it is part of their childhood and they grow up and learn all the steps. And I think there is some muscle memory thing going on, you are doing something your parents did, your grandparents did and your great-grandparents did and it has some sense of continuity in a physical sense which is part of the culture.
You mentioned bringing an early cut of the film over to show the people. What did the people of Epirus think of the film?
They loved it. I was really nervous because I don’t speak Greek, I am not an aficionado. I have learned a lot about the music but not compared to them you know? But they were thrilled that, on the one hand, that someone would pay attention to them. Within Greece, Epirus is kind of seen like Appalachia. It has that certain kind of thing, it is poor. It is out of the way, difficult to get to. It is far north, almost Albania. One of the chapters in Chris’s book is called ’even Greeks don’t listen to this music’. It is not considered to be much fun, it is like sean-nós in an Irish setting. There are other sorts of Greek music that people like such as the Zorba the Greek shit. This is a lot more intense, it is a lot more cerebral in a way and nobody really cares about it in Greece, as far as I know but I certainly didn’t get the impression that it was being cherished as part of the Greek cultural experience. The people were thrilled that someone from Ireland would come all the way over there and film. They also really respected the fact that a lot of Greek people speak in the film. I didn’t want people interpreting them all of the time. Let the Greek people speak, let them be part of the experience and show them more than hear them. It was about showing rather than telling and allowing you to see the experience rather than having it explained to you.
Parts of the mountainous region looked pretty hairy to be filming on. Was that yourself with the camera at the edge of the mountain?
I am not the best at heights so I went on the recce for those shots and I said ok, I have been out here once , I have seen it and I know what to do, now I am going to watch from way over here where it is safe. My fearless and brilliant cameraman Paddy Jordan, who shot The Young Offenders, he was out there with the assistant cameraman, with the line producer Nick and they did all the shooting at the precipice and they didn’t have any problem with it at all. I just thought, leave them to it. It is very beautiful, but you could die!
There is a shot about 50 minutes in, with a camera coming up the steps and into the circular musical celebration that is amazing. It looks a difficult set-up.
No.
Was it not?
I wasn’t even there! It was George Charisis, our second cameraman, who is brilliant. We were off somewhere else shooting some other stuff and I walked through it and told him what I wanted. And he shot it by himself and he did an absolutely stunning job. He knows the music and is from there so he timed it perfectly to get to the end of the shot just when the music was ending and people stopped and applauded which was lovely. One of the things I wanted to do in the film was to get away from the documentary thing where you are constantly cutting and cutting trying to make a point. We wanted to try and tell the story using takes that are longer than 30 seconds and go for three or four minutes if we had to.
46 CinÉireann / February 2018
Grigoris Kapsalis, who features in
While You Live, Shine