METAXA — listening to time

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Stavros Psillakis chose to turn his camera on doctors and nurses who had cancer themselves and came through it. He did not want to make a “campaigning” film, but an existential, contemplative one about life itself.

From today, Stavros Psillakis is presenting his documentary “METAXA — listening to time” at the Greek Film Archive: a record of the thoughts of doctors and staff at the Metaxa Cancer Hospital who are themselves living with cancer. To call such a film “optimistic” sounds trite, yet the new work by the award-winning documentarian (“There Was No Other Way”, “Guests”, “The Man Who Disturbed the Universe”) draws its strength from the testimonies of people who hit the wall and came out the winners.

What prompted and inspired you to make a film about doctors and nurses with cancer?

It wasn't my idea. There was a doctor at the Metaxa Hospital, Nikos Karvounis, who had come up with it three or four years earlier, but nobody would listen to him. At some point a mutual acquaintance introduced us. He invited us over to his place for pizza. From the very first moment I said yes, the subject interests me, but not 'medically'; I don't want to make a 'campaigning' documentary. That's something I never do; it isn't in my character. But since these people live in close proximity to death, psychologically at least, we can make an existential, a contemplative film about life itself. Coming into contact with these people, I understood that when you learn you have such an obstacle ahead of you, what you do is carry on living. You go through quite a few turnarounds, in your thinking, in your life and in your intentions. You see things somewhat differently. So if the film is about anything, it is about that. It becomes an opportunity for people to rethink life. A friend of mine told me: 'I want to watch the film every month, to take a cleansing bath!' It certainly isn't there just to make us happy and make us laugh. Instead of cancer, it could be dealing with anything else that pushes a person to the limit, face to face with death.

What do you think the viewer gains from watching “Metaxa”?

The whole history of civilisation, down the centuries, is an exorcism of death. All good literature deals with enormous crimes, with things that, if you lived through them day after day right beside you, would be no easy matter at all; you wouldn't absorb them, you wouldn't accept them. Yet if you read them in a work of literature, it is a masterpiece. What is this magical process that takes place in between? These things belong on the side of decline, very often of death, and art takes them and brings them over to the side of life, giving them an incredible allure, so that you want to embrace all these characters, or at least have a coffee with them.

How do you win the trust of your protagonists, so that they share such personal experiences and thoughts with you?

That is the whole essence and the whole wager of the human-centred documentary. There is no technique; nothing about it can be taught. It is a pure relationship between two people. The more honest and the more clear-hearted you are, the more you can get the other person to talk to you. All I do in my films is record stories of trust. I don't accuse, I don't judge. I feel, I understand, I have compassion. I just listen. And of course I try never to betray the trust someone shows me, not even when the film is finished. It is something I always worry about.

While making the film, did you notice your own image of cancer changing?

I had no personal experience of cancer, not even in my close family circle: sister, mother, father. But I did have my best friend, Alekos, who appears in the film. He is no longer alive. I feel that the process of cultivating my relationship with these people changed me; it made me a better person. When someone beside you is facing death, you cannot say 'I can't take it any more'. You cannot feel the slightest self-interest in a relationship like that.

Do you feel that, over the last few years, Greek documentary has established a more dynamic connection with the public?

We recently started the Hellenic Documentary Association. I am part of that effort, and I think there are many good colleagues doing good work – there were in previous years too, but people didn't have the chance to see what they were doing. I feel very much at home among them, a sense of closeness, and I see that each of them, in their own way, with their own character and their own distinctiveness, is gradually starting to reach out. There are many young directors with drive and passion who cannot enter the maze of a feature-length fiction film and the huge sums it requires. Through documentary they can find their way more easily. I love Greek documentary and I hope it goes forward.