjøge Rønning), and Fabien (Fabien Greenberg) (https://antipodefilms.com), for this journey across this new, online-only environment. My heartiest congratulations for their success and the two prestigious IDFA awards. I loved every minute of our warm, close-knit collaboration.

 

Firouzeh, Bård (Bård Kjøge Rønning), and Fabien (Fabien Greenberg) in Oslo.
Backstage pictures from Abbas Kowsari
Backstage pictures from Abbas Kowsari

Interview with Firouzeh Khosrovani (“Radiograph of a family”)

There are films destined to become classics, here to stay, to be watched again and again and reveal ever new facets – films to inspire. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and jotted in my notebook: ‘collective memory through archives.’ I felt I must remember it, that and: ‘documentation of memories,’ a phrase Firouzeh Khosrovani used over the phone earlier, she in Tehran, I in Athens.

An effective title ushers you right into the film: Radiograph of a Family. Factually as well as symbolically, the story of the director’s family and the history of her country unfold before your eyes, and you want to see and hear it all, touch it even; smell the scent of rosewater; yet at certain moments it feels like having sand in my mouth.

The film’s opening phrase – the phrase that inspired her to make this film – immediately grasps the viewer’s attention: ‘My mother married my father’s photograph.’ Weird though it sounds, it’s true.

There are architectural elements in this film; not only because it is set in an empty house – their home in Teheran – but also because it is richly stratified, with materials that highlight textures, interactions, and trajectories in space. ‘The film builds a puzzle with precious family archives that blend with powerful images of collective moments of great significance.’*

It all began, the director Firouzeh Khosrovani notes, with the photo archive and her memories, out of which she started to weave the story she was most familiar with, as well as to fill the gaps:

‘Looking at our family albums as a child made me develop imaginary stories about my parents’ relationship. The pictures in our family albums became the primary archives in the film. Other formal and informal archival footage provided opportunities to expand the story of our family photos. At times, the archive more accurately conveyed what I had originally imagined or remembered about a story. So, sometimes the images created the story, and sometimes we looked for images to advance our story.
I also used out-of-focus Super 8, their elusive texture resembling the hazy texture of our deep-rooted memories.’

One can only admire the way this film speaks about the history of Iran, posing questions, avoiding bitterness and dogma, casting a critical yet lucid glance into a fascinating world, telling a riveting story before our eyes.

The revolution occurs at the exact middle of the film.
‘I had appealing ideas but no real plot. I knew that a well-constructed plot often moves along a cause-and-effect chain. The film structure is created through my lived experience and vivid childhood memories.’

Unless you know precisely what you want to say right from the start, you run the risk of becoming lost in the different strands of the material. I witnessed the making of this film like someone weaving a carpet, an arabesque of yarn and dye.

‘I had too many interwoven themes. It was easy to get lost in the multiple threads of ideas and forget to think of a compact narrative structure. The fusion of my own fantasies and reality made me excited to share it with others through this film. I sought to lay out in a structured order a chain of connected ideas; tore up photos; produced X-rays of distorted backbones – scans of our home – a narrative space divided into two poles and telling the story of how Islamic laws penetrated our life and our memories of it. Many other peripheral ideas gradually came to my mind.’

‘I did everything I planned to do. Step by step. Working with a great art director, Morteza Ahmadvand, who contributed significantly to its development during the long production journey.’

An act of re-examination and reconciliation, this is a therapeutic film to watch over and over again to discover new aspects of world history and its impact on the stories of three individuals, of a family. Firouzeh doesn’t like the word ‘identity. I respectfully didn’t ask her why; I guess the term may seem to her one-sided, not enough to qualify as self-determination – an identity is never one identity.

This applies to the film, too. In addition to the archives, it is the sound, music, voices, whispers that evoke an environment. Firouzeh Khosrovani explains ‘We considered many different options for speech. Because of the tendency towards realism, it was not possible for the narrator (me) to tell the story before I was born. I tried to find a distinctive conversational tone. Sometimes with whispers. Sometimes loudly.’

I loved the conversational tone of the film. The dialogues truly bring the couple’s conversations to life.

The music also serves a narrative function in Radiograph of a Family, evoking, for instance, her father’s presence even in a scene with her mother alone.
The soundtrack consists of ‘recreation of sounds heard at home. Classical pieces recorded in my childhood memories have been selected and replayed by the composer. Also, a creative re-playing of the melodies of Revolutionary and war anthems that exist in the collective memory of Iranians took their place in the film.’

It took Firouzeh Khosrovani almost five years to finish her film. And it is really beautiful the way she treated her parents, how she values their places in her life and within society; how she respects her mother's political and life choices, despite all the differences that she might have with her.

‘[My mother] was touched profoundly [when she watched the film]. She entirely acknowledged the imaginary dialogues with my father before I was born. She appreciated the conversational tone of the film, the narrative arc, the visual aspect, music – everything. She congratulated me and hugged me.’

This sounds like closure, but it’s not – we all have our own paths to travel.

‘I experienced the greatest invincibility, patience, and failure in the years of making this film. But it was not without pleasure. This film made me. And it continues to do so.’

Firouzeh Khosrovani's Radiograph of a Family has been named the best feature-length documentary at the 2020 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) the film won also the IDFA Competition for Creative Use of Archive 2020

radiographofafamily.com

  • The excerpts are from the interview Firouzeh Khosrovani gave me on November 2020.

The Arnode Kavos house welcomes Dimitra Kouzi

The ARNode[1] Kavos house[2] welcomes Dimitra Kouzi[3]

It felt like a visit to a church before vespers, exactly when the most interesting things happen.

Reverently, mystically, metaphysically, unhurriedly, at his own pace, as if in a ritual dance, he revealed to me the place of… worship. Little by little, with a hint of tender hesitation, perhaps embarrassment, but with the fresh youthful joy of the explorer. Like a monologue, but two-way and interactive, each sentence providing food for thought on multiple levels. An erotic confession.

It took me nearly a week to assimilate this experience of a guided tour of the ARNode Kavos house, Mit’s[4] house. At first, I kept the experience to myself, not knowing what to do, how to capture it on paper. Without crumpling it, without distorting it. Just the act of recalling it, I feared, might cause it to fade. In my mind, it was all there, but putting it into words may have altered it. 

But I never for a moment stopped thinking about it. What an honour! In Mit’s inner sanctum, where things appeared so familiar, yet so unknown. Everything was alive. I felt at every step that there were hidden aspects. And much more that I couldn’t see, parallel stories about everything, almost as if the drawings, embroideries, sculptures, furniture, lemons, garlic and Dexion shelving were in motion, communicating with each other. Everything appeared as one piece, but there were so many different stories. 

A mermaid stuffed into a bag, only her tail visible; I almost followed her on her dive into the sea. To create and then set aside, perhaps for someone else to find and discover how much freedom is there in parting with something voluntarily?  

Just everybody was preset there: Georgie (Makris)[5], Auntie Voula, Captain George (Mitropoulos), Auntie Mitsa[6] naked, taking a shower in her yard, the ouzo, the baklava in the baking pan, the 10 species of fish and other creatures in our sea[7] at the time, and a fishing line hanging from the window, “be careful not to get it caught in the railings!” (when fishing from the 3rd floor balcony).

Everything was there: deserted shores, his nudes, (which a friend of his found in a folder next to his headboard and later organised Mit’s first art exhibition in Brussels). The small sculptures, which he has not shown to anyone. I had certainly never seen them. But I would definitely like to see them again, touch them. Caress them. 

I remember them in the smallest detail, even their location, as if they had been revealed to me before going back into hiding in their secret world, their parallel world which momentarily met my own, I think, but I am again left with questions – I see whatever I can. 

The composition is his, every little corner: small desks, work left to one side, waiting for Mit to resume. Left, not abandoned; as if he had just got up, as if he sits down and gets up simultaneously, like a dancer moving with choreographed purpurse from point to point. Everything is alive, connected, pulsating, networks again, like those he has been creating all his life. Not with electricity, but with the Northern wind and the sea. The house is a ship, with bridges, stairs and tiny corners.  

The view around him, outside, with the North wind raging on that day. I had not experienced such a wind for a long time; the waves were crashing over the quay. Not a soul in sight. Where could Rouroulis the cat be? We were sailing in its stories. Together. 

And Auntie Voula’s embroideries, like icons, suspended from hangers. Seagull dreams – travels – votive offerings – Auntie Voula was there too – I heard her talking about her son Makis (Mit). I saw her, very much alive with Darina[8], at parallel at times.

Simultaneously, the young girl, the bride in a violet dress, slightly older, holding a baking tray and posing for a photograph, reading a book, her glasses attached to a cord over her neck, later in life a beautiful olive-skinned woman (“she’s one of ours”, they had said in Egypt) and finally, at her elderly age. My mother’s godmother. My dear mother, you could not endure the idea of time and age, preferring, perhaps, to leave us while still young. Yes, Darina was also there, using the open wardrobe to sit inside it, waiting with towel in hand for Auntie Voula to finish using the bathroom (I even heard her heavy footsteps in the sitting room where they both slept) 

The sun is sinking behind Mount Parnassus as backstage. I have stopped my countryside walk, on a back road that winds through fields, once a lake. I am thinking that they have nearly all of them gone, they have all died: Uncle George – Georgie, with female nylon socks in his breast pocket, Auntie Voula, my grandmother, my mother – all those people who had experienced those magical times for which, unlike me, Mit feels no sense of loss. I am suddenly overwhelmed by nostalgia. That day, the Northern wind had blown the waves over the quay of the once Nautical Club which land use changes Mit so strongly opposed: the first example of arbitrary construction in this sacred place. Of course, for many it’s no big deal, since as in the case of the exotic environment of Galaxidi (which for Mit is the area of 5 square kilometres refers to as “38° 22ʹ N 22° 23ʹ E”. Most people don’t know what they have now lost because they didn’t know what they once had as Mit frequently notes (this always scares me, especially when he associates it with opportunities we all miss (my self included) . 

Roziki beach – the obsidian[9], it was all there, in the Kavos house – buoys hanging above our heads – buoys like Sophia’s[10], lemons in a bag – along with other things on the stairs leading up to the third floor. I hadn’t been up there for years. Travel bags hanging, ready for departure; I realized that these could be the sailors’ cabins, which I had never seen. Mit’s bed, with the royal navy blanket – I hardly dared to look at it, out of respect for the ascetic – one of those grey blankets that irritate the skin, this guided tour sometimes made me feel that I barely had the right to look – life, the mock-ups, all ongoing, connected in his eyes, much still unconnected in my mind. The sea, and Delphi on snow-covered Parnassus over the distance – the kore without veils and clouds, handed over to the west. “Make it a little more difficult,” I hear him say to me.

The seagulls fluttered from Auntie Voula’s embroidery into the kitchen. “There is still room for others,” said Captain George. I have almost become one with them, as Auntie Voula sends me kisses through the windowpane on the third floor; it was freezing on that feast of the Epiphany, we were on the balcony, she was inside, outside the flag is flapping – I can’t remember the year – thankfully there were so many. I liked the green frame that I had ordered, for the photograph I had taken of her, from the picture framer at 95 Kolokotroni Street, near the pharmacy of my mother, Maria Mastorikou[11] in Piraeus – what was he called? 

I have stopped at the side of the road, next to a field, and I am writing, while listening to Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne. I am thinking of Mit’s models, the coy ones.

Dimitra Kouzi, Galaxidi, October 2020

Read Mit Mitropoulos in To Galaxidi newspaper:
“Family Moments from a Galaxidi Sailor's Lifetime”, 6/2017
“The Sea Acted the Role of the Muse at the Time”, 2/2019
“On Complexity”, Alzheimer's 2/2017 conference, 6/2019    

The article The ARNode Kavos house welcomes Dimitra Kouzi was first published in the newspaper To Galaxidi, October 2020. It is part of on-going notes towards a documentary on the same subject.

[1] Archive Research Node in progress 

[2] The house of George and Voula (the captain's wife) Mitropoulos. 

[3] Journalist, filmmaker, [email protected] From the guided tour, January 2020. Three floors facing the sea, above and beyond which part of the ‘Delphic Landscape’ extends. The family home is in the process of being transformed into a Research Museum that will be known as the Archive Research Node (ARNode), as just one node in a wider network. By the end of September 2020, two of the four ARNode definition phases had been completed. 

[4] Mit Mitropoulos (baptised Efthymios), Researcher, Environmental Artist ([email protected]) taking over from his parents at 125 Akti Oianthis, (Kavos) Galaxidi.

[5] George Makris, the brother of my grandmother, Eleni Makri, and chief officer on the vessel captained by George Mitropoulos. As a child in Holland, Mit often shared his cabin with him. I remember at 186 Praxitelous St. in Piraeus, the left-hand, single-door wardrobe in the bedroom of G. Makris (Georgie, we called him) which instead of clothing contained all his tools, hanging neatly arranged. 

[6] Mitsa Mitropoulou, Mit’s (also my aunt).

[7] I don’t remember all the names but they included the annular sea bream, peacock wrasse, red scorpionfish, some other brightly coloured ones that looked more like tropical fish, Mediterranean rainbow wrasse, European conger, sand steenbras. And the octopus, which my father, Thodoros Kouzis, fished with a speargun off Voidikas beach (the site where the biological wastewater treatment plant was built years later). It is the islets of Ai Giorgi, Apsifia and Agios Dimitrios, places where we went on day trips in our boat “Dimelana”. These fish have now disappeared, due to pollution and overfishing.  

[8] Darejan Stvilia from Kutaisi--brought up in Sohoumi (in the Abkhazia region Russia annexed by force in recent years). The wonderful Georgian housemaid who, as if a member of the Mitropoulos family, assisted Mit and Auntie Voula when she began to suffer from memory loss, but nevertheless lived well for the next 10 years, up to age of 103. Information and Exercises for people with memory degeneration are available in the library of Galaxidi, the result of Mit’s 10 years of experience with the disease and his 4 Alzheimer's conference presentation. 

 

[9] Obsidian, hard glass formed as a rock, is found in volcanic areas. Sources of obsidian are few; in the Aegean, they are limited to Milos, Antiparos, and Yali. Because of its hardness, Milos obsidian was used in the Neolithic period to make tools and weapons. At Roziki, Mit had located one (of two) workshops sites. There was line-of-sight- visual contact between these sites, which afforded control over approaches by sea. As confirmed by Professor Colin Renfrew (Mit kept in touch with), the obsidian had come from Milos

[10] Sophia A. Martinou, The Glass Buoy, Iolkos Publications, 2017.

[11] The drugstore she continued to run following my pharmacist grandfather Dimitris (Mitsos) Mastorikos“ It was there, at 9 Bouboulinas Street, that a group of Galaxidiotes decided to resume publication of To Galaxidi newspaper as an integral part their association”. (Excerpt from To Galaxidi, 7/2018, by D. Kouzi "Our local newspaper in the era of fake news”). 

Both pictures taken from same seating position in 'desk area' ground floor studio (the sur-elevated pavement) (connecting the group of 4 houses facing the water). One photo shows the interior as you turn left, that includes blackboard,tools, found objects, artworks.Turn to your right you face the sea, beyond the coastal road and ,and above and over the water Delphi stands.

Meet Me at the BDC Discoveries

Meet me at the Balkan Documentary Center on 9, 10, and 11/6 working with seven projects on Audience development - the audience as a goal. For three days we will meet and work together with seven new projects (in development) and their creators from Eastern and Central Europe (Bulgaria, Germany, Slovenia, Italy, UK, Moldova, Croatia, Serbia, and Romania). First with a lecture on audience development, then while their pitching presentations and last in one to one meetings.

Audience development means bringing people and cultures closer together. It aims to directly engage people and communities in participating, experiencing, enjoying and valuing arts and culture. The idea is to expand visibility, to make the public aware, to diversify the audience or to deepen the relationship with existing audiences (or a combination of these). Audience development also means earning money.  First, you dream, then you plan, then you act. 

My work is a coaching job. It means also building your personal brand and increasing your income.  Every time it is tailor-made for every single filmmaker or and producer, and his film/career. It works great with all creative proceses, like festivals and cultural events.

Three days, all Online! For those who do not know BDC Discoveries, it is a super creative and challenging workshop in 3 parts.

The first Module is the most intensive session. It is aimed at general script and project development strategies. The participants work together with tutors and observers on their own projects, attend lectures, join discussions, and case studies.

The second module is hosted by their partner DokuFest, in Prizren in August (Kosovo) and focuses on preparing the packaging and marketing of the projects on the international market it finishes with a final presentation in front of a jury. Awards are given during that module, incl. a cash prize for the best pitch and nomination to participate in DOK Leipzig Co-Production meetings! The third Module is at DOKLeipzig.

BDC Discoveries is organized by Martichka Bozhilova and her company Agitprop. It is my 5th year on the team and I always learn a lot while working with them! Read about the 2020 projects here: http://bdcwebsite.com