Text by Natalie Mariko
I’m rushing on foot past motorcyclists and voices yelling out across the traffic lanes, eyes bent to the images bleeding out in my hand. I’m struggling to make sense of the photos I’ve been sent: a brainy facemask in the shape of a cock’s helmet, a silicone pig-head bra, various fake-blood consistencies splashed onto a blank page, a spinal column. Hello, dear, reads the attached message. Running late from the prosthetics meeting.
I’m meeting Slovakia-born and Athens-based film director Adam C.Keller and editor Nikki Powell in the lobby of the Astor cinema to discuss their latest project, in collaboration with Athenian EBM vampire musician Eddie Dark. Strikingly tall, in leather motorcycle boots, grungy hair, bootcut denim and camo jeans, a hypnotic Slavic intonation in his voice— C.Keller cultivates the very image of a vampire-stroke film director. We’ll screen the film and take a coffee somewhere nearby, he smiles, leaning into his hand, and we wait for Eddie to arrive.
C.Keller’s filmic language – if such a thing can be condensed in passing – is typified by desaturation, as if everything were being shot just at dusk and drenched in bleach. There have been rumours, Powell laughs next to him as he speaks and impishly side-eyes us both, that I’ve been using witchcraft on set. It’s a stark sensibility which, over a more-than-a-decade-long career, has lent itself meaningfully to both commissioned works by respectable fashion houses and cultural institutions, and artistic projects alike.
NECROPOP—part short film and part music video—dials up the latent camp fun at the heart of all this darkness. A highly danceable synth line blares as a group of young vampires languish in the gloom, picking blood packets from a fridge. A shirtless young man leans dead-eyed against a wall and suddenly lifts into the air to sing along. We follow them to the dancefloor as they’re hunted by what can only be described as normativity embodied—a slick-haired, square-rimmed glasses-wearing hunter in khaki, toting a suitcase of holy water-dipped bullets and a large cross.
The colours of the film gradually change and warp over time, grow neon and bright, blur and fade as Eddie and his Vamp Angel (London-based Greek supermodel, Nassia Matsa) rip his neck and run blood-soaked into the night. It’s The Hunger meets Blade, but also a nostalgic run into the world of 80s Greek cinema. I always loved John Waters, Eddie tells me seated on the folded-up end of a cinema chair, but also for me [underground film director] Veslemes, who directed Norway, or any of these small film directors—Greece used to be a place where strange and experimental cinema was possible, and I want to show people it’s still possible. With Greek Weird Wave cinema garnering Oscar nominations, it appears to be part of a larger trend away from more traditional narrative modes.
It’s a turn C.Keller (whose instinct seems to tend toward the Gothic) embraces with pride. I was drawn, magnetically, to Eddie the moment I saw him online, he explains as the cinema lights go up. I thought, ‘ This is someone really unique… ‘ I felt drawn to his energy, and he came to remind me that play was an important part of this whole process. He laughs, My Twinkula. We wander past the light of the lobby and into the street. I don’t think I’m a great musician, Eddie (who introduces himself as Nikolas) offers as we walk, I’m happy people like my music, but I know the best thing I can offer is the show. C.Keller leads us all into a café and adds, This is what I learned and why making this film was so important for me. In our dynamic, we exchanged and mirrored our personalities, and he reminded me… He pauses and looks over his shoulder as we sit down. I’ve been invited here to plan for a Q&A after the screening. Keller orders a coffee, a finger tapping against the teak oblong beneath his arm. For our talk at the screening, I’m going to channel the little kid locked in the basement.
We go quiet. It’s an image that’s hard to fly past, and I insist he elaborate. It goes back to my grandparents’ basement. Since childhood, I’ve been obsessed with creating visual worlds. I would lock myself in the basement of my grandparents’ house and, with my best friend, we would play for hours, sometimes even days in a row and construct all kinds of scenarios. The old wooden wardrobes were filled with different props and costumes, and our imaginations always went wild. He adjusts himself in his seat. We used pillows and chairs as different protagonists and actors, sometimes even dressing them up. I realise I never stopped playing that game. It just became my reality.
But what type of reality is made manifest in his films is far from unserious or circumstantial. C.Keller puts his hands together and looks at us through a satisfied grin. In this incarnation, which led me to directing films, I’m exploring the human condition while searching for a utopia of equality. In my artistic work, I’m most interested in creating a capsule—a world, a bubble, a portal. My cast and crew often feel, when we’re on set together – and especially when we wrap a shoot – that everyone needs a moment to reintegrate back into reality. When that happens, I know we’ve traversed. There has been a mutual effort and energy. It’s an exchange.
What passes across that map is a queer eye searching for its authentic catch, or a mode of understanding that horror’s typical accursed Otherness doesn’t somehow delimit, but is rather an invitation to gawp and be delighted. To join in the fun. The character of the Hunter was interesting for me, he explains. Here’s a man captivated by what he can’t be. And yet he’s also intrigued. His initial aim was to eliminate the Otherness and freedom the vampires possess, but as he hears the music, he connects with his inner femininity, and he starts to love it. He joins in. I point out the camera blur that hits at that exact moment. That was lube, Eddie jumps in, a smirk and his bright eyes shimmering under the fluorescent light, Lube smeared on the camera lens.
Powell notes the time. They have until 7:30 before they’re off to a breathwork session. The theme, apparently, is ‘letting go’. Amidst all this energy and passion for exploratory expressive modes (all of which exudes from the dynamic the director and star openly share), there is a palpable sense of measure. When you get to my age, dear, he gestures to his yoga bag, You’ll be carrying your yoga bag. I mentally note they are a decade apart, before asking how this all plays into the creative process. You can also live the experience first and then begin laying it out, or you can sit in solitude and begin by conceptualising, researching, writing, creating boards, brainstorming—whatever approach works for you. He sips his coffee.
An almost beatific smile rarely seems to leave his face. Though what drives me forward is often something very intuitive. It’s higher than me, and I’m almost 2 metres tall. Either a thunderbolt of energy passes through my body, triggered by a particular experience, or some download that happens during my meditation. As soon as I receive this seed of information, often in a very embryonic and abstract form, I try to lay it out in keywords to capture it. It’s then up to the circumstances of life whether you can build on this idea, water it, nourish it with attention. I’ve planted many seeds in my creative garden. Not all of them are ready to sprout, though. Some are more immediate. Some require you to grow into a higher form of yourself.
Eddie adds, This was the best part about working together. We had just enough of an age gap and overlap of references. We were fully immersed and each gave what the other was missing. There was a mutual respect. It is evident in the final product that this project is not just the reflection of one man. Looking at the credits is like reading through a who’s-who of the tiny Athenian queer scene’s creative minds. It’s an endeavour Keller tells me will be his proper Athens ‘arrival’.
I’ve been living here for three years, he says, but the past few months have given me a ‘Vampiric era’ feeling. I spent my summer holidays in Transylvania and felt a striking connection with the medieval interiors and aesthetic elements. This led me to explore Romanian and Slavic folklore mythical creatures. For example, Elisabeth Bathory, the medieval blood countess, the original Vampira—she was an extremely powerful woman charged with murdering over 300 young girls, bathing in their virgin blood to preserve her youth and beauty. I’m also working on a theatre production of Dracula, set to premiere in October. In the end, I realise I’m reconnecting with my roots.
We should head off, and we gather our things to pay. Eddie and Nikki stand satisfied, and Adam looms over the three of us with a sincerity and presence I’m coming to understand is something he never washes away. His mien is controlled, but warm. It was crucial for me that in NECROPOP, the notion of the vampiric resemble something free, fun, sarcastic, nonchalant and mainly queer. Eddie and I bonded like two kids in school, outcasts running away from the mainstream crowd, pressured to conform to some prescribed ‘norm’. We found our safe space, nerding out over each other’s references and immersing ourselves in each other’s visual worlds.
The hunter, as opposed to the vampires, represented something significantly suppressed, obsessed with destroying the sense of freedom the vampire tribe had achieved and, ultimately, subconsciously desiring to become one of them. My brief for the actor was to embody a homophobic psychopath on a mission to destroy a queer safe space. A metaphorical outlet for the accumulated hate and tension in the world. I remember Eddie watching the first cut of the film and telling me, ‘Only a queer director could have possibly grasped the world of Eddie Dark.’
I know it now, but I wish I could go back and tell my younger self: all the things you will be bullied for, all the characteristics that make you stand out from the people who choose to conform, are the things you should nourish and celebrate about yourself. We stand in the street and prepare to part ways, and I have a sense that I’ve been pulled into the orbit of a team whose entire modus operandi is a mutual sense of achievement. It’s a feeling we tend to appellate with the word ‘community’, and Keller’s crew enfolds that as a working ethos. He hugs me tightly and for longer than my cynical Jersey blood can usually handle. I’m really looking forward to the screening and our discussion. He and Eddie clasp onto one another, and Powell and I hug and laugh.
It’s giving a premiere on the big screen. Category is…red carpet realness, C.Keller adds, and I can’t help but wonder aloud if the man who traces his horror flick world back to a childhood spent locked in a basement and sent me photos of gore prosthetics earlier is really always so cheery. I’m most happy when I’m on good terms with myself. When that relationship flows well and I’m aware of all my shadow sides, inner saboteur and negative patterns, I radiate with good energy outwards. And when that happens, I feel like a magnet. Everything is possible.
