SCULPTED SOULS

01. How did “Sculpted Souls” begin?

It is all down to the persistence of a matchmaker. That is what I call Marina Fountoulaki in the end credits; I met her at a screening of one of our films in Ano Elounda. Marina, the soul of the “Manolis Fountoulakis” Library and niece of Manolis Fountoulakis, one of the central figures in SCULPTED SOULS, set her mind on introducing me to Julien Grivel: the Swiss dentist who for 26 years (1972–1998) came to Greece twice a year and treated, free of charge, the teeth of people with Hansen's disease (lepers) at the “Agia Varvara” Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Aigaleo, Attica. Once the couple had finally met, everything took its course. Of course, the matchmaker and the producer Matthaios Frantzeskakis did everything they could to secure the dowry – the funding for the venture. So it all started from a chance event, not as the result of some research.

02. What paths of research and documentation did meeting Julien Grivel lead you down?

I don't know whether you mean the paths of research and documentation as regards the creative process itself or the factual content of the film. But it is a challenge to answer both.

As regards the making of the film itself, I will repeat what I said in another interview¹, because I think it rightfully belongs here too. This is what I said there: The choice of “subject” is a pretext that gives me the framework to be able to talk about what really interests me: the people we meet in our stories. Our films are not described by their “subject”, and I myself am neither moved by nor start from anything of the kind. Some years ago the critic Manolis Kranakis (Do you two know each other? Same name?) wrote²: “The people who ‘star’ – the talking heads – in Stavros Psillakis's films are, before the ‘subject’ they recount, themselves the ‘subject’ of his work. A body of work that, you might say, documents the human condition because it finds it more fascinating than any other... documentation. ... S.P.'s path is the one that each time begins and ends with the person facing him, on the straight line where the gaze of one meets the gaze of the other.”

He wrote that in 2016. It was an illuminating view for me too. Our films are not about “subjects” but about people who draw me in and are willing to set out on a journey with me through the geography of their soul. Kranakis's observations become evident in the works that followed, and perhaps they even foreshadow them. In the most recent films – the trilogy ODES TO EXISTENCE (FOR NO REASON, DEBT, FAREWELL) and SCULPTED SOULS – the approach to the people, freed from the need to showcase the “subject”, is worked on and given shape even further.

The paths of research and documentation regarding the film's factual content concerned the setting in which our story unfolds. The scope and focus of this research were clearly bounded from the start. We did not want to make a film about the history of leprosy in Greece, or about the life of Hansen's patients at “Agia Varvara” and the other leper colonies that existed (Spinalonga, Chios, Karlovasi on Samos), back when Hansen's patients were still “lepers”, regarded as a public enemy, and the social stigma they endured was perhaps harsher than the disease itself.

Nor did we simply want to record Julien's volunteer work, for all the greatness of his deeds. These would form the framework within which our “hero's” great inner journey towards his own Ithaca takes place. We wanted to search for Julien the man. That is where our research moved and where it stayed, and two books were very useful to us: “GREECE, My Ithaca” by Julien Grivel [published by the Region of Crete (2022), edited by the civil engineer Kostis Mavrikakis] and EAGLE WITHOUT WINGS: The Autobiography of Epaminondas Remountakis [published by K.D.P.I.E.R.].

03. What did you know about the history of Hansen's disease patients in Greece before the film, and what knowledge did you finally gain once the documentary was finished?

I knew very little about the history of Hansen's patients in Greece. In the '50s and '60s, when I was growing up in Chania, for us there were no lepers and no Spinalonga. It operated from 1904 until 1957, when it closed for good. Whatever had existed in that connection had been banished into silence. The only time I remember hearing about lepers was in religious education, in the parable of the ten lepers healed by Jesus. I don't imagine it was the same for children growing up around Elounda, but I don't know...

The subject came up again in recent years with the very interesting TV series THE ISLAND. My friendship with Thodoris Papadoulakis, the director of the series, broadened my knowledge somewhat, but always at the level of the conversations we had, and no further.

When I began working on the subject, I realised what an enormous social stigma leprosy was, especially before the war and until the first drugs appeared around 1950. I understand why the word was hardly ever heard. It had been exiled, just like the lepers on Spinalonga.

Today Spinalonga, once synonymous with leprosy, is a major tourist attraction in the area. Its impressive Venetian fortifications and the popular TV series have boosted interest in the island and draw thousands of visitors every year. I cannot know what all these people see and feel...

We, at any rate, did not visit it. In the film we sail around it in a small boat with Julien and Christiane, who comment: “Spinalonga was more a place of exile than a hospital. It was a prison, a social and medical prison. These people were loved, very much loved, and isolated. The accursed disease stole their life and their memory together,” Julien tells us, and he recalls the testimony of one of his patients: “Spinalonga is the Minotaur of modern times, glutted with so many victims.”

04. Why do you think there was so much indifference, and even something close to revulsion, towards the subject of Hansen's patients in Greece?

This behaviour is nothing strange or remote. If there were lepers today, do you think that as a society we would treat them differently and embrace them more? There are plenty of examples, and recent ones. I don't want to resort to heroics and cheap grand talk. It was no easy matter, and it would help more if each of us, alone with ourselves, answered honestly what he or she would personally have done. What has changed significantly over the years is the speed and effectiveness of medical treatment for such conditions. As for our attitude as a society towards the “lepers” of each era, I don't know whether much has changed...

05. Were there stories you learned about but did not want to touch? How hard was it to persuade people to talk about their experiences?

I will start with the framework within which our film moves. We sketch the sculpting of Julien's soul through the experience he lives, and Uncle Manolis, a former Hansen's patient, sketches the framework within which this happens. With spellbinding accounts, he takes us back to the period when rejection, exclusion and social stigma dominated the treatment of Hansen's patients. He himself was a patient at “Agia Varvara”; that is where he met Julien, and their relationship was decisive for the path our “hero” took. He was his mentor.

We never met Uncle Manolis. He died in 2010. He is present in the film through archive material very generously given to us by our friends and colleagues Thodoris Papadoulakis and Silas Michalakas. They talked with him, and the stories they recorded were a treasure for our film. No other interviews were needed, nor any efforts to persuade people to talk to us. We learned about difficult stories from that era, but we didn't go into them further because they were leading us astray, towards the history of leprosy.

06. The archive material – how easy was it to find? Where does one look today for archives on Hansen's patients and Spinalonga?

Our own needs were essentially met by the personal archives (photographs and audio recordings) of the film's central figures: Grivel, Fountoulakis and Remountakis. And of course by the material given to us by Thodoris and Silas, filmed at around the same time, independently of each other, shortly before Uncle Manolis died.

We then used material from the archive of the Franco-Swiss architect Maurice Born, a very important researcher and a remarkable man who had studied places of confinement, and Spinalonga in particular, since he spent long periods living in the area. The existence of our film, as well as that of the emblematic documentary L'ORDRE by Jean-Daniel Pollet, is essentially owed to Maurice Born, as we learn in the film. We also used brief footage from that film.

Those were our needs. As we said, our subject was not the history of leprosy and Spinalonga, so the research did not extend further, and I don't have more information on where someone might look for relevant archives.

07. What was the most emotionally difficult moment of the shoot?

Perhaps when we visited the grave of the Remountakis couple in Apidi, in the Lasithi prefecture. Epaminondas Remountakis was the first patient Julien came to treat, and that is how it all began. The grave, together with the surrounding landscape and the memories this visit stirred in Julien, carried a special charge.

But this visit carried a great charge for me too. About 20 years ago, at a colleague's urging, I tried to watch Jean-Daniel Pollet's documentary L'ORDRE. Epaminondas Remountakis appears and speaks in it. For the first time I was seeing a badly disfigured leper deliver an incredibly lucid and powerful discourse. At first I looked away. Only with great difficulty and effort did I manage to watch it. I forced myself to, I would say. And now I was standing at this man's grave... Later, in the editing, I used a short excerpt from that interview in our film. So Epaminondas and his wife Tasia are part of our company too.

08. What do you think viewers take away from watching “Sculpted Souls”? What is the greatest life lesson the central hero teaches?

There are many things said in the film that could be considered life lessons. And they are not delivered pompously, verbosely or ex cathedra, because it is never enough to consider what someone says; it also matters who says it. The manner, the timbre of the voice, the whole presence and above all the ethos a person radiates are decisive for what they will stir in us, and that does not transfer easily to paper.

I have said it before: I find it very hard to answer when people ask me what my “subject” is. It is not “subjects” that make films great, but the way we approach them, shed light on them and talk about them. That is what our creation will ultimately radiate. “Whatever I describe describes me”, says the poet Argyris Chionis. And I think that says it all.

I have gone on at length, and so as not to dodge your question, I will repeat Julien's words at the “M. F.” Library: “I love the library very much, because the world should be like a library: we see so many different and contradictory volumes coexisting and tolerating one another, for the beauty of the world”.

09. What did you admire most in Julien Grivel? What do you have in common with him?

I would like us to end this interview on a lighter, somewhat cheerful note, and I will answer you indirectly by telling a story, part of which I have told before³:

Night has fallen and we are leaving Anogeia for Chania in the van. We have enjoyed the mantinades and the company of Gialaftis at the café on the square, and the ofto with tsikoudia a little further up. In high spirits, we are all teasing each other. Kostas is driving, Manolis is beside him hugging the camera, and I am in the back keeping the good mood going. At one point I turn round laughing and say to Julien: “Just so you know, you're in the car with three remalia.” He senses I have told him something important and immediately opens his dictionary to look up “remali”. I stop him and start explaining to him in simple Greek – a rascal, a good-for-nothing. Once he has understood, he explains it to Christiane too, and they burst out laughing: “No, we are five remalia,” he tells us. That's Julien and Christiane for you.

Ever since, we have loved teasing each other with the word “remali” and laughing about it. At one point, months later, we are drinking tsipouro at our favourite café and he confides to me in a low voice: “You see, I was a remali all along; I just didn't know the word.”

You ask what I have in common with him? I will tell you another time...

¹ interview with Stratos Kersanidis, EPOCHI (February 2025)

² text by Manolis Kranakis from the book SMALL ADOPTIONS — a tribute to the work of S. Psillakis, published by the CRETAN CULTURAL ORGANIZATION – PYXIDA TIS POLIS in 2016.

³ interview with Giannis Grosdanis, PARALLAXI (February 2025)