FEMALE MALE NATURE MATERNITY PATERNITY BODY IMAGE

SEXUALITY AGE DISEASE DEATH RELATIONS DEPENDENCY FAMILY

WORK ART POLITICS SECRETS GUILT HARASSMENT RAPE HISTORY

RELIGIONS RIGHTS FEMINISM LANGUAGE SEXISM

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WELCOME

We present to you MATRIARCHY! An unprecedented and inspiring film experiment which asks for your support. We are deeply moved by this singular project of collective and voluntary work by 60 actresses and 15 film professionals! A film about women today cannot be just a personal film. And it does not concern only women. We invite you to be part of it!

SYNOPSIS

60 women of different ages, nationalities, social backgrounds, political beliefs and sexual orientations, at a non-stop five-day meeting, attempt to redefine their place in today’s world.

In a society fabricated on male discourse for centuries now, how can women articulate their own language, find their own voice today?

The heroines gather in order to defend a space which they consider their own - a shelter for the protection of women and children which is threatened by shutdown and demolition.

By day they discuss, analyze, converge and clash over all matters concerning them: society, sexuality, politics, body, relations, arts, maternity, work. By night they let themselves free to express, they dance, sing, confess their lived experiences to one another.

Guilt, secrets, fears, desires, preconceptions, doubts.

What will come out of such an experiment? Of a peculiar type of assembly without any manifestos and predetermined goals, inspired solely by the desire for communication, expression and free self-determination?

Away from stiff beliefs and easy conclusions, the women of MATRIARCHY gather to talk about everything that troubles them today, through a variety of different perceptions and viewpoints, based on their lived experiences.

WHAT WE WANT TO ACHIEVE AND HOW YOU CAN HELP

We are 75 people (cast and crew) working feverishly and voluntarily, without any kind of financial reward but with great enthusiasm and faith in the significance of the film experiment of MATRIARCHY.

We want the voices of these women to be heard. We want to grasp with them the imperative demand for a different world – hospitable for both women and men everywhere on earth, less violent, more feminine.

In this meeting where masks are stripped off, the heroines gather to talk about all matters that trouble them and sometimes divide them:

Work - Body - Sexuality - Image - Relations - Family - Age - Violence - Art - Public Space - Private Space - World and History - Feminism - Gendered Language - Prostitution - Mental Diseases - Religions - Nature

The heroines of MATRIARCHY will be joined by eminent women poets, artists and theorists with a particularly personal language and of great importance such as Katerina Anghelaki Rooke (poet), Olga Tournaki (actress), Tzina Politi (university professor and political activist) and others.

The space for this extraordinary assembly is located in an industrial area of Athens with its entire “male imprint” on it. However, the real scenery is nothing more than the heroines’ faces and bodies.

Rehearsals and production design have started and advance intensively. Despite our collective dynamics and the volunteer work of a dedicated team, cinema is an art that cannot exist without funds. In order to make this project real with the adequate technical requirements and minimum working conditions, we need your support.

Shooting will require among others three cameras connected to three monitors, so as to follow parallel actions and reactions and an equivalent sound-recording installation capable of capturing a rich sound universe full of so many voices, breaths and silences. Shooting and post-production will be demanding, as we aim to imprint and recompose a complex visual and aural polyphony.

With your support we intend to cover the basic production expenses, summarized as follows:

Equipment rental (cameras, lenses, steady cam, lights, sound): 4000 euros
Studio rental and electricity: 4000 euros
Scenography (space rearrangements, props): 1000 euros
Costumes: 600 euros
Consumable materials: 1800 euros
Cast and crew per-diems (transportation, etc): 8450 euros
Equipment and props transportation: 800 euros
Catering: 3000 euros
Sound mix: 2000 euros

We intend to cover the rest of the expenses with private sponsorships.

The shooting is scheduled to start at the end of June 2013. The film will be completed by January 2014.

We invite you to participate in the collective and polyphonic endeavor of MATRIARCHY, a film which aspires through the personal story of each heroine to open a discussion on subjects concerning all of us. This is why we ask for your support.  Because we think that this project concerns you. Help us make MATRIARCHY real!

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Sixty Women, Five Days

Some talk, some keep silent and listen, others keep silent with wandering thoughts. One keeps silent because there are no words to express the pain and the violence that brought her here. Some talk a lot because speech is sound, a music which wants to express what words cannot say. Some talk calmly and slowly, others anxiously. Some talk with their body, they touch, caress, fondle, smell.

At noon they make lunch and get to know one another better.

All of them become intense, they clash, cry and laugh. Emotions come and go, along with thoughts –overabundant, warm, on the spot. They want to feel, understand, and take courage from one another. They don’t want to be alone in anguish, doubt, panic attacks. Dark memories should come to light, for what happens to one of them happens to many, it happens to women’s society, to the world.

They also want to share their joy. To bring with them what is precious: a young child, a cat, a plant, the testimony of a cherished relationship, of a dear memory.

By night they revel, drink, dance, sing, and go into ecstasies – over their power, their beauty, life itself. Later, as they go to sleep, they confess something intimate to a friend or tell stories to themselves in their sleep, in the dark.

In the morning they wake up and make coffee. One breastfeeds her baby, others are outside for a smoke and the early small talks on practical subjects. Some start discussing and invite the rest along. Others linger outside, feeding the dogs and playing around with them. They come inside running; one is holding a puppy in her arms.

Discussions liven up for good, from lived experiences to the world, and then back again to the body. Where everything begins and ends.

Before Matriarchy*

What we call Civilization, the human civilization is a gendered civilization - it is the male civilization.

Violence is everywhere.

A different way of living on the planet is possible if women give their own imprint on all aspects of life
if they listen to their own inner voice, if they manage to distinguish it after millenaries of male dominance on everything, on thought and habits, on the very language we speak every day,
if they go beyond the mere equality of rights to seek their own language, their own way of doing things
reproducing the male ways and stereotypes only makes them barter away their own deeper voice,
their own female voice
regarding social life and our ways of being together and sharing goods, our relation to the body and its desires, maternity, our relation to the environment but also our very brain and its complexity
it is only by means of the feminization of civilization and the encouragement of mens' feminine side that an essentially different way of common life on Earth not governed by violence can exist
by the advent of
MATRIARCHY
and if it sounds utopian, it is only the scenario
of a film.

Nikos Kornilios

* Matriarchy never existed and probably will never exist, at least not in the sense implied by the word. It is a concept of a gendered language, a virtual antipode to patriarchy. We choοse this word because ιt seems to provoke trepidation. We appropriate this word because we want to explore its utopia.

OUR APPROACH AND WORKING METHOD

Τhe film will imprint the gathering of the women in three levels: the polyphonic conversations of the group as a whole; the intimate moments between smaller groups (private conversations, confiding secrets); the liberation of expression through singing, dancing and art.

The characters of MATRIARCHY are shaped in collaboration with the actresses, starting from experiential material which they carry and elaborate. Their own life experiences, as well as those of women from their environment make up the raw material for creating the heroines of MATRIARCHY.

The documentation of fiction derives from the exploration of real lived experiences. Women’s narratives dramatize a material which comes from their immediate experience.

This experimental approach in fiction adjoins documentary also on the level of free improvisation during shooting. For these female voices to be looked for and listened to, shooting will have to provide space for spontaneous and unforeseen developments in the interaction between the actresses and their roles.

The former (and often long-term) collaboration between director Nikos Kornilios and all the actresses of MATRIARCHY provides a solid ground of trust on which an affective collective dynamics blossoms.

Daily rehearsals construct for each heroine her way of taking a stand on a wide spectre of issues, as well as her potential reaction when she’ll be called to face them along with the rest of the women. Theoretical and critical texts, women's poetry, literature and lived experiences form the basis for the constant elaboration of the characters by the actresses.

This five-day meeting takes place in a space which houses activities about women and children. The heroines have gathered there to protect the place from being sealed in the near future; women from Greece, Africa, Europe, Latin America. As time passes by while they stay there, the issues that trouble them and the imperative demand to articulate a personal as-lived discourse will start to emerge.

CAST (in development)

Evelina Arapidi, Eirini Assimakopoulou, Alexandra Balomenou, Kassandra Bafaloukou, Christina Baptista, Anoixia Bountziouka, Anna Chanioti, Emmanouela Charatsi, Iris Chatziantoniou, Maria Derebe, Romalea Drega, Kleopatra Emmanouil, Penelope Flouri, Eva Gazanou, Nikoleta Gialelaki, Esther Andre Gonzalez, Eirini Iglesi, Artemis Ioannou, Olga Ioannou, Eleni Kalara, Stella Kalisperatou, Vasso Kamaratou, Dimitra Konstantinopoulou, Melissa Kotsaki, Maria Lampraki, Lauretta Macauley, Eyfrosyni Makridou, Christina Manoli, Eirini Margaroni, Aurore Marion, Elpida Metaxa, Ioanna Michala, Maira Milolidaki, Dimitra Mitropoulou, Eleni Moleski, Eleni Nassiou, Elpi Oikonomou, Depy Panga, Aimilia Papadakou, Eleni Parginou, Katerina Parissou, Vasia Paspali, Zetta Pasparaki, Christina Skaza, Andromachi Spanelli, Elena Stamati, Margarita Stavropoulou, Eva Stylander, Konstantina Takalou, Vasiliki Troufakou, Gavriela Vasdeki, Andriani Vasilopoulou, Larissa Vergou, Eutuxia Xanthoudaki.

CREW (in development)

Direction, Dramaturgy: Nikos Kornilios

Collaboration in Dramaturgy: Evgenia Papageorgiou

Assistant Director: Eleni Gioti

Photography: Giorgos Papanikolaou

Camera: Alexis Iosifidis

Assistant Photographer: Fotis Tsakos

Sound: Yannis Karamitros, Vasiliki Poulou, Iason Theofanou

Editing: Evgenia Papageorgiou

Sound Design, Sound Mix: Studio 19, Kostas Bokos, Vasilis Kountouris

Set Decorator: Christos Konstantellos
1st Assistant Set Decorator: Ifigeneia Tzimouli
Electrician: Thanassis Sidiras

Production Assistants: Panagiotis Drakopoulos, Odysseas Skandalis, Dimitris Ampatzis

Production Design: Evgenia Papageorgiou

Production: Nikos Kornilios

NIKOS KORNILIOS

Director/Producer

Born in Athens. For many years he lived in Paris, France where he composed orchestral music and directed for the Chaillot National Theatre among others. His works have been performed at many European festivals. He started making films in 1982. He teaches acting for theater and cinema.

FILMOGRAPHY

1982 THREE MOVEMENTS

1991 EQUINOX

1997 DESERT SKY

2002 THE WORLD AGAIN

2008 MUSIC OF THE FACES

2010 TUESDAY

2012 11 MEETINGS WITH MY FATHER

THEATRE

Pseudonyms (1979), based on a text of Dominique Grandmond, first presented in the Centre of Contemporary Art, in Paris.

Echopolis (Sonorville 1980) “Urban Musical Spectacle”, at Ivry, using as set the front of the buildings, where the actors and musicians were performing.

The Night of the Suppliants (1982), based on Suppliants of Aeschylus. Co-production with the National Theatre of Chaillot and the ARC (Ville de Paris).

The Imitation of the Silence (1983), at the Theatre festival of Avignon.

The Seventh Gate (1985), two acts of the Theban Circle and “Thebaide” by Racine, at the National Theatre of Chaillot. Tour in France.

As You Like It (1999), William Shakespeare, at the National Theatre of Greece, in Athens.

Mabbot street (2003), based on chapter XV of Ulysses by James Joyce at Roes Theatre, in Athens.

Laurel and Hardy Go to Heaven (2007), Paul Auster, at the Sfendoni Theatre, in Athens.

Hamm and Clove (2008), based on the Endgame by Samuel Beckett, at the Booze Cooperativa, in Athens. 

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (2009), Rainer Werner Fassbinder, at the Chora Theatre, in Athens.

One Act Plays (2011), Harold Pinter, at the Alkmini Theatre, in Athens.

MUSIC

He composed music for ensembles, which were performed at several festivals (Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Cannes, Strasbourg, Orleans, London, Middelburg, Athens).

He also composed music for his films and his stage directions.