O anthropos pou enohlise to sympan (2000) - full transcript

Where was the old mental
hospital, remember?

It was over there.

That one there?

There's the church
that's inside.

They made it a church
afterwards...

Poppy was the matron.

We had a good time but
the mice ate...

What did they eat?

Did they get in the beds,
the rooms?

In the beds.

What did they do in the beds?



Our ears...

They bit our ears.

They bit our ears.

- Who did?
- The mice did.

We left and we went up
because it smelt of shit.

It smelt of shit.

The Greek Film Centre
and Stavros Psillalkis

present

The man who disturbe the universe

I remember they brought me
at midnight, at night.

I was a just kid.

They cut my hair, gave me a
bath and brought me...

...my husband.

How I made it I don't even
know... how I made it then.



I don't remember
why or how.

This thing came out of my
thoughts, my incoherence...

Now I'm making this man and
the statue itself...

...will show me what form
to give it as I work.

I can hear voices in here.

- Our voices, Manolis.
- What a lot of voices.

You find a 1000 bill, you
take a picture of it, a film...

...you make money afterwards.

My head's empty.
I don't know what I have.

I don't know what's
wrong with me.

And the widow loved me
too much.

She accused me of attempted
murder and I ended up in jail.

One year of my prison term
I spent in the mental hospital.

The rest of my time I served
in Halicarnassus Prison.

Written and directed by
Stavros Psillakis

Every time I talk fast
they tell me to talk slower...

They say they don't understand.

It's a problem I have.

But you tell me

when a sprinter is
running the 100 metres...

...just before he finishes,
is it easy to stop him?

The Souda Mental Hospital
is over here.

The Ministry of Health and
Welfare Mental Hospital.

The Chania Mental Hospital
is over here.

Here we're all sick,
I'm also sick.

They say I should become a minister.
I don't like it.

What we have in here,
in this place, in non-existence.

There is no time or space.
Nothing matters.

There is only a burning cigarette
and a coffee.

Things that are easy outside
are the hardest inside.

From the moment we wake up
we search for coffee and a smoke.

I love my madness.
I really like it.

I may take medication but
nothing's changed in my mind.

The people who locked us up
lost their dignity, but not us.

I'm a guy who belongs here.

I've been institutionalised...

I don't know...

but I come here and I rest.
I consult.

It's my own Mount Psiloritis.
There the mountain is of stone...

...not steel like the Eiffel Tower
or the New York skyscrapers.

Stone, stone, stone, the earth
is stone.

It's not a gun, or the nucleus of a man
nor anything else.

The first men
fought each other with stones.

The last, the fourth world war
will be fought with stones.

I've finished.

I'm 38 years old.

I was born, grew up,
went to grade school...

...learned to read and write,
then learnt a craft.

I worked non-stop.

But in 1982,
I was in a traffic accident...

...and I remember nothing.

My nerves were shot and I've been in
hospitals and mental clinics ever since.

But I have no complaints.

Alcohol contains toxic substances
called toxins.

They affect the
nucleus of the cells

and with the fission of the nucleus
cause explosions...

...and that's
what a drunk feels.

I told my nephew and
he told me that's how it is.

Shoot it, please, the whole
shot, don't lose it...

Show the 1,000 bill burning.

It's a piece of paper...
say I lost it or gave it away...

Shoot it, it's a symbol.

Can you hear the sound?
Tell me if you can hear the sound.

Can you add sound?

Do we have sound?
Can I speak?

For the same reason
I burnt a 5,000 bill once.

I feel this place like
the Pnyx or the Acropolis...

It's like
the army in here.

Certain hours
we have to spend inside the ward.

We drink our milk and medicine
and then come straight here.

Look, in the wards
we can be beaten up...

Here, there's harmony.

In the morning,
you see the place is full.

All the mental patients
who are not confined...

...come here
to wheel and deal.

They converse with each other.

They handle their beauty and
their relationship well.

The speech barrier breaks.
You need it.

You heard about psychotherapy,
psychoanalysis, I mean...

...it's very important to talk.

It's what I do.
It's what everyone does.

Some ask for money and
others ask for speech.

It's the same thing
you understand.

In here we're a small Vatican,
a state within a state.

I call it a citizens' Assembly,
of the Mental Hospital.

We don't adopt resolutions here
but we could in the future...

at a time when patients would
have greater support...

this could be
a meeting-place.

The rehabilitation programme
began in 1990.

The reasons that led us to
initiate these efforts...

was the situation prevailing in
mental hospitals and out own.

There are around 400 patients,
2/3 of which are chronic cases.

Most of them are confined,
abandoned...

They remain in mental hospitals
for 5, 10, 15, 20 years...

...they are deprived of basic
social and political rights...

It's very nice in here.

Even if you're sick,
you get well.

The 5 cooperative units are
aimed at professional training...

...of the group,
and the assurance of...

...relative economic independence
for social reintegration.

Take a photo of me here.

I make people with my eyes.

Understand?

I have good vision and
I can make whole figures.

Really.

People who have been
institutionalised for years...

...are systematically prepared

for their release from
institutionalised passivity...

...and for the re-structuring
of their lost personality.

The patients who work
in the co-operative units...

...or stay at the Programme's
rehabilitation shelter...

...don't cease to be
mentally disturbed.

Psychiatry today cannot find
the causes of mental illness.

It can't even
define it properly.

What is required is that
the patient be socially viable...

...and disruptive behaviour
will be socially absorbable.

The criteria for patients
to live outside...

...is not their mental illness
or obsessive ideas...

...but their behaviour.

If it is absorbable,

they will be fine and
may never need a psychiatrist.

I had nothing to do
and I did something rash.

I couldn't sleep and
went for a walk to the cemetery.

For a joke, I decided to
take a coffin lid to the cafe.

At night, I carried it to the cafe
and stood it by the door.

When they saw the coffin lid,
they were panic-stricken.

The woman who owned the cafe
almost fainted.

I did it on purpose, before
they did something bad to me.

I thought of putting in a sheet
and sleeping inside...

..but I didn't do it.

When you paint,
you don't think about the price...

...it's irrelevant.

I paint because of a whim,
it's a labour of love...

...a hobby,
irrespective of money.

When I paint while drugged,
it has a special value.

It's one thing to be healthy,
and another to have problems.

What can I say?

It's like a neighing of the horse
in 3 stages.

I'd say that...

I define the
untamed nature of women...

Something like that...
I really don't know.

I imagine the naked female body
like something...

...that reminds me of mother earth,
our earth.

Things turned out
differently than I imagined.

We said that
Christ is always crucified.

Maybe all painters
are like Christ...

...carrying a cross until
the end of their life.

So that His picture
can always exist.

As society is today,
I don't know what else to say.

I don't like chicken,

barley pasta, soup...

chicken soup...

I don't like anything.

I committed a crime
in my village.

I strangled my little brother
and attacked my mother.

We say that people confined
for years in mental hospitals...

...have lost everything
except their minds.

They have lost basic human
rights and personal freedoms...

..which, if a person lost,
he would die.

A sense of personal space,
of time, of life's aims...

...of personal desire
and personal taste.

They can't choose their food
and have no personal space...

...to put their personal effects.
It would drive us insane.

The first point we made

was a critical stance towards the
asylum and institutionalised care.

The methods and approach to insanity
seems almost insane.

After 15-20 years of treatment,

we have to remedy what we caused
in the patient with the therapy.

What we do
is almost senseless.

To confine insanity is like
trying to put a large box in a small one.

It's impossible.

That's why
we've reached a deadend.

Don't take pills,
don't take pills.

I didn't expect to be
brought from Souda to here.

The rooms were small there,

men and women were separated...

...and it was filthy,
with rats and cats.

We also went to the sea,
it was close by.

The Rehabilitation Programme
has three sections:

The Re-integration Unit
operating within the clinic...

the Cooperatives outside,
in places with social life...

...and the Remedial Apartments
in the city where they stay...

...forming the basic cell
of their new reality.

I've been in and out of the
mental clinic since 1978...

...without good reason.

I was depressed, and had no-one
to talk to or give me advice.

I never had a father
or anyone.

I don't want to fool myself,
but l had a defect.

I was young, at school,
and I came to the clinic.

It was good for me,
because I needed therapy...

...but what can I say?
It's a jungle there.

Rehabilitation begins when
the patient is diagnosed...

...and the psychiatrist is obliged
to deal not only with the symptoms,

but with the
repercussions of the illness.

We have to plan the therapy
so that we can tell patients...

not only what medicine to take,
but how to earn an income...

...have social relations, friends,
and perhaps a family.

These things will support them.

Five years ago,
they only used spoons.

They had forgotten
how to use forks.

When patients went outside
after 20 years...

...they didn't know
what a red light was...

...how to use money, phones
or public transport.

It's as if they're beginning
to walk by themselves again...

...to learn about life,
step by step.

We see those steps,
that effort...

...to get to know themselves again
in a social setting.

We see resistance
from the community...

...as well as tenderness, support,
love and acceptance.

The Fifth Season Cafe is a
season that doesn't exist...

...but we all understand
this season...

...because it is inside us and
we believe it will blossom.

Whenever we organise an event,
we make new friends.

Should we raze the walls
to go outside...

...or expand them
for the rest of you to come in?

Freedom was born in Athens,
at the citizens' Assembly.

Freedom is repressed
and violated in here...

...in the Mental Clinic
Assembly.

Freedom is a limit.

In Greek, the word "freedom"
comes from "I will come".

And always remember...

I worry about those
who worry about me.

I don't know
beautiful words

and if they're for me,
don't bother.

Let me stay
where I am

without trying
to change me.

I'm broke and lonely

and I love you because
you're elusive.

What can I say,
my mind's empty.

I'm carving "I love you"
on my arm.

I can't not see you,
or not wait for you

and you can't follow
my own escape.

It's a fact
there's no immortality

let St. Peter become ill,
so we'll live another year.

If You were a drinker, Lord,
mankind would be saved.

if You'd knife Death
in Your drunkenness.

Listen to the nightingale
singing in the trees...

I've lost myself for 20 years.
I don't remember who I was.

They shackle me with chains,
locks, handcuffs.

They've shackled my soul.
Who? The demons.

Satan, Beelzebub. the dragons,
gnomes, goblins, fairies...

the demons and dark powers
have got me.

Why do you think that?

They bring me the thought.

- Who?
- Those... the devils.

- No, they don't exist.
- I wish they didn't.

Whoever can tell me why
my soul is shackled...

I'll make him rich.
I'll go to China...

...where you can get a big piece
of solid gold for $10.

I'll make him rich
and I'll worship him...

...for a thousand billion years,
a thousand billion light years.

There is chaos in my mind,
a black silhouette...

...and a strange light,
and chaos.

Oh, mother,
mother, mother...

Sometimes it turns
this way, then...

What's the matter with me,
my God, my God...

...If you speak to God,
you're praying.

If God speaks to you,
you're schizophrenic.

When we describe behavior
in religious language...

...we legalise it,

when we describe it in psychiatric
language we make it illegal.

In the human kingdom,

the struggle for definition is
really the struggle for survival.

Under the chaotic
raving of the lunatic...

...rules the class
of a secret raving.

His words are
the crust of a deep sea.

Translation is necessary,
but there is no translator.

A person's clash with madness,
a dramatic clash...

...involves profound desperation
and absolute doubt...

...about every aspect
of "being".

The person feels
he has nowhere to return.

He "is" no more.
He "was".

Just as death surrounds
our life...

...so does lunacy linger
around our mental health.

The completely normal person
only closes up inside him...

...the body of
the murdered lunatic.

You take only one drop
from the ocean.

I've been experiencing it
for 20 months...

...apart from the years
I've spent in here.

In here, it's life
and you know why?

Have you seen a river?
It flows. The world.

There are swamps, but inside,
there is much more life.

In stagnation there is movement...

and in a crush there is wealth.

Are you a journalist?

Let me hold it.
Let it go.

It's soft.

Take a photo of me now.

Mum,

call me at the kiosk
in 2 minutes, OK?

No, not 10 minutes,
in three.

I can't talk on the mobile.
Call me in 3 minutes. Bye.

I see you,
you've got cute little teeth.

Now, I see Makis and Akis
and the camera.

I see the palm tree now
and it has nuts.

The palm tree
will make nuts.

- Michalis, I see you.
- Oh, go away!

I'll see God.
The plum tree.

I saw God.

I see the sun.
It's like a sea urchin.

The sun is like a sea urchin,
with rays.

Can Manolis
see a bit too?

Can you see the sun, Manolis?
The boys?

What's that is there?

I see trees, the yard.

What beautiful things!
Beautiful surroundings.

Oh, beautiful trees!
Like the cinema.

There's a number
high up.

Go towards the gate please,
close together, like that.

Keep moving, talk...

Lean on the railing.

Hi, Michalis, do you mind
us playing with the camera?

I want to give you
a cigarette, Michalis.

Haris, how are you?
Are we going on an excursion?

Where's your face, Haris?

Smile, Giorgos, you're
the most important...

...after our medicine.

Shave off your moustache,
so your smile shows.

Don't you know that a "pansy's"
veil is his moustache?

What's your name, my friend?
Don't you have one?

You've got a nice smile.
Did the mouse take your teeth?

- Who do you want to hear?
- Costas.

- This Costas?
- Yes.

How are you. Costas?

- When will we get out of here?
- Patience, Manolis.

- As long as we're healthy.
- Yes.

And you, boys,
be healthy too!

- Thank you.
- You're welcome.

There are more crazy people
outside than in here.

Here, they're sane.
They want to eat, to sleep...

...but outside, they're digging
each other's grave.

You find more understanding
in the hospital than outside.

Outside, if I ask someone
for a cigarette...

...he looks sulky.

But in here...

...if I ask anyone,
they'll give it to me.

In 1996, the first nine members
of the Re-integration Unit...

...accompanied by five members
of the support team...

..went to Denmark for one week.

For most of them, passports,
foreign currency and aeroplanes...

...were unknown
or long-forgotten stories.

I'm Michalis Vourlidakis
from Iraklio...

...and I'm travelling
by plane to Denmark...

...with the others
from the mental clinic.

I was born in Egypt
and stayed till I was 15.

Nasser took our assets
and kicked us out.

Some went to Switzerland,
America, Australia...

...but we went to
South Africa.

I finished school there
and found my husband...

...I married there
and had children.

I'm from Rethymno and
my mother's from Alpha...

...where a famous
lyre-player lived.

My father's from a village
in Rethymno county.

I grew up in a carefree way,
I went to school...

..and I was very close to nature,
to hunting and fishing.

Then I completed an electronics
course and came to Athens...

...and you know the rest.

I have something
pleasant to announce.

During the trip,
a big love was born...

...and tomorrow Stella and Spyros
will be engaged.

Come here. It's not right
to be sulking for two days.

That's it.

I don't want
to discuss this anymore.

You'll sit together
and drink your coffee.

I loved her
right from the start.

We walk to the port, to Hania,

and drink coffee.

That's why I love her.

Has a woman ever caressed you
the same way twice?

That's love,
it constantly creates.

It's fire,
a nuclear explosion...

...irrespective of whether only
a few aristocrats...

...survive the explosion.
Love is not aristocratic.

Both rich and poor
have the right to fall in love.

Love is not defined
like time.

My tragedy is that
I won't have kids...

...because I'm schizophrenic,
I won't have kids.

There is a better one
for 400.

- How much is this?
- 200.

I can't see a woman suffer.
When she's unhappy...

..and can't bear it anymore,
I'm upset too.

With my first girl-friend.
I took things differently.

I felt I like a man who'd been
married for years...

...and never wanted
to separate.

"It was a very constructive
trip, beyond imagination”...

"...and was possible
because of you."

"Thank you from us all.
Yannis Papadakis."

"I'm sending greetings
and love from Denmark."

"We'll be back soon.
Spyros."

"Greetings to my friends
in the Re-integnation Unit."

"Bourlidakis. Aalborg.
August 24, 1996."

They made
an amazing escape...

...from the asylum time,
and compressed...

...a wasted time,
a time they didn't live...

..and they want to squeeze
into that short time...

...so many luscious things,
which they never did.

You're scared
aren't you?

Time is a big problem
in mental illness.

My life was somewhat planned
before I went crazy...

...because for a while
I played chess alone.

After my illness
and after my father's death...

...my time became unlimited,
it pressures me.

Just as Cronus eats his children...
it pressures me.

Here, time passes...

and when I sleep,
I'm well...

...but when I wake up,
I can't plan.

Unlike you, with obligations,
something to create...

Do lions in a cage
plan their time?

It's something
like that.

Don't forget that
no-one defines time.

I was born in 1857
in Iraklio, Crete.

I spent my childhood
in my mother's village...

...then returned
to Iraklio.

I stopped high school because
of marriage and pregnancy...

...but after my divorce.
I finished high school...

...and studied midwifery,
which I completed.

Later, I worked and then
I had problems sleeping...

...so I consulted a doctor
and a priest.

They excited me about women,
but I never saw any.

I was 16 and
I was restless.

I wanted to enjoy life,
but I messed up.

Although I was young,
I became a sailor.

Upset and sad,
I travelled very far away.

I was fine in South Africa,
but became ill here.

I went to a psychiatrist,
who gave me pills...

...but I got worse and
ended up in a mental hospital.

Doctors give you injections,
without you understanding it.

They give you an injection
to feel good...

...but you feel terrible
afterwards.

A moment of joy
becomes a lifelong breakdown...

...just because of an injection.

My potential dropped
and I landed in a well.

It was very deep.
The light of lunacy.

I'm at the edge of the well,
trying to get cured...

...in a well with slippery
footholds, no rope, no-one.

That's how we
all are in here.

I'll get out, even if
I don't know what to expect.

"The Light of Lunacy"
is a good title...

...but lunacy is sub-dimension
of light..

Christ said:
"I am the Light."

"Whoever follows me
shall not be in darkness."

I didn't go to school,
I came here in short pants.

I don't know who I am,
nor how to go back home.

My father died,
my stepmother's alone...

...and my sister
comes to see me.

You can be discharged,
but it's too early for me.

I'm not in a hurry,
because it was too early...

...when I'd been discharged
before and I came back.

I don't like it
anymore in the village.

What can I do there?
I'm used to being here.

You haven't become
institutionalised...

but if I go there,
the laughter...

I liked a girl there,
we went out together.

We were friends, now she's
in her country and I'm in mine.

We were happy together,
but she loved someone else.

We were just friends.

I was born in a big house.
We had property.

Now the house leaks.

I can't go to the village now.
The house is too big for me.

"You re not doing anything new,
you're just continuing...

...the work of your predecessor,
whether father, film director...

...brother, friend,
or someone who's gone.

Six of my friends have suicided
because of insanity.

The girls
wear white ribbons

and look at the boys,
who wake early.

But I don't mind,
nor does my heart ache,

no-one knows
who you love.

I an tenderness.
I am the tear from the eyelash.

I am the man who disturbed
the universe. We are us.

A drop of water in the ocean

is bigger than the
universe of the earth...

...and we help,
we help the dusk.

Beauty, my God,
life, my God.

It's as if mentally
disturbed people...

...are an offering
to others...

...so the rest
can manage.

Insanity is interwoven and
identified with human existence...

...it is inside it
and that's why...

...it cannot be exorcised
or expelled...

...and whoever tries to
subjugate it, to cure it,

pays very dearly.

Simply, at this time,
the murderer thought:

"Will the Furies
or justice choke me?"

"The Furies,"
his friend replied.

What Furies?
What was the crime?

Here, a woman was raped
for two cigarettes.

And here the road,
which isn't an avenue...

...but a path, trodden daily
by thousands...

...with their labour, their sweat,
forgive me Lord.

I pray occasionally.
Now I'm walking, I'm a child.

The finest human essences
are linked with insanity.

To approach it,
you must develop...

...familiarising mechanisms,
with a rhythm...

...and a way of behaviour
in relation to these essences.

You drink and get drunk,
you have to get drunk that day...

...and you know why you get drunk
and how intoxication comes...

...naturally inside you and
you're willing to get drunk.

This willingness in relation to
insanity must become natural.

"Sun, my great easterner,
golden cap of my mind..."

"I like to wear you askew,
I like to play."

"As long as you live,
as long as I live"...

"...I like the earth,
like the curly grape."

"I crave the light
like the olive tree"...

"...and the pine,
and time is hacked to pieces."

"Coolness, coolness,
and time is hacked to pieces."

What hunter
maimed you,

my sweet-sining
nightingale...?

"I'll wage war with God
to take away his angels"...

"...and leave him alone
with damned Death."

"God and Death
are the same thing"...

"...and may they both die,
so nothing's left."

I love the mental hospital
and if I stay outside longer...

...I may even miss it.

If I leave, I'll have
many memories of it.

The people are warm and good,
even in their violence.

You see people fighting,
then shaking hands.

I imagine your film
is finishing now.

Finish with a sentence
that will be touching...

...and as it is heard,

the screen will fade
and go black.

And instead of "The End,"
put "To be Continued."

Will you remember that?

"I am tenderness.
I am the tear from the eyelash."

"I am the man
who disturbed the Universe.”