A full life, I suppose
2023,
25’
Super 16mm, 2K transfer
Sound
Directed, Shot, Edited and Graded by Alexandros Pissourios
Sound by Emiddio Vasquez
Sound recordings by Alexandros Pissourios
Film Development, Telecine by Cinelab London, On8mil
Androulla Pissouriou: The first reaction is shock. Seeing yourself at 18-19 years old, and you are now 70, it’s a bit of a shock. Then you evaluate how you feel. How you felt back then. What you used to do… What frame of mind you were in, I guess, compared to now. But then you say, “This is how life is”. You go through it… You mature, you grow old, and you should appreciate every stage of your lifetime. You needn’t feel sad that you once were young… You should take a look at how you were and be glad that you existed like that—beautiful. I’m not regretful I existed like this… Joyful, beautiful, well-dressed, with my babies. I feel satisfied.
Alexandros Pissourios: So you wouldn’t want to be someone else.
Androulla Pissouriou: No. Someone else, no. Maybe I would have wanted to have a different life. Admittedly, I would’ve liked another partner. Someone else, I guess, someone different. But I like who I was. I wouldn’t want to be someone else. Have I answered ok?
Alexandros Pissourios: Yes.
A full life, I suppose is a filmic portrait of the time shared between the filmmaker and his mother, Androulla, combining new 16mm material shot during his recurring visits to Cyprus with Super 8mm footage shot by his father in the 1970s to chronicle the evolution of bodies and the desires that mark a life. Attempting to balance between observation and construction, the film captures dailiness and domesticity while transfiguring Androulla’s body and inhabited space through close-ups, double exposures and time-lapses. As segments of conversations between filmmaker and mother about her life wander mostly sync-free over the images, encounters with light and darkness in the nooks and furnishings of her otherwise ordinary dwelling arouse a sense of unreality.
Screened at:
2024 27th Brooklyn Film Festival, New York, USA
2024 Film, Memory and Trauma, Cineclub, Nicosia, Cyprus
2024 Film Diary NYC 3: Coldest Winter, Millenium Film Workshop, New York, USA
2024 21st London Short Film Festival 2024, ICA, London, UK
2023 18th Lemesos International Documentary Festival, Lemesos, Cyprus