Efthimis Filippou, born 18.1.1977

On the warm and rainy evening of the 7th of July 1994, a 44-year old woman had a tragic accident. The motorcyle she was on skidded off the road and the woman was seriously injured by a sharp object that penetrated her liver as she fell on the street. She was immediately transferred to the hospital in a state of coma. All the time she remained there, the man whom she loved more than anything in her life was constantly by her side. A 62-year old healthy and well-built man. Every night this man would lie next to her on the hospital bed and sleep with her. These few hours, until the break of dawn, it looked like both of them were in a coma or just asleep. Night shift nurses would not wake him up, they would only tuck him in if it so happened that his leg would stick out of the white covers.

This is the last conversation between the organs of this man and woman’s bodies, as it was recorded by the medical machinery a while before she died of internal bleeding on 18 July 1994. The transcript of the conversation was made by Efthimis Filippou. The internal organs of the two tragic lovers are interpreted by the musicians, performers and members of the Ictus Ensemble, Tom Pauwels and Mike Schmid, musician and sound artist Angeliká Castelló, actor Jean-Benoît Ugeux and actors and directors Angeliki Papoulia and Christos Passalis.

Performers
Konstantinos Avarikiotis, Giannis Klinis, Christos Loulis, Vasilis Magouliotis, Angeliki Papoulia, Elina Rizou, Evi Saoulidou, Michalis Sarantis, Stavroula Siamou, Maria Skoula Music Recording: String Quartet L’Anima (Stella Tsani, Lefki Kolovou, Elias Sdoukos, Brunilda-Eugenia Malo)

Male Dancer
One day they surrounded us and put us in a cage, hitting us on our heads and knees in turn. The men could stand it more, the women less so — they complained and cried at the slightest hit. We couldn’t tell if we were headed north or south. When we arrived, they gave us chicken to eat, and fruit. We ate, and afterwards they showed us to our rooms. The rooms were neither too dirty, nor too small. We thought the conditions would be worse, but we were wrong. For days, almost none of the guards laid a finger on us. But when they caught one of us trying to escape, that’s when things got brutal. They made us all love people who didn’t love us back. They forced us to love people who didn’t want us. We’d tell them how much we loved them and they wouldn’t say a word. We took them flowers but they didn’t appreciate it at all. We kissed their hands and gave them gifts and they’d just stand there – motionless, expressionless- and then they laughed loudly, almost sarcastically in our miserable faces. It was so awful that within a few days, out of a group of twenty people, only two of us remained. The rest died from desperation and sadness, slashing their wrists with their teeth, tearing out their throats with their nails, diving head first from tall trees. I don’t know how the two of us managed to get out of there. Anyway. The songs we write are sad songs and we sing them sweetly without the accompaniment of musical instruments. One of these songs is this one here.

Smoke often rises from our eyes
And our teeth are like hot stones
Our skin is soft and easily torn
And our hair is always combed
Mountains shake when we sob
Our tears form lakes and streams
Overflowing with sperm and spit and water
And our parents, inconsolable, pity us
Our bodies are impossibly thin
But were we to fall down, no-one could pick us up
Our hands and feet become unliftably heavy
Spleens of stone and livers of steel
Inside our mouths hawks sing
In our bellies lie gentle babes and rocks
Pine branches float and big dogs swim
In wine and beer and milk
Nothing better than us exists, nothing purer
We are the world, the moon and the stars
It’s not fair, not even right
That they fear us, or call us fearful

If swimming gives me pleasure, may I never dive into clear blue waters again.

If I sleep soundly at night, may my pillow turn to stone and my sheet to steel.
If I say interesting things, may I lisp only trivial things in my conversations from now on.
I will tell the truth.
If I do not tell the truth tonight, then I am not worthy of standing here before you tonight.
If I dance beautifully, may the music stop and the musicians wander off when I get up to dance.

If I like to walk in parks, may the trees fall and block my path as I go.
If my shirts are always clean and pressed, may I only wear dirty and creased and cheap clothes from now on.
If I like to be kissed on the mouth without tongue, with only lips gently touching my lips, may I only be kissed obscenely with tongue.

I know that in cases like this what you should do is hit us.
Kick us till we faint.
Cut our hair very short.
Cut our nails very short too so that they dig into our finger flesh.
Cut off our water,

so that we can’t cook
or take a bath.
Forbid us from leaving the city
so that we can’t holiday in summer,
or visit our friends in our villages. Speak to us in words without beauty

that sound horrible,
crude words, improper words. Place our feet in buckets filled with ice cold water
and rose-bush branches
and nettles.
Abandon us naked on rocks

and throw sea urchins in our faces. Give us clothes that are too loose or too tight to wear
and take away the clothes that fit us right.

Cover the jetties on our beach – the ones we dive off – with butter and soap so we slip.

They say that when someone dies, their teeth become golden. All the teeth and their roots. The same applies to the gums, to the tongue as well – and the deposits of gold are nothing but concentrated teeth and tongues. That is the necklaces and the chains and our rings are made of dead people and, to give an example, approximately three tongues and twelve teeth are needed to make a good bracelet. They say that when someone dies, the first thing they do is to change clothes. To take off the clothes they were buried in and to wear other, more durable ones.

They say that the dead live between the lithosphere and the asthenosphere; that there is a world up there, with living people, who are afraid of the moment they will die and a world, down there, with dead ones, who are afraid of the moment they will come back to life and their arms will first emerge from the ground and then, slowly, they will come once again out, on earth.

Some say that the dead for whom their living relatives and friends and colleagues are most sorry, are the strongest ones. They are higher ranked. When her husband died, she did not re-marry and she frequently thought of him and she wouldn‘t eat and she would only stay in bed, lying there, crying. This is why her husband is, down there, something very important. She says that he is a chief, a director or that he has a very important position. Had she found a new man and loved him as much as she loved the

dead one or even more, then the dead husband would immediately become something unimportant. A soldier or a low-rank clerk, with no responsibilities, or a thief. This is why the highest-rank positions are held by children. Because it is for them that the living are most sorry.

They say that the character of the dead resembles more or less that of the living. That there are, so to speak, egotistic dead, unreliable dead, naif dead, rude dead and uncompromising dead.
They say that a dead may become a guide only if he or she wants it and after a series of ordeals which last for many months. It is a hard job, for which one has to be knowledgeable and able to concentrate and to possess good eyesight, for the darkness is deep and the conditions very difficult.

Some say that only the hands are cold down there. This is why when they come up, the first thing they take out, on the surface of the earth, is the hand, with its fingers stretched out at the beginning and then bent, as if they where clasping something. Only the hands are cold down there.

Once I heard a dead and a living talk to each-other. “I only wish to know what had happened to my shoes, the ones with the laces,” said the dead. “I wear them once in a while and go for a walk,” replied the living. “Yes, but tell me also, what did you do with my dogs, my two dogs,” asked then the dead. “I keep them in my balcony and feed them every day and give them water,” said the living. “Do you give water to both of them?”, asked the dead. And the living replied, “Not to both of them. Only to one of them – the other is a useless dog. I do not feed him and he does not dare to eat the food of the good dog. Because of his hunger, sometimes he eats the flowers in the pots of the veranda. I do not take them out to run because I do not want to loose them and I do not want them to be hit by a car. They sometimes run and crush on the veranda table and get scratched by the iron parts of it and they, then, sit and lick the bleeding wounds. I have bought leashes for them; new, leather ones that cannot be cut, no matter how hard one may try. If they ever die of kalazar or of any other disease, I have decided that I will bury both, together, next to your grave”. Then, the dead turned around and started walking away and shouted from afar, “Not together. Bury just the good one. The calm one. Let the other be devoured by the birds and the cats”.

Here. A man with brown hair stands on a bridge; he has his arm around a woman and his foot on a big stone, so that his knee shapes a ninety degree angle. His other hand is in the pocket of his jacket. Here. Another man sits at his desk and wears his medical jacket; and behind, on the wall, one sees his diploma; and his arms are crossed. In the pocket of his jacket on may discern the upper part of a pen. Here. A woman with a dark blue swimsuit is standing in the sea, the water is up to her belly and, round her neck, she is wearing a silver chain. Here. Another man is wearing a sweater, a woolen one, a dark one, and he smiles. The hair are now yellow -they used to be light brown, though. The hands are now light blue while, before, they used to be pink. The medical jacket has become yellow, though it used to be white. The swimsuit is now light green -it used to be blue. The sweater is white -it used to be dark. And if someone says that he knew this man well and that it is indeed weird that his hands are light blue, while they used to be pink, then I would answer him that this is not weird at all and that it is the sun that is responsible for all of this. And if he did not believe me, I would show him my father. “Look”, I would say to him, “my father used to be pink as well and he is now yellow and brown and black and green”.

11 February 1990

Dear Dimitri,
I don’t know how my mother is doing.
It’s been months since I last saw her,
I don’t know if her health is any worse or if she loves me anymore. The reason I’ve stopped seeing her is she can’t do needlework as she kept saying. When I realized she didn’t intend to learn, I begged her to do it for me. I followed her into the living room in sobs. When she saw me weeping she promised she’ d start the very next morning. Next day I woke up early put on my shoes and a natty jacket and went to the sewing-and-craft shop. I bought her blue and brown thread, got her a needle too, and all she had to do was embroider a flower, a blue flower with a brown stem. I gave her some beige cotton cloth and sat facing her on the couch. She took ages to thread the needle as her hands were trembling with anxiety. When she managed she looked at me and I said, “Well done mom,” and not just that but I got up, walked slowly to her armchair, I took a deep breath and kissed the spot where her hair met her back. She started on the branch first because the thread was brown. I sat back on the couch and without looking I kept repeating, “Thank you very much”. Being inexperienced she drove the needle through her finger plenty of times, it must have been painful, but she never complained. “The branch was a bit crooked,” I told her
but she couldn’t fix it, which I realized so I did not insist.
With time she got better, I’ll grant her that, and when it came to threading the blue yarn  she was much faster.  I was quick to praise her and then I wiped the sweat off her brow,
I tucked her hair behind her ears as it fell in her eyes and she couldn’t see. The flower was not too pretty, and when she was down to the last petal she saw she had stitched her left hand to the underside of the cloth. I can’t imagine how she never felt the needle going through her own hand. “Much use I have of your apologies,” I said. “Get the scissors and cut yourself free,”
I said. “No,” she said, “get a knife and cut off my hand, or the embroidery will be ruined and I’m not sure I can do it again”. I cut off her hand with the sears we kept in the toolshed and left. I haven’t seen her since. I never went back because that was the only thing I ever asked for
so going back was pointless. Dead, but I don’t think so,  they’d have told me. I had a hard time framing it because the palm couldn’t fit in a conventional frame and I had to order something special, but even so it doesn’t look too good. The result is laughable. Her hand and the blood on the wall, it’s all very sad but there wasn’t much I could do and after a while I learned to live with it. Her fingers are not swollen and her veins are as clearly defined as they used to be and to answer your question I do think of her at times, living alone, without me or anyone else with one of her hands missing, sitting all alone on a chair and I think of how much she loved me when we lived together and I wonder if she still loves me after all these months. So whenever I look at the frame

I remember her.

I hope you are keeping well.
George

A short letter describes the windows as objects with emotions that support people. The letter was then divided into sections that were assigned to artists from the KesselsKramer network. In no time, windows were coming in from Tokyo, Nairobi, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Niagara Falls, Berlin, Florianópolis, an Austrian mountaintop, and a Dutch hamlet called Middel

Co-written with Yorgos Lanthimos
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
12 min

Best Screenplay Award at the 70th Cannes Film Festival

YMA Voice over
They gave me a text printed on 80 gr. velvet paper and they told me to read it.
I tried to speak as clearly as I could. With a nice loud voice.
If our leader was here he would be proud of me and he would definitely give me a bracelet or a conductor’s baton for a reward. He sometimes gives us batons as a gift but we don’t know how to use them cause we are not conductors.

When the time comes YMA stands up and walks in front of a digital camera.
One middle aged man gives him a piece of paper.
YMA looks at the camera and reads the text.

Shaving nicks and cuts – 10 points
Wrong usage of language – 5 points
Fake laughing-15 points
Making original dance moves – 20 points
Tribal tattoos – 60 points
Joint sharing – 5 points
Dyed hair – 5 points
High levels of forgiveness – 10 points
Cheap cologne/cheap after shave – 3 points
Flip flops/ linen shirts/ linen trousers
oversized blazer jackets/ undersized blazer jackets – 15 points (each)
Ability to lick/kiss – 40 points
Loud voice – 5 points
Being boring – 20 points
Hairy back – 14 points
Hairy chest – 14 points
Having two or more beautiful kids – 35 points
Acne – 20 points
Hemorrhoids – 23 points
Knowing Madonna’s real name – 15 points
Knowing Stephanie Grimaldi’s birth date – 35 points
Recalling old songs’ lyrics – 5 points
Playing the guitar – 5 points
Being violent – 10 points
Cool handwriting-20 points
Taking dull pictures with digital camera and then showing them – 30 points
Making spaghetti carbonara with cream – 40 points
Crying in front of others – 20 points
Knowing how to somersault in the water – 2 points
Waking up late – 5 points
Wearing an awkward watch – 19 points
Jerking off more than twice per day – 5 points
Dating a racist girl – 29 points
Being ridiculous while drunk – 30 points
Being raped by another man while drunk – 20 points
Not knowing who Gianfranco Ferre is – 6 points
Being slapped in the face while eating – 12 points
Being punctual and having green eyes – 32 points
Being a cross dresser – 10 points
Enjoying sex with more than one partners – 9 points
Having a pony tail – 40 points
Believing in lies – 15 points
Fear of sharks and bad weather – 5 points
Bad music preferences – 16 points

Jury Prize at the 68th Cannes Film Festival
Nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 89th Academy Awards

INT. LECTURE HALL-MIDDAY
The new arrivals at the hotel sit on seven chairs on stage. David sits last in line. There is a wireless microphone which they each take to speak. Behind the podium stands the Hotel Manager. Her Husband stands beside, and a little behind her. All the residents are attending the event, including Heartless Woman, Nosebleed Woman and her Best Friend. They are all sitting very quietly. Waiters and Maids stand randomly around the room, in pairs. The 50-year-old Waiter and the Maid observe the new residents from the side of the stage.

Hotel manager
Room 206, Day 2

Limping man
Hello, everyone. My mother was left on her own when my father fell in love with a woman who was better at math than she was. She had a postgraduate degree I think, whereas my mother was only a graduate. I was nineteen at the time. My mother entered the hotel but didn’t make it and was turned into a wolf. I really missed her. I found out she’d been moved to a zoo. I often went there to see her. I’d give her raw meat, I knew wolves liked raw meat but I couldn’t figure out which of the wolves was my mother, so I used to give a little bit to each of them. One day I decided to enter the enclosure. I really missed her and I wanted a hug. I climbed the fence and jumped in. All the wolves charged at once and attacked me. All but two, who stood motionless. My guess is that one of those two must have been my mother. The zoo guards got to me quite quickly and took me to the hospital. Thankfully, I didn’t lose my leg, I just have this limp, which is also my defining characteristic. My wife died six days ago. She was very beautiful and I loved her very much. She had a limp too.

Nomination for World Cinema Jury Prize- Dramatic at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

A man lives in his car. He is 40 years old.

Osella for Best Screenplay at the 68th Venice Film Festival
Sydney Film Prize for Best Film at the Sydney Film Festival in 2012

Alps members:

1. Must declare in advance the things they are unwilling to do by filling out Form 1 (e.g. kissing, lifting weights, travelling etc.).

2. Must declare in advance the things they are good at by filling out Form 2 (e.g. dancing, waterskiing, discussing etc.).

3. Must have some basic knowledge of psychology and sociology.

4. Are obliged to support, under all circumstances, the interests of the Alps group.

5. Must respect each other.

6. Have the right to change their nickname only twice. They cannot choose a nickname belonging to another Alps member. The nickname must strictly be the name of a mountain in the Alps, and not something general or irrelevant (e.g. Blonde, Master, Dragon etc.).

7. Can never talk about Alps activities with non-Alps members.

8. Are obliged to take the Gymnastics Club Test, if necessary.

9. Must be over 14 years of age.

10. Should always be smart, clean, punctual, and in complete control.

11. Must never get emotionally involved with clients, or have intimate relations with them.

12. Cannot change their physical appearance without the Leader’s permission (e.g. dye their hair, lose or gain weight, wear coloured contact lenses etc.).

13. Must be able to make convincing facial expressions (sadness, happiness, despair etc.).

14. Must honor the title of their membership, and be ready to kill or die for it.

15. Must never attack one another, and must believe in teamwork.

Mont Blanc, Leader of the Alps group
January 2008 est, if necessary.

Un Certain Regard Prize at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival
Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards

EXT. GARDEN-MIDDAY

Father
Your brother is dead. A creature just like the one that entered the garden this morning, tore him apart. Our enemy is the cat. The most dangerous animal there is. We have to be ready.

– He had a white BMW 316. He then bought a 520. He was born in April 2, 1948. His favourite cologne was Eau Sauvage.
– Dior?
– Dior.

11 February 1990
Dear Dimitri,

I don’t know how my mother is doing.
It’s been months since I last saw her,
I don’t know if her health is any worse or if she loves me anymore. The reason I’ve stopped seeing her is she can’t do needlework as she kept saying. When I realized she didn’t intend to learn, I begged her to do it for me. I followed her into the living room in sobs. When she saw me weeping she promised she’ d start the very next morning. Next day I woke up early put on my shoes and a natty jacket and went to the sewing-and-craft shop.
I bought her blue and brown thread, got her a needle too, and all she had to do was embroider a flower, a blue flower with a brown stem. I gave her some beige cotton cloth and sat facing her on the couch. She took ages to thread the needle as her hands were trembling with anxiety. When she managed she looked at me and I said, “Well done mom,” and not just that but I got up, walked slowly to her armchair, I took a deep breath and kissed the spot where her hair met her back. She started on the branch first because the thread was brown. I sat back on the couch and without looking I kept repeating, “Thank you very much”. Being inexperienced she drove the needle through her finger plenty of times, it must have been painful, but she never complained. “The branch was a bit crooked,” I told her,but she couldn’t fix it, which I realized so I did not insist.
With time she got better, I’ll grant her that, and when it came to threading the blue yarn  she was much faster. I was quick to praise her and then I wiped the sweat off her brow,
I tucked her hair behind her ears as it fell in her eyes and she couldn’t see. The flower was not too pretty, and when she was down to the last petal she saw she had stitched her left hand to the underside of the cloth. I can’t imagine how she never felt the needle going through her own hand. “Much use I have of your apologies,” I said. “Get the scissors and cut yourself free,”
I said. “No,” she said, “get a knife and cut off my hand, or the embroidery will be ruined and I’m not sure I can do it again”. I cut off her hand with the sears we kept in the toolshed and left. I haven’t seen her since. I never went back because that was the only thing I ever asked for
so going back was pointless.
Dead, but I don’t think so, they’d have told me. I had a hard time framing it because the palm couldn’t fit in a conventional frame and I had to order something special, but even so it doesn’t look too good. The result is laughable. Her hand and the blood on the wall, it’s all very sad  but there wasn’t much I could do and after a while I learned to live with it. Her fingers are not swollen and her veins are as clearly defined as they used to be, and to answer your question, I do think of her at times, living alone, without me or anyone else
with one of her hands missing, sitting all alone on a chair and I think of how much she loved me when we lived together and I wonder if she still loves me after all these months. So whenever I look at the frame

I remember her.
I hope you are keeping well.

George

LIVING ROOM, NIGHT
Four old men and two old women are seated. They hold glasses full of whisky in their hands. On a small coffee table in front of them there are strawberry tarts and kiwi tarts. A man gets up and stands in the middle of the room. He raises his hand holding the glass. On the back side his shirt is wet from sweat. His belt is made of fine leather.

(old man)
And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what we can do together for the freedom of man.

MORNING, ZURICH
A man is crying and a woman caresses his head. On the floor lie a silver tray, two croissants, two cups of coffee, a ball with apricot jam and a piece of chocolate cake.

(woman)
I’m sorry.

MORNING, KITCHEN
A chubby man is sitting on a plastic chair. Water runs from the tap and the sink is full. A woman gets in the kitchen, slaps the man and turns it off.

NIGHT, SHIP DECK
A man and a woman stare at the sea as they have their hand around each other. It’s dead calm.

(man)
I will tell him to fuck off.
(woman)
You do that.

AFTERNOON, LIVING ROOM
In the center of the room there’s a corner couch, its cover made of a shinny cloth in shades of blue. Next to the couch there’s a ancient roman couch made of the same cloth but in shades of grey. Next to the glass house on the balcony there’s a bookcase with just a few books and on the other side a 42′ flat screen TV and a brand new DVD player plugged to it. There’s no carpet on the floor. The curtains are white, strapped with a thick blue cord that ends in a tassel. On the wall a painting of a forest in autumn hangs, and a framed poster that shows some dogs that smoke as the play pool. In front of the couch there’s a low table, on top of which there’s a cup full of coffee and a plate with butter cookies. On the couch there’s a closed leather rucksack. On the floor, between the low table and the couch, there are two slippers made of faux leather. The ceiling lamp consists of eight small spots, each facing a different direction. On the other side of the bookcase there’s a fireplace, that hasn’t been recently used and of all the equipment, the one that you use to knock on the wood, when it has burned, to keep the fire going, is missing. On the shelf that the wall forms with the fireplace there is a pile of playstation game wraps and two pictures in two similar frames, one of which shows someone wearing sunglasses and the other one shows an old man hugging a younger man wearing military uniform. Next to the door there’s a wall hanger where four jackets are hanged; a jean, a black raincoat with a hood, a brown leather with fur collar and another jean a bit darker. On the door there are some keys. The key holder is silver and its shape resemblance the island of Crete. Next to the door there’s a shelf cabinet and on the top shelf there are two pairs of sunglasses, one short-sighted, a car key on a BMW key holder, a Zippo lighter, a burned tea light candle, a two pages wish card -on the cover of which is printed: “HI, MY FEELINGS FOR YOU ARE”, while on the inside page: “SO TRUE”-, a plastic mobile cover, a marker with chewed cap and AA batteries. The spotlights are on. We can hear the sound of the garden’s watering machine and the sound of the door bell.

GARAGE, AFTERNOON
The timer of a clockwork bomb shows 08:42. After a while it shows 08:22. A dirty handsome man and a beautiful woman stand in front of the activated bomb. The handsome man cuts a blue cable with a small knife but the timer does not stop.

(woman)
We’ve got to make it. It is Christmas and the mall is full with children.

Sometimes I think that if I talk only in English, I, and you of course, will make a great improvement in this particular language. Or if we think in English. If we all talked to each other in English from now on, we would speak fluently in a few years, even months. We wouldn’t forget our mother language, because it is so part of ourselves at the time being, so the one wouldn’t affect the other. I am definite about that. So I suggest whatsoever -which is a word that I adore by the way- that we speak only in English.