Light

‘Light’ was the sole entry from Greece in the international short film Santiago de Compostela Festival in Spain and was placed among the ten best in the documentary category for the year 2010.
This is an allegorical account of light in audio-visual form, interpreted in parallel on different levels and based on the poem of the same title from the poetry collection ‘Souls of Nature’ by Ioanna Moutsopoulou and Ioannis Zisis. It is a symbolic ‘travelogue’ from the birth of light in the universe, the dawning of consciousness and its experiences, the revelation of and conflict with the hidden darkness before the appearance of light, until completion in meaning and purpose is achieved.
It is a description of the side belonging to light which lies hidden behind every inner and external conflict, and of the opportunity for liberation from the darkness of prejudice, cruelty, and ignorance.

Light! An essence from the most ancient fire,

at the outset of the world

lost back in time,

then when the immaterial Spirit

shot with light the primeval darkness

in an explosive moment of will

emitting itself, the inexhaustible,

in an unfathomable sacrifice

on the outlines of form.

The imprisoned darkness breathed.

It was a suppliant at the portal of God,

worn out by the loss of sight

with the condemnation of a boundless time.

It was carried with the quivering traces of life

without motion, because it was darkness

and movement was impossible in its non-existence,

on the edges of the free country -

that of God.

          *******

Spirit and matter,

the insoluble enigma

and yet within us so familiar.

And there was a light, great and limitless,

and the prison was lit up in an instance.

And then dark thoughts

terrified showed themselves,

wilful dark amid involuntary darkness.

Hosts of armies of darkness did battle with the light.

But that was elusive,

an undefiled beauty which those envied,

but it had already entered into them

and the battle was lost from the start,

in the face of the Boundless, in the face of the Eternal Now.

It is only in time that the war still rages,

but time is no more than a simple thought of God

and unfolds the drama before our eyes

in the shadows which the light has made.

A drama with lines and colours,

in fiery senses of the world

exploring its aim perpetually,

until all things look like light.

Mind and emotions.

Who said that the world is empty?

The self ceaselessly unfolds itself

in the drama of life

and the consciousness like another light advances

there where the sunlight does not enter in.

          *******

Light! A magical essence, full of spirit,

as much as this world could endure.

Life through the breath of nature, ecstatic,

on the green carpet of the earth,

in the beauty which is revealed triumphantly

in the eyes of the beings whose joy is light.

Boundless gradations of light

tell stories of nature and of man with images,

and all seems so natural,

because the beginning has been forgotten,

then when the unintentional darkness, fainting,

lay in the nothingness of vanity

without that spark, the abundant spark, of life

which mercilessly tenses existence

in the games of time,

in order to find its self.

          *******

The old oak-tree in the yard

beneath the summer’s sun

stands like an unassailable rock,

unsleeping guardian of the house,

under the weight of so many summer memories

of a joyful warmth of life

protected in its shade.

And the birds and the flowers further off.

They live only in the generous light

and their graces bring beauty,

undefiled by chaos,

by that willed darkness

which has hidden in the primordial blindness

so that death does not find it.

Beings of light have supported our life,

but we, uncaring, have forgotten them.

We are beings of light too,

the light did not enter only into our branches,

but passed into the crypts

of the heart and the brain

and the Book of Life opened

before our eyes

and the course for our soul

was illumined too,

so that the battle should not be in the dark

in a hopeless effort of life,

with irresponsibility incapable of giving us solace

when the darkness of the heart deludes us

with the poor gifts of an imprisoned soul,

while all around us the light burgeons triumphantly,

in nature and in the inner self.