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Akyllas Karazisis meets Horvath with Faith, Hope, Charity (2015-2016)

65 min

Interwar period. A desperate young woman, Elizabeth, decides to mortgage her corpse, in the hope of making some money in advance.

Produced by

The Onassis Cultural Center

Executive producer - Footage treatment:

Apostolia Papaioannou

Cinematography:

Elias Giannakakis - Apostolia Papaioannou

Editing - Sound mixing:

Myrto Lekatsa

Directed by

Apostolia Papaioannou - Elias Giannakakis

Akyllas and I had known each other for many years and our respect for each other was mutual.
We had never worked together that closely, though.
Of course, I had filmed him many times for other documentaries, especially for “Faust”, while he had offered to do some voice over for “Joy”.
We had discussed the idea of a documentary for “Paraskinio”, but the closure of ERT prevented that from happening.

In the end, we came together, on account of the production of “Faith, Hope and charity”, by Ödön von Horváth.
It was a harsh play, written in 1930, during the economic and social crisis in the Interwar period.
Akyllas, being a German-educated historian, was the ideal choice of director to stage such a harsh play in today’s Greece, and to do that without pomp and circumstance and ostentation.

The most interesting part of the film was Akyllas himself, who apart from being an actor and a director, is also a drama teacher. He has been teaching in drama schools for years and has a very unique approach. He allows his students liberties, but supports them by providing them with intellectual, political and artistic stimuli.
This was the case in this production as well. Akyllas does not fear exposure. He also flirts with fluidity, with the conviction that it will clear the path towards authenticity and that will prevent misguided theatricality.

In this film, Apostolia and I agreed to be credited as co-directors, as she took the lead in the editing, while I was somewhat more in charge of the filming.