Cypriot Cinemas: Memory, Conflict, and Identity in the Margins of Europe 9781623561314, 9781501300127, 9781623564605

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Scenarios of History, Themes, and Politics in Cypriot Cinemas
Stories of history, histories in stories
Literature review on Cypriot cinema(s)
State film support policy
Themes and issues
Concluding remarks
Works cited
Notes
1 Archive, Evidence, Memory, Dream: Documentary Films on Cyprus
Introduction
Part One: The social space of documentary film
Part Two: Uses of the documentary archive
Conclusion
Works cited
Notes
2 Aesthetics, Narratives, and Politics in Greek-Cypriot Films: 1960–1974
Introduction
Aesthetics, politics, and national identity
Pastoral landscapes, village life, nostalgia, and purity
Tourism, modernity, the city, and the beach
Conclusion
Works cited
Notes
3 Cyprus Past, Present, and Future: The Derviş Zaim Trilogy
Introduction
Parallel Trips
Mud
Shadows and Faces
Past, present, and future
Works cited
Notes
4 Tormenting History: The Cinemas of the Cyprus Problem
Introduction
Greek (Cypriot) visions: Missing persons, refugees and victimization in 1974
Visions of reconciliation
Turkish-Cypriot fears: Warnings from 1963
Conclusion
Works cited
Notes
5 Transnational Views from the Margins of Europe: Globalization, Migration, and Post-1974 Cypriot Cinemas
The global, the local, and the trashy: Hassanpoulia, Diogenis Herodotou, and their unclaimed legacy
Hassanpoulia as an “alternative” form of transnational cinema
Journeying “within” and “around” Cyprus: Unattainable and in-between filmic spaces
Conclusion
Works cited
Notes
6 Women and Gender in Cypriot Films: (Re)claiming Agency amidst the Discourses of its Negation
Introduction
Theoretical and methodological approach
Women as victims
Women as agents
Conclusion
Works cited
7 Postscript: Borders of Categories and Categories of Borders in Cypriot Cinemas
A comparative view of Cypriot literature and Cypriot cinemas
The categorical ambiguities of Cypriot cinemas
A working typology of Cypriot cinemas
Conclusion
Works cited
Notes
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Topics and Issues in National Cinema Volume 3 Series Editor Armida de la Garza, University College Cork, Ireland Editorial Board Mette Hjort, Chair Professor and Head, Visual Studies Lingnan University, Hong Kong Lúcia Nagib, Professor of Film, University of Reading, UK Chris Berry, Professor of Film Studies, Kings College London, UK, and Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre, UK Sarah Street, Professor of Film and Foundation Chair of Drama, University of Bristol, UK Jeanette Hoorn, Professor of Visual Cultures, University of Melbourne, Australia Shohini Chaudhuri, Senior Lecturer and MA Director in Film Studies, University of Essex, UK

Topics and Issues in National Cinema Other Volumes in the Series: Volume 1 Revolution and Rebellion in Mexican Film by Niamh Thornton Volume 2 Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinemas: From NationBuilding to Ecocosmopolitanism by Pietari Kääpä

Cypriot Cinemas Memory, Conflict, and Identity in the Margins of Europe Edited by Costas Constandinides and Yiannis Papadakis

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2016 © Costas Constandinides, Yiannis Papadakis, and Contributors 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cypriot cinemas : memory, conflict and identity in the margins of Europe / edited by Costas Constandinides and Yiannis Papadakis. pages cm. -- (Topics and issues in national cinema) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62356-131-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures--Cyprus--History and criticism. 2. Motion pictures--Political aspects--Cyprus. 3. Politics in motion pictures. I. Constandinides, Costas. II. Papadakis, Yiannis. PN1993.5.C875C97 2014 791.43095693--dc23 2014023614 ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6131-4 PB: 978-1-5013-1996-9 ePub: 978-1-6235-6002-7 ePDF: 978-1-6235-6460-5 Series: Topics and Issues in National Cinema Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN Printed and bound in Great Britain

Contents Acknowledgments

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Introduction: Scenarios of History, Themes, and Politics in Cypriot Cinemas 1 Costas Constandinides and Yiannis Papadakis 1 2

Archive, Evidence, Memory, Dream: Documentary Films on Cyprus Elizabeth Anne Davis Aesthetics, Narratives, and Politics in Greek-Cypriot Films: 1960–1974 Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert and Nicos Philippou 3 Cyprus Past, Present, and Future: The Derviş Zaim Trilogy Laurence Raw 4 Tormenting History: The Cinemas of the Cyprus Problem Costas Constandinides and Yiannis Papadakis 5 Transnational Views from the Margins of Europe: Globalization, Migration, and Post-1974 Cypriot Cinemas Costas Constandinides 6 Women and Gender in Cypriot Films: (Re)claiming Agency amidst the Discourses of its Negation Nayia Kamenou 7 Postscript: Borders of Categories and Categories of Borders in Cypriot Cinemas Costas Constandinides List of Contributors Index

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61 91 117

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237 239

Acknowledgments We would like to thank the two external reviewers, Lydia Papadimitriou and Vrasidas Karalis, as well as Armida de la Garza at Bloomsbury, for their helpful comments. We would also like to thank Panicos Chrysanthou for the cover photo (from the making of the documentary A Detail in Cyprus 1987). We thank Elena Christodoulidou and Andrea Constantinou at the Cinema sector of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus for their assistance in providing useful material, as well as Diomedes Nikitas for contacting the filmmakers to secure permissions to use images from their films. We thank Ms Katia Fili, Marios Piperides, and all the film directors who kindly shared behind the scenes information and provided additional useful material. Finally, we would like to thank the many colleagues and friends who viewed some of the films with us and shared their thoughts on drafts and ideas for the volume.

Introduction: Scenarios of History, Themes, and Politics in Cypriot Cinemas Costas Constandinides and Yiannis Papadakis

Archbishop Makarios, the President of the Republic of Cyprus, was regarded as a charismatic orator, but proved to be a lousy actor when he played, well … himself actually, in the ominously-titled (especially for Makarios) Greek-Cypriot film Order to Kill Makarios (Dolofoniste ton Makario, Costas Demetriou, and Pavlos Philippou, 1975). All he had to do was utter a few sentences to a journalist, yet he looked stiff and uncomfortable as he spoke while stealing furtive glances down at where his script was (obviously) lying just outside the frame (Figure 0.1). Given that he was alive—as testified by him acting as himself, among other things—there was not much doubt regarding the outcome of the plot to murder him, hence no real sense of audience suspense. A documentary with this title rather than a fiction film would have been more appropriate.

Figure 0.1  Archbishop Makarios, acting as himself, consults the script to perform his lines in Order to Kill Makarios

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This film exemplifies certain key aspects of Greek-Cypriot cinema: the blurring of the boundary between fiction and reality; the employment of film for political persuasion (which others would call propaganda); the use of film to present key historical events in order to persuade, explain, or rather—as the Orwellian-sounding phrase goes—to “enlighten (diafotisoun)” others about what really happened and who really is to blame; the self-indulgent belief of certain filmmakers of their power to convince others, however unconvincing the films might appear to others, then or subsequently. That a head of state could be persuaded to act as himself in a film meant that he had strong faith in the value of film as a tool of political persuasion, exemplifying the post-1974 support of film by the authorities for this purpose. But, first, what is Cyprus? Cyprus is an island in the eastern Mediterranean, close to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Africa. This however, is not a description that would please the majority community of Cyprus: the Greek Cypriots comprised 80 percent of the population according to the 1960 census, when the island became an independent state. The geographical association with Turkey, as well as with the Middle East, would sound abhorrent. The association with Turkey however would please Turkish Cypriots, the minority community who in 1960 comprised 18 percent of the population. The rest of the associations with Syria, Lebanon, and—insult-upon-insults—Africa would equally displease Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. Both would prefer to see Cyprus as the easternmost corner of Europe, for a strong sense of being European is one thing that the two communities share. Beyond this shared Eurocentrism and a belief in the superiority of the West (also expressed as a denigration of anything deemed as “Eastern” or “of the Third World”), Turkish Cypriots might still object to the opening question about Cyprus. Their issue could be with the word “Cyprus,” a geographical designation yet not a political one given that currently in “Cyprus” there are two polities: the (Greek-Cypriot controlled) Republic of Cyprus in the south, and the (Turkish-Cypriot controlled) Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. After all is this not a book in a series about “national” cinemas so is there a Cypriot “nation” to speak of? The Turkish-Cypriot claim about the existence of two states in Cyprus would be vehemently contested by Greek Cypriots, who would want it ascertained that the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus does not exist. What does exist, they argue, is a pseudo-state, one clearly not having the legitimacy of the internationally-recognized Republic of Cyprus, the former not being a recognized state (except by Turkey), hence it should only be referred to within quotation marks as the “Turkish Republic of



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Northern Cyprus.” The entry in 2004 of the Republic of Cyprus in the EU, meant that, in effect, the island currently lies both inside and outside the EU. As for the existence or not of a Cypriot nation—surprisingly perhaps for an outsider, but unsurprisingly for any locals—views are no less contested among Cypriots, as the following section explains. Cyprus is widely known abroad for two things: being an idyllic tourist destination (“the island of Aphrodite, goddess of love”) and one of the lengthiest intractable conflicts (“the Cyprus Problem”). As various authors note in this volume, the legacy of Aphrodite has been extensively mined, from films like Andreas Pantzis’ The Rape of Aphrodite (O Viasmos tis Aphrodites, 1985) where all Cypriot women are called Aphrodite, to early 1980s, co-produced soft-porn flicks shot in Cyprus. One of the funniest filmic appearances of Aphrodite is in the film Kalabush (Adonis Florides and Theodoros Nicolaides, 2003) where a customer of a local brothel pees on a kitsch statue of Aphrodite placed on a pedestal outside, and later, when another customer is kicked out, he smashes the statue to the floor (Figure 0.2). The distraught pimp, upon seeing the pieces, shouts “[How could you break] Aphrodite, the goddess of sex!” an indirect reference to ancient temple prostitution associated with Aphrodite. The legacy of the continuing Cyprus Problem has been paramount both in terms of filmic themes, form, and content, as well as for determining state support and funding policies. Given the fiercely politically contested terrains of Cyprus there is no position that could be regarded as apolitical (as is the case elsewhere, in fact); hence we also need to locate ourselves as editors of this volume in Cyprus’ sociopolitical

Figure 0.2  The statue of Aphrodite in “ruins” (Kalabush)

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terrain, as well as in broader disciplinary ones. We position ourselves as engaged in what anthropologist Jonathan Spencer has termed a practice of the counterpolitical: “an ethic of suspicion towards all political divisions between friend and foe. That is to say, we should refuse to treat any claims to incommensurability and absolute differences—whether expressed in religious, cultural, or political terms—as given aspects of our world.” (2007: 182). Costas Constandinides is a Greek-Cypriot academic specializing in film studies, who is currently a member of the Cinema Advisory Committee of the Republic of Cyprus and has also served in other cinema-related state committees. Yiannis Papadakis is a Greek-Cypriot social anthropologist, a significant part of whose work engaged in critiques of Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot nationalisms, including memory, memorials, museums, and history schoolbooks. These comments are not meant to deny the pertinence of issues related to the politics of interpretation, issues unavoidable in the humanities and social sciences anyhow, but rather to draw attention to the disciplinary, theoretical, and political lenses that we have employed in our discussions and choices as authors and editors. This same point is illustrated in this volume by noting the different readings that different contributors may give to the same film depending on their interest and approach, more so, in examining any open and multi-layered form of art such as film.

Stories of history, histories in stories This section provides the necessary historical introduction and outlines the contested views of history in order to explain the historical and political complexities of Cyprus. It does this by providing a basic historical outline, and using the way history has been represented in the films discussed in the book to illustrate the contested politics and stories of history. In other words, following Sorlin (1980) we discuss films not as records of history or reconstructions of the past but as records of the period’s historical culture, i.e., of the dominant historical paradigms, perspectives, and debates when the films were made as reflected in the films. We take Sorlin’s observation a step further noting that, given the externally and internally contested historical views, it is more accurate to speak of historical cultures rather than a single historical culture. The twentieth century witnessed the gradual rise first of Greek and later of Turkish nationalism in Cyprus (Kitromilides 1979), along with the rise of



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powerful joint Left-wing movements. Greek Cypriots first challenged British colonial rule with Enosis (union with Greece) and Turkish Cypriots later by demanding Taksim (partition) for Cyprus. EOKA (Ethniki Organosi Kyprion Agoniston, National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) led the Greek-Cypriot armed uprising for union from 1955 to 1959. Turkish Cypriots set up their own fighters group, TMT (Türk Mukavemet Teşkilatı, Turkish Resistance Organization), for Partition in 1958. The opposed political aims of the two communities, along with the British policy of employing Turkish Cypriots as auxiliary policemen against the Greek-Cypriot insurrection, also led to interethnic conflict during the late 1950s (Pollis 1979). The island finally became an independent state in 1960, an outcome that satisfied neither community, with (Greek Cypriot) Archbishop Makarios elected as its first president and (Turkish Cypriot) Fazil Küçük as vice-president. Yet, independence did not satisfy either community’s aspirations and the resulting state was aptly called the Reluctant Republic (Xydis 1973). No films were produced during this period, yet there is an interesting documentary—among various colonial newsreels—Cyprus is an Island (Ralph Keene 1946) that was produced by the British and is worth commenting on. The Colonial Film website, on which it is available, has detailed comments on the politics of its making, explaining how it evaded certain political issues and conflicts and how its director was forced to add scenes in order to present the British Empire in a benevolent light, such as bringing various benefits and modernizing the island.1 This is an example of (documentary) film employed for political purposes, through selections and evasions, a strategy that was subsequently emulated by both communities after independence. It is also an example of pressures placed by funding bodies on filmmakers, the sponsor here being The Ministry of Information, a role later taken up by each side’s (identically named) Public Information Office. During December 1963 interethnic conflict erupted in Cyprus, as the two ethnic groups persisted in their demands for Enosis and Taksim. Turkish Cypriots—who were the weaker party—suffered more with people displaced, killed, and missing, and retreated in enclaves protected by TMT fighters, paving the way for the first widespread territorial separation of the two communities (Volkan 1979). One of the lines separating the two communities in Nicosia came to be called “the Green Line” (the name by which the current post-1974 division is also known) and UN troops, who came to the island in 1964 in order to preserve the peace, are still on the island to this day. Greek Cypriots—who

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were in effect in control of the island and its government—enjoyed the benefits of economic development based on light industry and tourism, while the move from villages to urban centers became more pronounced. In 1967 a military junta came to power in Greece that tried to dictate politics in Cyprus. The rise of the military junta made Greek Cypriots edge away from the idea of union with Greece, striving instead to preserve the political independence of Cyprus and settle the internal political conflict with Turkish Cypriots. Interethnic conflict subsided after 1967 and the two communities engaged in negotiations, with Turkish Cypriots now being able to partly live outside the enclaves. A small group of Right-wing extremists, calling themselves EOKA B and aided by the Greek junta, launched a campaign of sabotages and intimidation against the government of the Republic of Cyprus accusing them of having abandoned the “sacred” cause of Enosis, culminating in a coup against Makarios in 1974 (Richter 2010). The period from 1960 to 1974 marks the beginning of Cypriot cinema, with a number of Greek-Cypriot films made, something Turkish Cypriots were unable to emulate due to their struggles to protect themselves and make ends meet while living mostly restricted in enclaves. Economic prosperity, tourism, travel, and a more capitalist mode of life developed that, echoing Marx’s famous aphorism “all that is solid melts in the air”, also gave rise to fears and discontents among Greek Cypriots. The nostalgic folkloric impulse arising from the changes due to Cypriot modernity is best represented by Giorgos Filis’ two films, Loves and Sorrows (Agapes tze Kaimoi 1965) and The Last Kiss (To Teleutaio Fili 1970), that attempt to document local “authentic” village customs. Costas Demetriou’s Hassanpoulia: The Avengers of Cyprus (Ta Hassanpoulia: Oi Ekdikites tis Kyprou 1975), a film whose production began before 1974 and was interrupted due to the war, casts a backwards glance on the legend of Hassanpoulia, a Robin Hood-type gang that tried to right wrongs committed against the poor in late nineteenth-century Cyprus. It employed a sex-and-violence theme that was common in foreign films of the period. The attempt to get rich quickly during the 1960s, taking advantage of others in a rapidly changing world, including the selling of fake Cypriot antiquities to unsuspecting tourists, is presented in the comedy by Vangelis Oikonomides Money, Mischievous (O Paras o Maskaras 1969). The pitfalls (but also liberating possibilities) offered by modernity’s new mores of the 1960s frame Orestis Laskos’ Vacations in Our Cyprus (Diakopes stin Kypro Mas 1971), which promotes Cyprus as a tourist destination to the point where it now appears as a lengthy tourist advert.



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The image on this book’s front cover is an apt representation of the role and position of many post-1974 Cypriot filmmakers, the major period of film production. Lone, heroic, and (mostly) male, working under difficult conditions, focusing on the Cyprus conflict, and exemplifying an auteurist spirit of filmmakers perched dangerously on the edge, in need of careful balancing: balancing the books and not bankrupting given the funding difficulties; balancing the films’ politics in order to express their own views, remaining within the funding authorities’ permissible (politically correct) boundaries; and addressing a local public (possibly comprising Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots), the public of Greece and/or Turkey, and hopefully others beyond— clearly an arduous balancing act. The year 1974 was the key landmark of modern Cypriot history. It is no exaggeration to say that most intellectual effort in the post-1974 period dealt with the causes or results of 1974, whether by historians, political scientists or latterly sociologists and social anthropologists, among others. On July 20, 1974, a few days after the July 15 coup, Turkey launched a military offensive in Cyprus claiming that this was in line with its role as one of the guarantor powers of Cyprus and positing that this was necessary to protect Turkish Cypriots. For most Greek Cypriots July 1974 stands for the beginning of the problem, but for many Turkish Cypriots the end. Greek Cypriots experienced the July 1974 Turkish military offensive as a time of war, when around 165,000 came to be displaced south of the dividing line, still called “the Green Line,” 3,000 were killed and around 1,600 were classified as “missing.” Since then, the events are mourned in yearly commemorations as the “dark anniversaries of the coup and the Turkish barbaric invasion.” In the period until skirmishes subsided, significant numbers of Turkish Cypriots were also killed or went missing. A year later around 45,000 Turkish Cypriots moved to the north, making the two sides more or less ethnically homogeneous. Turkish Cypriots yearly commemorate 1974 as the “Happy Peace Operation” that saved them from Greek-Cypriot aggression from 1963 to 1974, thus as the end of their plight (Papadakis 2005). In 1983, Turkish Cypriots declared their own state, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which has not gained international recognition save by Turkey, an action immediately condemned by the UN. Greek Cypriots made a spectacular economic recovery after the calamity of 1974, often called “the economic miracle,” yet with unreflected-upon social and environmental consequences; the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU in 2004. Turkish Cypriots have lived in political and economic isolation, relying on Turkey for military protection and

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financial assistance, partly due to an economic embargo Greek Cypriots were able to enforce on the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Significant events of internal violence also took place during the period from the late 1950s to 1974 where Leftists were victimized by Right-wingers of their own community, including EOKA, EOKA B, and the TMT, under accusations of treachery and for cooperating with the other community. These events as well as other ideological differences led to internally contested views on the “imagined community” (to use Benedict Anderson’s formulation) of the nation. The two Rights broadly identify with the “motherlands,” i.e. the Greek-Cypriot Right with Greece and the Turkish-Cypriot with Turkey. Thus, Turkish Cypriots of the Right would identify themselves as Turks first and foremost and view the history of Cyprus as an extension or parenthesis of the history of Turkey, and analogously for the Greek-Cypriot Right and Greece. The two Lefts, by contrast, would identify themselves as Cypriots first, espousing an associated narrative of the history of Cyprus as an independent history on its own terms (Papadakis 2003). Most Greek-Cypriot films of the post-1974 period directly or indirectly deal with the events of 1974, and with few exceptions they do this from a Greek-Cypriot viewpoint, while also criticizing certain aspects of post-1974 Greek-Cypriot society. Pantzis’ atmospheric film The Rape of Aphrodite casts a critical look on the actions of the Greek-Cypriot coupists, and examines the traumas of Greek Cypriots due to the Turkish invasion. He also criticizes the Greek-Cypriot “economic miracle” as a sell-out of Greek Cypriots to an unreflective and unpatriotic pursuit of riches. This issue is taken up to a greater extent in Pantzis’ The Slaughter of the Cock (I Sfagi tou Kokora 1996), while both his films contain direct or indirect accusations of Americans, especially the first, which posits “Anglo-Americans” as responsible for the 1974 tragedy through an international conspiracy, a very common topos in Greek-Cypriot writings on 1974, and an issue uniting the Right and Left, though subsequently criticized in various academic writings (Asmussen 2008; Nikolet 2001). Michael Papas’ Tomorrow’s Warrior (O Avrianos Polemistis 1979) also focuses on the GreekCypriot traumas from 1974. Costas Demetriou and Philippou’s Order to Kill Makarios (1975) explores the coup, presenting coupists as traitors and the coup as a result of “the international conspiracy” (Figure 0.3). Kyriakos Tofarides’ recent film Block 12 (Oikopedo 12 2013) could be read as a parody of the Greek Cypriots’ desire to get rich quickly, as well as the notion of international conspiracies by foreigners against Cyprus, and as parodying the spy genre itself.



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Figure 0.3  The Cyprus Problem “conspiracy” as a card game in Order to Kill Makarios

Christos Georgiou’s Under the Stars (Kato ap’ ta Astra 2001) also critiques Greek Cypriots as “forgetting” 1974 and engaging in the pursuit of material gains. It presents two leading characters: the “pragmatic” Phoebe who, while having been displaced as a child, tries to put this past behind her and makes money with Turks by smuggling across the dividing line, while Loukas, also displaced, appears “stuck” in the past, unable to put it behind him. Dealing with memory and displacement becomes an issue for both. Aliki Danezi-Knutsen’s early film Roads and Oranges (Dromoi kai Portokalia 1996) explores the issue of the Greek Cypriot missing since 1974, with hints of a critique for a belief of the survival of the missing based on rumors. The issue of the missing is also taken up in Danezi-Knutsen’s next film Bar (2001) (a film exploring other issues too), but now with more distance, complexity, and a comparative take with the case of missing in Uruguay. After 1974, two opposing official historiographies were adopted by the two sides. Greek Cypriots—who strove for the reunification of the island— argued that the past was one of “peaceful coexistence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots” in order to legitimate reunification by arguing that “the past proves that the two communities can live together, hence the island should be reunited.” Turkish Cypriots claimed a past of “conflict and oppression by Greek Cypriots” in order to argue that they should remain apart. Greek Cypriot Corinna Avraamidou’s film The Last Homecoming (O Teleutaios Gyrismos 2008) expressed the Greek-Cypriot dominant historical paradigm, by presenting Greek and Turkish Cypriots living amicably together (Figure

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0.4) just before 1974 with the events of 1974 tearing them apart and Turkish Cypriots wishing things could go back to what they were before. It also presented the Greek-Cypriot coupists in a somewhat positive light, through a central character, Manolis, who while possibly misguided was idealistic and well-meaning. The notion of “peaceful coexistence” with Turkey shouldering the blame of not allowing the people of Cyprus to come together also informs Costas Demetriou’s The Road to Ithaca (O Dromos gia tin Ithaki 1999) through an interethnic romance. The controversial documentary jointly made by Greek-Cypriot filmmaker Panicos Chrysanthou and Turkish-Cypriot academic Niyazi Kizilyurek, Our Wall (To Teichos Mas/Duvarimiz 1993), was a breakthrough in the sense that it explored issues of displacement and trauma for both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. It emerged out of the Left-wing sensibilities of its makers, given that the Left in both sides of Cyprus was critical of both Greek and Turkish nationalisms in Cyprus, employed a more Cyprio-centric discourse (in contrast to the Hellenocentric discourse of the Greek-Cypriot Right and the Turcocentric discourse of the Turkish-Cypriot Right), expressed empathy with the plight of both communities, and was at the forefront of efforts toward reconciliation. This documentary and Nekatomeni Aerides by Yiannis Ioannou (Troubled Winds aka Weltering Winds 1984)2 paved the way for many other “reconciliation” documentaries that followed.

Figure 0.4  Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots (in the center of the frame) amicably living together in The Last Homecoming



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No less controversial were the jointly-produced films Akamas (directed by Chrysanthou 2006) and Mud (Çamur, directed by Turkish-Cypriot filmmaker Derviş Zaim 2003), with collaboration, as with Our Wall, in and of itself having political and symbolic significance. Akamas provided an extensive overview of history from the 1950s, critiquing both Greek and Turkish nationalisms as well as their adherents in Cyprus, with a direct criticism of EOKA for also killing Greek-Cypriot Leftists, a taboo in Greek-Cypriot society. Mud was a poetic and symbolic, though also stern, critique of Turkish-Cypriot society for not acknowledging the violence inflicted against Greek Cypriots, its militarism and mafia-type gangs operating for quick and shady financial enrichment, also emerging from Left-wing sensibilities. Zaim’s next film on Cyprus, Shadows and Faces (Gölgeler ve Suretler 2010), came closer to the Turkish-Cypriot official historiography by focusing on the time of interethnic conflict during the 1960s. While it presented a village where people lived amicably that was torn apart through fear and paranoia as conflicts all around them erupted, it culminated with the plight of Turkish Cypriots who were forced to abandon their village, despite tragic efforts of Turkish- and Greek-Cypriot elders to contain the conflict. It may be difficult for an outsider to comprehend the emphasis on the Cyprus Problem in two communities where headline news for the past half a decade has focused on this issue. As a result of defining this as the problem, many other social and political issues were sidelined receiving scant public debate, critique, or attention. Gender, migration, and other important social issues were sidelined both in public discourse and films, though lately they have begun to receive some attention. Florides and Nicolaides’ Kalabush took up the issue of migration in Cyprus, by presenting a tragicomic critical take on Greek-Cypriot society through the plight of the protagonist, Mustafa, a Syrian undocumented migrant who inadvertently ends up in Limassol, a coastal city on the GreekCypriot side. Elias Demetriou’s Fish n’ Chips (2011) explored the complexities of belonging through the protagonist, Greek Cypriot Andy, whose family migrated to London and decided to go to Cyprus in order to try to make it his home, an effort that finally fails. Gender issues among Greek Cypriots, including the social taboo of homosexuality, receive most attention in Marinos Kartikkis’ two films, Honey and Wine (Meli kai Krasi 2006) and By Miracle (Apo Thavma 2010). Even though the number of local films that do not focus on the Cyprus Problem is increasing steadily, domestic box-office success is still an unusual phenomenon. However, the recently produced comedy The Bird of Cyprus (To

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Pouli tis Kyprou 2014) by Nicolas Koumides, set in the current financial crisis, has managed to top the domestic box office for more than one week, which is the normal run of the commercial screening of a film in local cinemas.

Literature review on Cypriot cinema(s) Previous writings on Cypriot cinema were mainly by non-academics who are interested in the arts or have an educational background in filmmaking and have produced or participated in the making of films themselves. There are two book-length projects on Cypriot cinema (written in Greek) dealing predominantly with Greek-Cypriot filmmakers (Shiafkalis 1995; Kleanthous 2005). These two books are attempts to list and describe, not analyze, the films that have been produced in Cyprus. A small number of articles in Greek offer a brief account of the history of Cypriot cinema and of state film policy (KleanthousHadjikyriakou 1995; Lopez 2010; Taliadoros 2010). Certain interesting issues emerge from this literature: 1. The close links early on between Greek-Cypriot film production and the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC), the Republic’s Press and Information Office (PIO) (in the 1980s and 1990s) as well as Greek film cultures and practices (technical and artistic support, narrative trends, the Greek Film Center, Thessaloniki International Film Festival, and the former public broadcaster of the Hellenic Republic, the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation [ERT], which was succeeded by the New Hellenic Radio, Internet and Television [NERIT] in May 2014). The CyBC TV station/ channel was established by the British colonial administration in 1957. During the early period of independence CyBC was co-administered by Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot board members, the Turkish-Cypriot members withdrawing in 1963. CyBC is currently the public broadcaster of the Republic of Cyprus.3 2. The explicitly political focus of most Greek-Cypriot films, especially on 1974 (Kleanthous 2005; Socrates 2009; Yuksel 2005). 3. The lack of a film studies-oriented reading of films and 4. The issue of what precisely is ‘Cypriot cinema’ that also emerges from the existing sources (Alexis Kleanthous 2005; Kleanthous-Hadjikyriakou 1995).



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Alexis Kleanthous’ book, titled O Kypriakos Kinimatografos (Cypriot Cinema) is an archival research of Cypriot films produced from 1962 to 2005 and offers a brief historical account of Cypriot cinema. The author divides the history of Cypriot cinema in four chronological periods (1962–74, 1974–80, 1980–90 and 1990–2002). He underlines the fact that the dominant themes of Cypriot cinema revolve around the events that took place in 1974 throughout its brief history with the exception of the first period (1962–74). Kleanthous attempts to provide a definition of Cypriot cinema by focusing only on films that have been produced independently from CyBC, which was the only organization equipped with filming technology back in the celluloid days of Cypriot television; thus, he does not consider the documentaries produced by CyBC as part of his working definition of Cypriot cinema. According to Alexis Kleanthous the main characteristics of Cypriot films are the Cypriot dialect and the exploration/representation of themes relevant to the recent history of the island, to local myths, and to everyday life mostly in villages. His response to the question “What is Cypriot cinema?” is: Films shot in Cyprus (or partly shot in Cyprus) by a Cypriot director—the labeling “Cypriot director or film” implies a Greek-Cypriot director/production. Kleanthous also highlights the language of the films (standard modern Greek or the Greek-Cypriot dialect) and the nationality of the actors and the crew (Cypriot) as an important element of what could describe a Cypriot film. The book does not offer a critical analysis of Cypriot films; it provides a short summary and the main cast and crew credits of each film, and frequently cites film reviews of Greek-Cypriot films published in Greek print media. Interestingly, Alexis Kleanthous, in the beginning of his brief historical account asserts that Cypriot films can also be listed under Greek Cinema, and awkwardly describes Cypriot cinema as a “school” (2005: 9). Alexis Kleanthous’ approach is not very clear and it could certainly imply that Cypriot cinema is a “branch” of Greek cinema. The other book length contribution is Nicos Shiafkalis’ 1995 edited collection I Istoria tou Kinimatografou stin Kypro (The History of Cinema in Cyprus). It mainly focuses on the history of movie theaters in Cyprus and provides short biographies of the individuals involved in the development of the movietheater business in the major cities of Cyprus such as Diogenis Herodotou. It also includes a short historical account of Cypriot cinema written by Shiafkalis himself. The latter also provides a brief note on foreign productions filmed in Cyprus and a short note on the work of Filis, who was one of the pioneers of independent Cypriot filmmaking (that is produced independently from CyBC,

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which monopolized audiovisual production in the early years of the Republic of Cyprus). The same book includes a conference presentation (1986)—in the form of a chapter—by Soula Kleanthous-Hadjikyriakou, titled “Cypriot Cinema: Problems and Prospects” (“Kipriakos Kinimatografos: Provlimata kai Prooptikes” in Shiafkalis). Kleanthous-Hadjikyriakou’s article is the first known or accessible attempt that critically discusses the development of Cypriot cinema. While the author is not doing a close reading of specific films, she is the first person writing on Cypriot cinema that offers an overall evaluation of the films produced between 1974 and 1986. The evaluation is no more than a few lines, but the reason it should not be ignored is because her position regarding the state policy on Cypriot cinema is quite cynical, and to a certain extent dismissive, considering the dominant politics of the period in which she produced this article. Kleanthous-Hadjikyriakou writes that the state treats cinema as a propagandalike brochure or a tourist guide and uses two words to describe the second period of Cypriot cinema (1974–86): miserable and inadequate. She openly criticizes the state for the lack of a well-organized film policy and notes that cinema as an independent cultural production cannot exist in Europe without state support, in order to stress the state’s share of responsibility for the inadequacies and ethnocentrism of Cypriot films. Kleanthous-Hadjikyriakou’s understanding of Cypriot films implies films made by Greek Cypriots, but it should be noted that no known (at least to us) filmmaking activity was taking place within the Turkish-Cypriot community, nor any collaboration between Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot filmmakers, since the island’s independence up until the collaboration of Niyazi Kizilyurek and Panicos Chrysanthou in the production of Our Wall. Kleanthous-Hadjikyriakou divides Cypriot cinema into two periods: (a) Early twentieth century to 1960, and (b) 1960–86. She states that there is no Cypriot cinema in the narrow sense of the term, but in her attempt to form a broader understanding of Cypriot cinema she does not, for example, exclude film documentaries produced by CyBC. Kleanthous-Hajikyriakou clarifies though that CyBC’s pre-electronic or celluloid productions were marked by certain limitations due to two factors: (1) The productions were faithful to the language of television and (2) CyBC is a semi-governmental institution, therefore the personality of the directors of these films could not come through as a politically independent voice. Indeed the film documentaries produced by CyBC did form a collective political voice that reflected a then-shared urgency



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to record the 1974 events from a Greek Cypriot official viewpoint (see also Taliadoros 2010). Kleanthous-Hajikyriakou also explains that the small size of the island, the absence of commercially-driven production companies, the lack of infrastructure and film education alongside the political upheavals and conflicts specific to the island have prevented the development of a domestic film industry. A bilingual (Greek and English) leaflet published by the Nicosia Film Club4 (undated, it was probably published in the early 1980s) titled “Cyprus and Cinema” also emphasizes the contribution of CyBC in the development of Cypriot cinema. The main reasons behind the slow development of local filmmaking are outlined in the beginning of the leaflet: The island’s small size, and its limited audience, did not favour the establishment and development of such a costly industry as the film industry. Consequently the Cyprus film market was supplied with foreign productions, particularly from Britain, being the colonial metropolis on which Cyprus depended. Films were also imported from Greece and Turkey, because of the cultural relations these two countries had with Cyprus.

In the remainder of the brief historical account that appears in the leaflet, CyBC is understood (unlike Alexis Kleanthous’ position) as a major factor in the formation of film practices specific to Cyprus. CyBC is praised as the only organization, after the island’s independence in 1960, that systematically produced films (documentaries and short films that record the cultural traditions and the turbulent history of the island) for the purposes of its television schedule. In a less congratulatory tone the leaflet makes reference to a few independent film productions, such as Tomorrow’s Warrior, Order to Kill Makarios, and Love and Sorrows, and describes them as “good and hopeful” attempts. Adonis Taliadoros (2010) does not add anything new to the already existing historical accounts offered by Kleanthous-Hajikyriakou, Shiafkalis, and Alexis Kleanthous. The main difference between Taliadoros’ report and the aforementioned sources is that the former provides more information about the development of state film policy and adds to the list of existing Greek Cypriot fiction films the following productions: Akamas, Soul Kicking (Me tin Psihi sto Stoma, Yiannis Economides 2006), Hi! Am Erica (Yiannis Ioannou 2007), The Last Homecoming, and Small Crime (Mikro Eglima, Christos Georgiou 2008). Ricardo Lopez (2010) focuses on the development of the state Cyprus film archive, which was under the responsibility of the PIO; however the cinematographic films

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archive (that is, films co-produced by the Ministry of Education and Culture or the former Cyprus Film Production Council now known as the Cinema Advisory Committee) was recently transferred to the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture, which is currently awaiting funds to (re)catalog the films and make the archive accessible to the public. Lopez, the former head of the film archive department at PIO, highlights the cultural importance of the state film archive and its potential to function as a source for historical information. He underlines the problems that exist in realizing the preservation of films and the implementation of EU policies on film heritage and emphasizes the lack of expert personnel in preservation as well as the lack of state support. The other two entries on Cypriot cinema, published alongside Taliadoros and Lopez’s accounts in the same volume, are written by Costas Constandinides (2010a and b). In his first entry (2010a), Constandinides attempts to frame contemporary Cypriot cinema within a wider discursive context and discusses two Cypriot films—Roads and Oranges and Under the Stars—in relation to road movie and magical realist themes. In his second essay (2010b), Constandinides stresses the lack of film criticism and film reviewing in Cyprus. He notes that, except for conventional journalistic film reviewing practices, other forms of film criticism hardly appear in Cyprus. He also underlines the fact that public service broadcasters in Cyprus are not willing to contribute to the development of film appreciation and specifically highlights the absence of world cinema from CyBC’s scheduling, even though sometimes CyBC financially supports film production in Cyprus. Yiannis Papadakis has also discussed Cypriot films from an anthropological perspective. In “Memories of Walls, Walls of Memories” (2000), Papadakis discusses the documentary Our Wall within its sociohistorical context and in the context of other efforts in Cyprus to engage with issues of blame, retribution, and memory. In a newspaper article titled “Why is the Turkish Cypriot Female Character Mute: The Limits of Greek Cypriot Political Discourse and the Film The Last Homecoming” (2009), Papadakis analyzes the relationship between political and linguistic issues raised by that specific film. He has also written on films in the context of other academic works, e.g. he discusses older Greek and Turkish films in his Echoes from the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide (2005: 35–8). Quite a few chapters and articles have been written on the work of Turkish-Cypriot filmmaker Derviş Zaim (see Chapter 3). A University College London (UCL) PhD candidate, Lisa Socrates, is the first commentator to introduce academic-level work (written in English) focused on



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(Greek) Cypriot films. Socrates’ article “Deterritorializing the Nation: Deleuzian Time, Space and Narrative in the Video Art of Lia Lapithi Shukuroglou” (2012) is a version of a paper she presented at a UCL Graduate Programme in Film Studies research seminar in 2008. Socrates discusses the video artwork of artist Lia Lapithi in relation to Gilles Deleuze’s (1986, 1989) understanding of time and space in cinema. In the 2012 version of the paper Socrates clarifies that Lapithi’s work is not cinematic work, but the author’s case study example certainly raises—even though implicitly—interesting questions about what is and what is not cinematic in the digital era. Socrates does not answer such questions in a direct manner, but she subtly calls for a “post-1974 screen and visual studies” (2012: 904), a discussion that lies outside the aims of this volume. Socrates’ other publication on Cypriot cinema titled “Documentary Responses to ‘1974’ in Attila ’74: The Rape of Cyprus and Divided Loyalties: Representations of Nationalism and National Identity” (2009) offers a critical evaluation of Michael Cacoyannis’ Attila ’74 (1975) that reveals problematic viewpoints which, according to Socrates, stem from Cacoyannis’ biased account of historical developments. Socrates’ selection of case studies in this article is quite interesting—it is also problematic as she neglects a range of documentary responses to 1974 made by filmmakers who are based in Cyprus—due to the fact that the first (Attila ’74) communicates the rather authoritative point of view of Cacoyannis, who nevertheless moved to Greece in the early 1950s, and the second, Divided Loyalties, which was made in 2001 by Sophia Constantinou, herself the daughter of a Greek-Cypriot immigrant who moved in the United States in the 1960s, explores how immigrants or exilic subjects originally from Cyprus maintain a diasporic, ethnonational identity. Therefore, there is a connection between the two filmmakers, not made explicit by Socrates: both can be seen as outsiders who feel/felt deeply affected by the conflict—because of their connection to Cyprus—and express through their documentary a desire to understand this conflict.

State film support policy The Republic of Cyprus currently spends 1.5 million euros per year (since 2009) on the production of films.5 The body responsible for the development of film policies and for regulating the existing policies is, since 2002, the Ministry of Education and Culture. A representative of the Cultural Services of the Ministry

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presides over the Cinema Advisory Committee, which is the body that evaluates and in turn recommends proposals submitted by filmmakers for the funding of film production.6 The state’s interest in funding the development of locally produced cinema began in 1982 when the film director Andreas Pantzis applied for financial support to the Enlightenment Advisory Committee (Symvouleutiki Epitropi Diafotisis) of PIO in order to produce The Rape of Aphrodite, a Greek Cypriot-lensed film that predominantly deals with the social disintegration that followed the 1974 conflict. The Enlightenment Advisory Committee is responsible for raising international awareness about the Cyprus Problem; the political framework within which this committee acts is determined by the respective government and the Republic of Cyprus National Council. The political elite of the Republic was eventually persuaded about the potential of cinema to strengthen the Enlightenment Committee’s mission and in 1984 (Alexis Kleanthous 2005) the Film Production Council (Symvoulio Paragogis Kinimatografou) was established as a subdivision of the aforementioned committee. As Taliadoros (2010) fittingly observes, the development of cinema in the 1980s is deeply associated with developments specific to the Cyprus Problem. It is certainly no coincidence that cinema became a pressing matter for Greek-Cypriot officials in the 1980s, especially after 1983 when the leader of the Turkish-Cypriot community, Rauf Denktaş, unilaterally declared northern Cyprus as an independent state (Taliadoros 2010). In 1994 the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cyprus decided on the establishment of the Cinema Advisory Committee (Symvouleutiki Epitropi Kinimatografou), which is authorized to recommend for funding, after thorough evaluation, the most notable proposals submitted by Cypriot filmmakers. These recommendations are subsequently approved or rejected by the Ministerial Committee on Film (Ypourgiki Epitropi Kinimatografou). The Cinema Advisory Committee was initially placed under the responsibility of PIO, but in 2002 the committee moved to the Ministry of Education and Culture, under the Cinema Sector. The members of this committee are the following: (1) A representative from the Cultural Services,7 (2) a representative from the Ministry of Finance, (3) a representative from the Film and Television Directors’ Guild of Cyprus (4) a representative from CyBC, and four honorary members appointed by the Council of Ministers. A three-member advisory subcommittee has recently been formed which is responsible for studying the scripts (for features) submitted by the filmmakers and producing a report that advises the Cinema Advisory Committee as to the effectiveness of the script.



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Cypriot filmmakers can also apply (and usually have to apply in order to secure the full amount of their initial budget8) to other programs or institutions specific to film support policies. For example Cypriot films are often financially supported by EURIMAGES (the Republic of Cyprus is a member state), the MEDIA program,9 the Greek Film Center, ERT (the former public broadcaster of the Hellenic Republic), and have participated in the highly competitive Balkan Fund initiative for script development.10 Films that promote a reconciliationthemed narrative or subject were, for example, financially supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The criteria upon which the Ministry of Education and Culture pre-selects feature films11, which will then go through the stages of pre-production (scriptwriting and development of the production plan), are the following: (1) The film must be shot mainly in Cyprus or any other member country of the EU, (2) the language must mainly be in one or both official languages of the Republic of Cyprus, Greek or Turkish, (3) the project must be of high artistic specifications, (4) at least one of the main characters must have a link with Cypriot culture, (5) the scenario upon which the film is based must be mainly written by a Cypriot scriptwriter or a scriptwriter who lives and works in Cyprus, (6) the main theme of the project must refer to modern or historical subjects, relating to Cyprus. A project must satisfy at least three of the above criteria in order to be pre-selected (Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus, Regulations for the Funding of Programmes to Support Cinematographic Films, 2009–15). For exclusively Cyprus-produced/ made films, which are labeled “difficult” by the Ministry, the funding may reach up to 70 percent of their estimated budget. The main reason that these films are labeled as such is because the cost increases considerably due to the lack of Cyprus-based film labs and other forms of technical support, which is difficult to cover if the film has not secured sufficient funds outside Cyprus. Films that explore less visible aspects of life in Cyprus have been produced12 or are in production (at the time of writing).13 The fact that Akamas is categorized as a Cypriot, Turkish (and Hungarian) co-production is an indication of the less monocultural approach that the Ministry of Education and Culture espoused in the 2000s14 to meet European Union requirements specific to the development and promotion of cinematographic projects. However, the state film policy has never been genuinely treated as a serious matter by the political elite of the Republic of Cyprus. The responses of the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Cyprus to the European Union to a questionnaire designed and distributed by the Audiovisual and Media Policies Department of the

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European Commission in order to monitor the development of film policies specific to film heritage are an indication of this treatment. These responses are accessible via the EU Audiovisual and Medial Policies website15 and we present a few indicative quotes to illustrate the above observation: As is known, Cyprus does not have any legislation regulating the operation of a Film Archive and facilitating the systematic collection, cataloging, preservation and restoration of its audiovisual heritage. (2nd Report on the Recommendation to Member States on Film Heritage November 2009: 1) Implementation depends on various factors such as finding more suitable premises, with better storage conditions and a more suitable working environment for researchers/interested parties. (ibid.: 4) Since the Film Archive is in the process of being transferred from the PIO to the Ministry of Education and Culture, a plan of action has not yet been drawn up. This will be examined and decisions will be taken on the measures concerned and their future implementation. (3rd Report on the Recommendation to Member States on Film Heritage December 2012: 5)

Sadly, these responses continue to describe the indifferent attitude at the top toward such recommendations and the cultural officers of the Ministry of Education and Culture are forced to improvise to meet the requirements of researchers and other professionals interested in Cypriot films. The recent successful restructuring of state-(co-)organized and state-subsidized film festivals such as Cyprus Film Days, the International Short Film Festival of Cyprus, the Lemesos International Documentary Festival, and the Countryside Animafest Cyprus has managed to develop a consistent viewership which is constantly strengthened by the active participation of university students and young media professionals who do voluntary work. These festivals have also become a promotional platform for Cypriot films16 and the response of the local audience has subsequently been very encouraging. Cypriot co-productions like Small Crime (Christos Georgiou 2008) and Fish n’ Chips (Elias Demetriou 2012) won the Cyprus Film Days audience award, and film viewers were queuing outside the Zena Palace cinema venue in Nicosia to experience Kyriakos Tofarides’ comedy Block 12 (2013) despite the gloomy financial situation of the Republic of Cyprus after the March “haircut” deal in 2013. Cypriot cinema may no longer be “miserable” and “inadequate,” but it certainly needs a defining moment. This moment can be anything from a low-budget splatter film to an Oscar nomination or a domestic box-office



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record, but ideally it should be the result of diverse, well-informed, and daring forms of partnership between Cypriot filmmakers and the existing (if not less government-controlled) state film support structures. As for the TurkishCypriot side, no explicit film policies have developed yet.

Themes and issues With few exceptions, Cypriot films, along with most intellectual and academic output, has been oriented toward the past, specifically the events of the 1960s to 1974, offering analysis, comments, and interpretations of the traumatic past and its outcomes related to the Cyprus Problem. In Chapter 1 of this volume, Elizabeth Davis explores documentary filmmaking, focusing mostly on the documentaries made in the period after the partial opening of checkpoints in 2003. Davis also ethnographically explores the sites and events where these documentaries were screened, thus also providing the social context for their production, audiences, and the ideologies informing these. A significant part of her chapter focuses on the reconciliation documentaries; she considers how such documentaries use photographic and film archives in challenging ethnocentric and nationalist historical narratives that predominate “official” documentary production, especially those produced for television consumption in the two sides. However, she also problematizes these films’ use of archives as also reproducing some of the partialities and exclusions of the archival material on which they are based and concludes with discussing the challenges and possibilities that lie ahead for future documentary makers. The impulse to record a vanishing past in the first (Greek Cypriot) films of the period of 1960 to 1974 is discussed in Chapter 2 by Theopisti StylianouLambert and Nicos Philippou. Some of the films they discuss are placed in a timeless “traditional” past as records of a vanishing “authentic” Cyprus under threat from modernity. These are informed by a folkloric impulse, also linked in Cyprus as elsewhere, to the associated nation-building projects. Chapter 2 by Stylianou-Lambert and Philippou widens the scope of discussion including photography—the other significant mode of visual culture—offering a comparative discussion of film and photography that reveals the implicit ideologies guiding both. The present-oriented films of this period deal with various aspects of modernity, commenting on the challenges and pitfalls as well as the

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opportunities they offer. It is interesting that these films ignore the presence of Turkish Cypriots on the island and are silent on the armed conflicts of the period. There are no Turkish-Cypriot films made during this period, as Turkish Cypriots were mostly living in dire conditions inside armed enclaves. A filmmaker that explored the relationships between past, present, and future in Cyprus is (Turkish Cypriot) Derviş Zaim, who, born in the tumultuous 1960s, grew up in Cyprus and later moved to Turkey. His work is discussed in Chapter 3 by Laurence Raw, placing his “Cypriot” films in the context of his other films dealing with Turkey, many of these also bearing an interest in the relationships between past and present. As noted earlier, for two of his films on Cyprus—Mud and Parallel Trips (2004)—Zaim cooperated with Chrysanthou in a rare and politically symbolic act. As Raw notes, Zaim describes himself as an alluvionic filmmaker interested in (muddy) sediments of the past that need to be brought back to the surface in order to understand the present and learn from the pasts that have been partly buried out of view. His first film on Cyprus, Mud is thus concerned with the buried past. Yet, instead of focusing on the crimes committed against Turkish Cypriots, he focuses on atrocities committed against Greek Cypriots, a testament to his (literally and metaphorically) groundbreaking critical stance. The film shows the Turkish-Cypriot protagonist descending into a muddy well and is a comment on officially “buried” crimes committed against Greek Cypriots that return to haunt Turkish Cypriots. His latest film on Cyprus (Shadows and Faces) explores the events that took place around the time of his birth, events with tragic consequences for the Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot inhabitants of the mixed village he examines as it gradually comes apart. Two of Zaim’s films are revisited in Chapter 4 by Costas Constandinides and Yiannis Papadakis in their discussion of these and many other films, directly commenting on aspects of the Cyprus Problem, unsurprisingly the largest category of Cypriot films. Reading these films as “national allegories” as proposed by Jameson (1986) and later taken up by Shohat’s (2010) discussion of Israeli cinema, they engage in a comparative exercise. Beyond the “obvious” Greek-Cypriot vs. Turkish-Cypriot distinction, their analysis introduces the elements of Left vs. Right and Hellenocentric vs. Cyprio-centric approaches that also destabilize rigid “ethnic” readings. In addition, Shohat’s work on Israeli cinema introduces another relevant critical comparative vantage point. Their chapter introduces the idea of “the excess of the political” in order to argue that the powerful political impulses that influence various aspects of



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the films (as their directors often attempt to use films as a means to make political statements) can reveal various problematic aspects of the films, both as political statements and as films in their own right. Returning to Jameson’s argument based on his (admittedly criticized) generalizations regarding differences between “Western” and “Third World” literary texts, they in turn employ the Cypriot films which they discuss as a means to offer critical reflections on the (apparent) lack of politics in popular Hollywood-type “western” films. In Chapter 5, Costas Constandinides examines other films made in the post-1974 period under the rubric of transnationalism, whether this is reflected in the conditions pertaining to the making of the films, their influences, or in their content that explores issues like migration and globalization. With one exception, the films he examines are more focused in terms of themes on the present and its associated sociopolitical issues rather than the past. His discussion includes both so-called trashy soft-porn films (unsurprisingly also drawing from the legend of Aphrodite) as well as “art-house” productions by a number of key Cypriot filmmakers, the latest of which deal with ambiguous notions of home due to the dislocations of modernity. Gender offers yet another destabilizing prism, challenging many of the categories previously discussed. It should be noted, for example, that Aphrodite, being a complex and changing mythological persona, has historically speaking had many representations, from androgynous to bearded and arm-bearing, beyond her current “goddess of beauty and love” romantic associations. These have been reduced in Cyprus to a male-oriented, appealing sexy representation of Aphrodite based on the statue of Aphrodite in the Cyprus (Archaeological) Museum. Locally, Aphrodite has been mostly (ab)used by the Cyprus Tourism Organization with an icon of Aphrodite dominating its campaigns, only the graphic based on the statue was given porn-star characteristics that have gone unnoticed and uncommented: fuller lips, notably enhanced breasts, liposuction in the waist, and more pronounced hips. Nayia Kamenou’s contribution in Chapter 6 discusses the films from a gender perspective based on contemporary feminist theory. Given the dearth of relevant public and academic debate in Cyprus, it is perhaps not surprising that she finds them limited, sometimes problematic, even if on many occasions the filmmakers tried to present “progressive” and even critical gender representations. Representations of the nation are highly gendered, as are those pertaining to interlinked ideas like the family, kinship, romantic love, action-passivity, victim-victimizer, friendfoe, etc. As already noted, gender—being a highly destabilizing category when

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introduced to debates dealing with class, ethnicity, nationalism etc.—offers another critical perspective. What is striking with Kamenou’s chapter is how much (often problematic) common ground certain films share when it comes to gender politics, while in other respects endorsing vehemently opposed political views. In this chapter, Kamenou highlights the limits of imagination with regard to gender as they are reflected in film but also Cyprus more widely, thus contributing in opening up new possibilities for reflection. In the postscript, Costas Constandinides takes up the category of Cypriot cinemas (in the plural), proposing a working definition, given the fiercely contested notions of the imagined (national) communities, a contestation that is also expressed in Cypriot films themselves. His analysis is based on discussions of the wider debates regarding national cinema(s). He also draws from sociologist Ulrich Beck’s (1997) theoretical observation that the period before the end of the Cold War could be characterized as a period of either/or (either Left or Right, either here or there, either with one side or with the other etc.), while the current period could be characterized as the period of and (a time of increased transnational flows and other changes challenging rigid boundaries). Furthermore, given that any social formation is always pluralistic rather than homogeneous, that identities and boundaries are always historically defined and shifting, and that the notion of the “nation-state” is a highly problematic one—an issue always prevalent, yet more starkly visible in Cyprus where this notion and the ideology that informs it is part of the political problems of Cyprus due to the homogeneity it assumes and the exclusions it gives rise to— Constandinides proposes a more open, fluid, and inclusive formulation rather than a more closed, static, and exclusionary one. Given that this is the first academic volume examining Cypriot cinemas, we chose to focus on themes, approaches, and issues that seemed, to us at least, of primary importance in order to provide a general overview. Many more discussions could have been included such as short films, video art or experimental films, sound and music, and acting, among others, that we hope other researchers will take up.

Concluding remarks In Culture and Imperialism (1994), Said puts forth the concept of “intertwined histories” to note how history is often divided disallowing a fuller, more



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complex and hence, more critical, view of the past. History in Cyprus is mostly written from highly ethnocentric viewpoints: when Greek Cypriots speak of “the history of Cyprus” they actually mean “a history of Greeks in Cyprus” and Turkish Cypriots “a history of Turks in Cyprus.” This separation of histories and exclusion of the others may appear surprising given the centuries-long period of Christians and Muslims, later Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots living together on the island. Similarly, Cyprus presents an interesting site to critically examine social memory. Memory-work (as well as oblivion) has been intense in both sides of Cyprus, with Greek Cypriots focusing on their plight in 1974 (and forgetting the 1960s), while Turkish Cypriots focus on their suffering during the 1960s (ignoring Greek-Cypriot suffering during 1974 and periods of coexistence). Placing the two side-by-side reveals the dialectical social processes of memory and forgetting. Issues of postmemory (Hirsch 1997) are equally pertinent with postmemory described as the violent imposition on younger generations of the traumatic memories of previous generations. Yet, such issues related to history and memory are the troubling legacy of histories of conflict reproduced as conflicts of histories in divided societies: erasing the others’ pain while obsessively focusing on one’s own suffering through opposed and divided historical narratives. These issues pertaining to history and memory are explored in various Cypriot films and emerge during their discussions, as are the attempts to transcend such divisions. Issues of identity emerge no less dramatically as contested constructions of Self and Other. In this respect, i.e., an emphasis on identity, memory and history, the cinemas of Cyprus could be placed within wider contexts of Israeli cinema (Shohat 2010), Palestinian cinema (Gertz and Khleifi 2008) and Lebanese cinema (Khatib 2008), as well as the more obviously influential (in each side) Greek cinema (Karalis 2012) or Turkish cinema (Suner 2010), all of which share similar themes. The legacies of conflicts, whether interethnic or intraethnic, have never been squarely addressed in either side of Cyprus. Many of the documentary films discussed in this volume are based on memories and experiences of people who were victims (very rarely also perpetrators) of violence, in an attempt to document these on-camera. They often follow a talking-heads style of documentary, where “witnesses” are, so to speak, called to the historical stand to offer their personal testimonies as a means to document these for posterity before these memories are lost forever. In this respect, they appear as implicit efforts on behalf of their makers to set up their own archives for

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future reference resembling “truth-commissions,” sometimes with a strong “reconciliation” impulse by employing juxtaposition. Given that official truthand-reconciliation type commissions or processes have not taken place in either side of Cyprus, the efforts of certain documentary makers challenge official silences and inaction. The “transnational turn” in recent film scholarship has been molded into a useful analytical tool by “national cinema” scholars, as it offers a closer look into the circulation and production of national cinema as festival cinema, of national cinemas at the periphery, or cinemas that benefit from supranational agreements. This turn mainly emphasizes the pluralisms involved in the making, distribution, reception, and meaning of films. The analytical framework of specific chapters and the decision to use Cypriot Cinemas instead of Cypriot Cinema in our title knowingly develop from the above discussions, and in turn communicate our aim to place Cypriot films within this broader frame alongside discussions on neighboring national cinemas. The use of the plural does not simply acknowledge the (co)existence (and different political viewpoints) of a Greek-Cypriot and a Turkish-Cypriot voice “within” Cypriot cinema, or simply discuss the mostly problematic “truths” that the film-as-witness (also prevalent in fiction films) mode attempts to “honor” through a narrative of “selections and evasions.” The plural here acknowledges structures and affinities both “within” and “around” the polities of Cyprus, in a way that contests the term “national cinema” and reveals a multi-ethnic, bi-cultural, or regional (Greek, Turkish, Balkan, European etc.) involvement in the making of Cypriot films. “First of all, you have to find the answer to a few basic questions: Who are these people, the dramatis personae, involved in it all. Then: Where are you? And: What is it all about?” (author’s italics) wrote George Mikes (1965, 100), an early observer of Cyprus, in an almost cinematic language. This introduction has tried to answer these questions. We hope the reader will enjoy the rest of the readings. Our greatest hope, however, is that the reader will enjoy the resulting viewings.

Works cited Asmussen, Jan. 2008. Cyprus at War: Diplomacy and the Conflict during the 1974 Crisis. London: I. B. Tauris. Beck, Ulrich. 1997. The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.



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Constandinides, Costas. 2010a. “Sinchronos Kypriakos Kinimatografos: Tasis kai Provlimata Thematologias” (“Contemporary Cypriot Cinema: Trends and Thematological Issues”). In Politismos, Technes, MME (Culture, Arts, Media), edited by Andreas Sophocleous, 153–8. Nicosia: Mass Media Institute. —2010b. “I Kritiki tou Kinimatografou stin Kypro” (“Film Criticism in Cyprus”). In Politismos, Technes, MME (Culture, Arts, Media), edited by Andreas Sophocleous, 201–6. Nicosia: Mass Media Institute. Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Cinema I: The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Originally published as Gilles Deleuze. 1983. Cinéma I: l’Image-Mouvement, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. —1989. Cinema II: The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Originally published as Gilles Deleuze. 1985. Cinéma II: L’Image-Temps, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. Gertz, Nurith and George Khleifi. 2008. Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma and Memory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hirsch, Marianne. 1997. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jameson, Frederic. 1986. “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Social Text 15: 65–88. Karalis, Vrasidas. 2012. A History of Greek Cinema. London: Bloomsbury. Khatib, Lina. 2008. Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Kitromilides, Paschalis. 1979. “The Dialectic of Intolerance: Ideological Dimensions of the Ethnic Conflict.” In Small States in the Modern World: The Conditions of Survival, edited by Paschalis Kitromilides and Peter Worsley, 143–84. Nicosia: The New Cyprus Association. Kleanthous, Alexis. 2005. O Kypriakos Kinimatografos (1962–2005) (Cypriot Cinema). Athens: Egokeros. Kleanthous-Hadjikyriakou, Soula. 1995. “Kypriakos Kinimatografos: Provlimata kai Prooptikes” (“Cypriot Cinema: Issues and Prospects”). In The History of Cinema in Cyprus, edited by Nicos Shiafkalis, 163–5. Nicosia: 7th Art Friends Club. Lopez, Ricardo. 2010. “Kypriaki Teniothiki: Mia Prospathia Akomi sta Spargana” (“Cyprus Film Archive: A Process Still in an Embryonic State”). In Politismos, Technes, MME (Culture, Arts, Media), edited by Andreas Sophocleous, 165–70. Nicosia: Mass Media Institute. Mikes, George. 1965. Eureka! Rummaging in Greece. London: Andre Deutsch. Nikolet, Claude. 2001. United States Policy Towards Cyprus: 1954–1974: Removing the Greek-Turkish Bone of Contention. Manheim and Mohnesee: Bibliopolis. Papadakis, Yiannis. 2000. “Memories of Walls, Walls of Memories.” In Cyprus in the

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Eastern Mediterranean, edited by Yiannis Ioannou and Paul Davy, 231–9. Lyon: Travaux de la Maison de l’ Orient. —2003. “Nation, Narrative and Commemoration: Political Ritual in Divided Cyprus.” History and Anthropology 14, 3: 253–70. —2005. Echoes from the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. —2009. “Giati I Tourkokypria Prepei na Parameinei Vouvi? Ta Oria tis Ellinokypriakis Skepsis kai I Tainia O Teleutaios Gyrismos” (“Why is the Turkish Cypriot Female Character Mute? The Limits of Greek-Cypriot Political Discourse and The Last Homecoming”). Politis, April 26. Pollis, Adamantia. 1979. “Colonialism and Neocolonialism: Determinants of Ethnic Conflict in Cyprus.” In Small States in the Modern World: The Conditions of Survival, edited by Paschalis Kitromilides and Peter Worsley, 45–80. Nicosia: The New Cyprus Association. Richter, Heinz A. 2010. A Concise History of Modern Cyprus: 1878–2009. Rupholding: Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen. Said, Edward. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage. Shiafkalis, Nicos, ed. 1995. I Istoria tou Kinimatografou stin Kypro (The History of Cinema in Cyprus). Nicosia: 7th Art Friends Club. Shohat, Ella. 2010. Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Socrates, Lisa. 2008–2009. “Deleuze, Time and Cypriot National Cinema: Space, Narrative and the Sound Image in the Work of Lia Lapithi Shukuroglou.” UCL Graduate Programme in Film Studies (Research Seminar Series). www.lialapithi. com/Lisa%20Socrates.htm (accessed June 18, 2013). —2009. “Documentary Responses to ‘1974’ in Attila ’74: The Rape of Cyprus and Divided Loyalties: Representations of Nationalism and National Identity.” In Media and Nationalism: The Basque, the Catalan, the Northern Ireland and the Scottish Cases, edited by Christina Perales, 115–29. Vic, Spain: University of Vic/ Eumografic. —2012. “Deterritorializing the Nation: Deleuzian Time, Space and Narrative in the Video Art of Lia Lapithi Shukuroglou.” Journal of Literature and Art Studies 2, 9: 897–904. Sorlin, Pierre. 1980. The Film in History: Restaging the Past. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books. Spencer, Jonathan. 2007. Anthropology, Politics and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suner, Asuman. 2010. New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Taliadoros, Adonis. 2010. “Istoriki Ekseliksi ton Kinimatografikon Paragogon stin Kypro” (“The Historical Development of Film Production in Cyprus”). In



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Politismos, Technes, MME (Culture, Arts, Media), edited by Andreas Sophocleous, 139–51. Nicosia: Mass Media Institute. Volkan, Vamik. 1979. Cyprus: War and Adaptation. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. Xydis, Stephen G. 1973. Cyprus: Reluctant Republic. The Hague: Mouton. Yuksel, Muberra. 2005. “The Role of Documentaries in Sensitizing Audience on ‘The Cyprus Issue’.” In IACM 18th Annual Conference. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/ papers.cfm?abstract_id=736286 (accessed June 18, 2013).

Notes   1 See www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/4511 (accessed June 17, 2013).  2 Nekatomeni Aerides is perhaps the first film documentary that gives significant space to a Turkish-Cypriot voice. A visually compelling film documentary, which voices the experiences of a Greek-Cypriot refugee woman who has a missing son, and of a Turkish-Cypriot woman, who decided to stay in the Greek-Cypriot controlled Republic of Cyprus after the events of 1974. The film was supported by the Cyprus Film Production Council and the celebrated Greek-Cypriot poet Pavlos Liasides makes a brief appearance in the film. The title of the film is borrowed from the latter’s 1979 collection of poems with the same title.   3 www.cybc.com.cy/en/ (accessed June 17, 2013).   4 The Nicosia Film Club (initially established as the Cyprus Film Club) was founded in 1974; the club did not remain unaffected by the events of 1974, however, it managed to reorganize itself and between 1979 and 1980 it imported a total of 60 films. Taliadoros (2010) names Andreas Constantinides (key CyBC director and creator of documentaries that belong to the first wave of post-1974 CyBC produced films about the Cyprus Problem) and Panicos Chrysanthou, among others, as the founders of this club. Today, the University of Nicosia hosts the Friends of Cinema Club which was established in the early 1990s and is partly seen as a continuation of the Nicosia Film Club.   5 The budget was less than 1 million euros in the recent past, in 2005 to be exact, and reached 1.1 million euros in 2009; however, due to the government’s current austerity policy, the budget has been significantly cut.   6 The committee may recommend films produced by European, non-Cypriot citizens as long as they produce legal evidence of Cypriot involvement. Applications by European producers should either be submitted through a Cypriot production company, or through a permanent branch they maintain or should establish in Cyprus.

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  7 The fourth honorary member was previously a representative of the PIO.   8 For example the Ministry of Education and Culture may participate with a percentage of up to 50% in the production of a high-budget film (maximum budget: open) or with the amount of €850,000 depending on which is the lower.   9 For example, Fish n’ Chips (Elias Demetriou 2012) and Murid (Yeliz Shukhri 2010) are MEDIA-supported films. 10 Christos Georgiou’s Small Crime was supported by this fund. 11 The Ministry of Education and Culture also financially supports the production of documentaries, film shorts, and animation films. The Ministry also accepts proposals for the funding of the promotion of a completed film, which is co-produced with the Ministry. 12 The film documentary Murid directed by Turkish-Cypriot female filmmaker Yeliz Shukri and produced by Greek-Cypriot filmmaker Stavros Papageorgiou in 2010 tells the story of Chris who abandons his dream to become a fighter pilot for the US army and becomes a member of the Sufi sect instead, which is based in northern Cyprus and was at the time of the making of the documentary led by the Turkish-Cypriot Sheikh Nazim (1922–2014). Accessed May 5, 2014. www.tetraktys. tv/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=19:murid-the-sheikh%E2%80%99sfollower-documentary&Itemid=143 13 Yeliz Shukri and Stavros Papageorgiou teamed up again in 2012 and secured state financial support for the making of Forgotten Brides, a film documentary about a period between the 1920s and 1950s, where Turkish-Cypriot families—living in poverty—were “selling” their daughters into marriage to merchant Arabs (mostly Palestinian). The team is joined by the Australian-born Turkish Cypriot Pembe Mentesh who investigates the fate of her great-aunt Fetine Memish. Fetine was married against her will in exchange for money being provided to her family as a form of dowry. www.tetraktys.tv/index.php?option=com_ k2&view=item&id=33:forgotten-daughters&Itemid=142 (accessed May 5, 2014). 14 Adonis Florides’ and Theodoros Nicolaides’ 1997 short film Espresso (funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture) may be the first post-1974 fiction film that promotes bi-communal themes, and the first take on the Cyprus Problem with explicit ironic and comedic aspects. 15 http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/reg/cinema/news/index_en.htm (accessed June 18, 2013). 16 Marion Döring, executive producer of the European Film Awards and director of the European Film Academy, was in Cyprus in April 2013 as a member of the international competition jury of Cyprus Film Days 11th edition. She was interviewed by Meropi Moyseos (Politis, 20/05/13) and admitted that Block 12 (Kyriakos Tofarides 2013), the Cypriot entry in the competition section, was the first Cypriot film she had ever seen.

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Archive, Evidence, Memory, Dream: Documentary Films on Cyprus Elizabeth Anne Davis We left our place. We left our home. We left our memories. We left our photographs. In short, we left everything we had. […] I have no photos that date before ’63. They must have been burnt, damaged. They’ve all disappeared. Not only our photos but also our memories have been lost. Turkish-Cypriot survivor of a 1963 attack in Nicosia Because I’m so attached to my village and my house, I’ve tried to make my own archive—to find recent photographs of my village, of our house and our neighbors. Greek-Cypriot survivor of the 1974 massacre at Palaikythro Parallel Trips (2004) In late November 2011, around 25 people—almost all women—gathered for a film screening at the Home for Cooperation (H4C), a research and educational institute and a shared space for inter-communal dialogue and action located in the buffer zone between north and south Nicosia. The spacious meeting room and café on the first floor had become popular venues for exhibitions, lectures, gatherings, and other cultural events since H4C’s inauguration six months before. This November evening marked the first of several screenings at H4C of Women of Cyprus, a 2009 documentary film made by Vassiliki Katrivanou, a Greek teacher and mediator, in collaboration with members of Hands Across the Divide (HAD), a bi-communal Cypriot women’s organization for equality, peace, and reconciliation. A number of HAD members attended the screening, including several who were featured in the film. One of these women, Maria Hadjipavlou, a professor of political science at the University of Cyprus, introduced the film. She described its inception in 2004 as a documentary about the

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referendum on the Annan Plan for reunification, and about HAD itself, whose members largely but not unanimously supported the plan and met regularly in the lead-up to the vote to organize actions on both sides of the Green Line. The film developed into something larger, Maria explained, as the filmmaker explored these women’s memories of violence and displacement during the 1960s–70s. Their experiences, narrated by Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot women who were separated for so many years by the conflict, and who now yearned to “come together in peace,” became the central focus of the film. In the film, Katrivanou’s interviews with Cypriot women are intercut with archival photographs and film footage: images, in black and white and color, of British soldiers checking Cypriots’ identity papers in the 1950s; of EOKA rallies against the British led by Archbishop Makarios, later elected president of the newly-independent Republic; of Turkish Cypriots fleeing Nicosia in 1963 as their businesses and homes fell to fires set by Greek-Cypriot extremists; of Turkish Cypriots leaving their villages in busloads in 1964; of Turkish Cypriots living in tents throughout the 1960s and early 1970s; of Greek Cypriots living in tents after the invasion in 1974; of Turkish bombers flying overhead, and Turkish naval vessels landing at Kyrenia in the summer of 1974; of Greek-Cypriot women and children gathered in village streets, awaiting the return of their husbands, fathers, and brothers taken prisoner by the Turkish army. As the interview subjects speak, or as Katrivanou speaks for them in voice-over, this archival material plays without captions or credits, as if directly illustrating their personal memories.1 This archival material comprises a series of quotations from other documentary films and television programs—a structure marked not only by the grainy, faded quality of the material itself, but also by its presentation in a 4:3 frame inset into the 16:9 frame in which Katrivanou’s contemporary footage of interviews, public events, and landscapes appears. As archival sources, the film credits list the Press and Information Offices (PIOs) in the north and the south, the Greek-Cypriot television channel, Mega, and the work of two Cypriot filmmakers: Antonis (Tony) Angastiniotis, a Greek-Cypriot photojournalist and activist whose films, Voice of Blood (2004) and Voice of Blood 2: Searching for Selden (2005), expose massacres of Turkish-Cypriot villagers by Greek Cypriots in the summer of 1974; and Michael Cacoyannis, a Greek-Cypriot film director whose one documentary, Attila ’74, was shot in Cyprus immediately after the coup and invasion in July– August 1974. Sequences from both films are reproduced without citation or comment in Women of Cyprus, alongside archival footage of violence in 1964 and 1974—thus seeming transparently to depict moments of a single, seamless



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history of conflict, without heeding the radically discrepant conditions under which this complex visual record had been produced. Following the screening, a discussion held mostly in English—a native language for only a handful in the room—was led by a HAD member, Nahide Merlen, one of the main characters in the film, whose narration of the bombings by Turkish forces and her childhood experiences in a northern enclave had brought several viewers to tears. Another HAD member, identifying herself as Greek Cypriot, said how sorry she was “for all that we allowed to happen,” referring to the defeat of the Annan Plan. Several audience members attributed this failure to Greek-Cypriot racism toward Turkish Cypriots. Another GreekCypriot woman confessed she had never known that Turkish Cypriots had lived for years in enclaves; she had known “in a vague way” that they had lived in protected areas after 1963, but not that they had been so massively displaced, living in tents like refugees, “like we [Greek Cypriots] did after the war” in 1974. She thanked the filmmakers for making this information available to a GreekCypriot audience. A Turkish academic in the room, who taught at a university in the north, said she wanted to apologize to Cypriots, and especially to Turkish Cypriots, for Turkey’s role in this situation. She apologized on behalf of “the Turkish Left” for their ignorance about the “realities of this situation.” She had come to Cyprus thinking she “understood the occupation,” she said, but after watching the film, she realized that she “knew nothing before,” and now hoped the Turkish Left would become much more active in helping to resolve the Cyprus Problem. A young American woman said she thought it would be better if the film had included nationalist or anti-reconciliation voices, since those voices seemed to her more representative of the Cypriots she knew. She had seen the film before she came to Cyprus, and it had not prepared her for the depth and entrenchment of mutual hostilities between the two communities. Maria and Nahide fielded this last comment together, explaining that they had wanted the film to have a “positive message” about the possibilities of reconciliation, and to represent voices that were normally ignored or excluded in popular discourse: not only women’s voices, but also voices in support of peace. Yet they had long been aware of their limited influence. Another HAD member agreed that they often found themselves “preaching to the converted. It’s always the same people who attend this kind of event; if we’re lucky, we’ll see one or two new people. We never seem to be able to reach outside this small circle.” This film had been more effective at delivering its message of peace to international audiences than to Cypriots.

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Introduction In this chapter, I consider how documentary filmmakers in Cyprus use photographic and film archives as resources for remaking the present: for staging a relationship between the present and the past that disturbs and displaces the nationalist histories they have inherited from films of the war and the immediate post-war period. Quotation from those older films—as in Katrivanou’s quotations in Women of Cyprus from Cacoyannis’ Attila ’74—is built into the contemporary documentary record. But in reproducing archival sequences from older films or original source footage, contemporary films also reproduce the partialities and exclusions of the archival material. I thus examine the structure of quotation from the archives in contemporary documentary films as a structure of memory in the process of being formed. I look at how quotation is used in films to assert the transparency of archival evidence—or, on the contrary, how it is thematized in films that aim explicitly to experiment with history. Along these lines, I explore contemporary Cypriot documentary film as an archive in itself: a medium not only for transmitting a common cultural and political heritage, but also for creating a common record—for collecting, preserving, and questioning evidence of the violent past. The decade since the opening of the checkpoints in 2003 has seen a rapid growth in the production and consumption of documentary films by Cypriots in Cyprus.2 The rise in traffic between north and south, and the revivification of the “dead zone” at the center of divided Nicosia, have fostered the development of an anti-nationalist, multi-communal culture—something like a “minor” community, in Deleuze and Guattari’s (1975) sense of an essentially political collective that speaks in a majority language from a marginal (in this case, formerly-colonized) position—whose origins can be traced to bi-communal groups active since the 1980s. The territory in and around the “dead zone” in Nicosia has become a new common space for Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, as well as other Cypriots and expatriates, to participate together in political and cultural events—among which, documentary film screenings appear to be among the most popular. The overwhelming majority of documentary films being made and seen in this emergent political space address “the Cyprus Problem.” Most contemporary filmmakers did not experience the events of the 1950s-70s themselves, or experienced them only as young children; but they have become politicized in relation to those events, and have come to occupy a meta-positional vantage on the ways



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in which the events have determined social and political life for Cypriots since the division. Some are self-described amateur filmmakers who have picked up a camera to extend their activist work; others are trained filmmakers concerned not only with the political efficacy of their work but also with its aesthetic and poetic dimensions. In Cyprus, the growth of community-based media and the spread of low-cost film technologies such as cell-phone cameras have blurred lines between “amateur” and “art” filmmaking. In this context, documentary film has become a popular platform for what is often called “peace messaging.” Another factor in the recent expansion of Cypriot documentary film is the relative opening of official film and photographic archives to researchers, and the circulation of archival images in public media where they had never before been seen. In the summer of 2010, for example, as the 50th anniversary of Cypriot independence was being observed in the south alongside the annual commemoration of the coup and invasion of 1974, the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC)3—the official radio and television service in the Republic of Cyprus—broadcast several documentary films addressing both events. These films included references to violence against Turkish Cypriots during the GreekCypriot campaign for union with Greece in the 1950s, as well as footage from the Greek-backed coup in 1974 that led to the Turkish invasion. Footage of the invasion in the summer of 1974 was, in the south, so frequently shown in the years afterward that many Cypriots seemed to see it as their own visual memory; but footage of the coup, and the attendant violence against Greek Cypriots by Greek and Greek-Cypriot combatants, seemed less familiar. A Greek-Cypriot friend of mine born shortly after the invasion told me she had grown up without any “visual connection” to the coup; but in the late 2000s, this visual connection was commonplace. Similarly, the restriction of official visual archives in Cyprus, considered by some as a form of political censorship, has been a constraint and concern of long-standing for Cypriot journalists, researchers, and artists. But, while I have heard such investigators complain of limited access to the film and photographic archives at the CyBC and the PIO in the south, I have heard as many describe their almost complete freedom in these archives—complaining of perhaps too much freedom, given the massive volume of uncataloged materials stored without regard for chronological or topical principles of organization. Although the CyBC’s collections are beginning to be digitized, and some photographs, films, and television programs are now available for streaming on the CyBC website, a former archivist told me that most of its materials are simply

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“unknown.” He described dark, dusty rooms full of unlabeled film cans and piles of prints without names or dates. Despite directives from the European Union regarding the preservation of film as cultural heritage, very little in the way of organization and digitization has yet been undertaken in the state media archives. Of course, these official archives are not the only sources of images and footage from the pre-division period and the war; many Cypriots on both sides of the Green Line have recently been sharing photographs and footage from their personal collections with documentary filmmakers. These archival materials are new, in the sense that they have never before been seen by Cypriot publics; but such a passage from “private” to “public,” as Derrida (1995: 2–3) notes in his essay on the archive, is not always a passage from “secret” to “non-secret.” Often, unlike official footage of formerly-unacknowledged violence in the 1950s-70s, these personal materials easily find a place in familiar genres established in earlier nationalist films—genres such as personal portraits, wedding photographs, family photographs, human landscapes—which limits their potential to advance new, post-nationalist visions of recent Cypriot history. This tension between the novelty and the familiarity of images coming from personal and public archives is a distinctive and intriguing feature of Cypriot documentary film today. Much of my research with filmmakers and film viewers in Cyprus during 2011–12 was conducted inside that “minor” community of activists, writers, teachers, artists, journalists, academics, and community organizers in Nicosia, who mostly took for granted that multiple perspectives on the conflict—and indeed multiple histories premised on incompatible factual claims—were present and arguable. At the same time, members of this community often expressed frustration and even boredom with the perennial posing of the Cyprus Problem as such. The chronic impasse in regard to a political settlement, the perpetual reiteration of entrenched positions, the stale terms of discussion, the occlusion or outright exclusion from consideration of other political problems in Cyprus, and the intractable self-congratulatory demeanor adopted by people across the political spectrum—all these features of the Cyprus Problem played a part in disposing progressive Cypriots to disaffection with activism and activist cultural production. Documentarians, too, were frustrated. Funding to support film projects was limited, by any measure, and further restricted by its earmarking—especially by international organizations like the UNDP4—for “peace projects” that would emphasize one or another aspect of reconciliation. These limitations on funding



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not only constrained the radical and creative potential of filmmaking, but also generated competition among filmmakers that hindered collaboration and mutual support. In this vein, a filmmaker living in the south told me that he was heartened by how much documentary film was being made these days by Cypriots, but worried that their films had “no edge” and “no heart.” Many filmmakers, he said, were obliged to work on others’ projects, usually through an NGO or press outlet, and thus contributed production or editing labor without sharing in the vision of the film. Likewise, a friend of mine, an avid consumer of film who grew up in the Turkish-Cypriot community in the north and now lives in the Greek-Cypriot community in the south, acknowledged that documentary films were being made in the north as they were in the south, but she insisted they weren’t any good: “They’re not professional, they’re not imaginative. They tell a story we already know; it’s what the audience expects. These films just don’t work.” Filmmaking was also threatened by the mainstream political silencing of non-nationalist perspectives. Accusations of censorship by the state in the north and the south were not uncommon. A case in point is Akamas, a fiction film directed in 2006 by the Greek-Cypriot filmmaker, Panicos Chrysanthou, and co-produced by the Turkish-Cypriot filmmaker, Derviş Zaim. Chrysanthou and Zaim have accused the Ministry of Education and Culture in the south of censoring the film by limiting public screening and television broadcast— a contested claim—and of waging a “financial war” against them, ultimately withholding funding that it had contracted to provide during the production of the film. In this controversy, Chrysanthou has publicly denigrated the Ministry as nothing more than a petty bureaucratic organization without artistic vision or any appreciation for Cypriot culture. Outright censorship was not necessary, he told me, when filmmakers had to depend on such institutions for support. Such conditions of cultural production in Cyprus were ripe for cliché. Many documentary filmmakers worked consciously and deliberately against them, seeking new knowledge about the recent past and new ways to represent it. That this quest for novelty often materialized in archival images in their films might seem paradoxical. What does it mean for Cypriots to turn to the archive for something new? In this chapter, I unravel this apparent paradox. In Part One, I address the social, political, and economic factors that have contributed to the recent profusion and popularity of documentary film in Cyprus. In Part Two, I closely examine a number of documentary films made about Cyprus by Cypriots in the last several years. I focus on the relationship between the present

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and the past that filmmakers stage in these films by intercutting contemporary footage with archival photographs and footage from public media and private collections. In looking at the use of this archival material in contemporary documentary films, I consider the archive itself anew. The art critic and theorist Simone Osthoff, examining contemporary art works that engage archival materials, observes “an ontological change—from the archive as a repository of documents to the archive as a dynamic and generative production tool” (2009: 11). Along these lines, I argue that the contingency, partiality, and ultimate unknowability of the documentary archive in Cyprus position it as a tool for capricious but potentially radical memory-making and truth-telling.

Part One: The social space of documentary film In the last decade, venues for documentary film production and screening have proliferated in urban Cyprus, especially in Nicosia. In this section, I explore these venues as spaces of sociality and productivity, where filmmakers collaborated with one another and connected with audiences, and where networks materialized among filmmakers, artists, journalists, scholars, and public intellectuals. It is also in these spaces that communities of viewership formed and transformed around particular themes and tropes. Documentary film screenings were often attended by “the usual suspects”—a small number of already-politicized Cypriots engaged in their own cultural production and multi-communal activism. These gatherings therefore held the potential both for collective recognition and synergy, and for repetition and coagulation, around those themes and tropes. The Home for Cooperation (H4C), mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, has hosted frequent documentary film screenings since its opening in May 2011. Although English, taken as a common language for Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, was often used to introduce and discuss these films, H4C had developed a system for simultaneous Greek-Turkish translations by the winter of 2012. The documentary films screened at H4C typically addressed peace and conflict, though not exclusively in Cyprus; some offered a comparative perspective, such as the 2011 film, Twice a Stranger, by Andreas Apostolidis and Yuri Averof, which examines population exchanges between Greece and Turkey, Germany and Poland, India and Pakistan, as well as Cyprus. The first documentary film screened at H4C set the tone for what followed:



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the event, in June 2011, was the premiere of Sharing an Island, Danae Stylianou’s 2011 piece about six young Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, strangers to one another, who were filmed living together and traveling across Cyprus for five days as they worked through their collective heritage of conflict. H4C’s documentary program in 2011–12 also included Women of Cyprus, the 2009 film by Vassiliki Katrivanou (discussed above), screened at H4C in November 2011 and again in May 2012; The Division of Cyprus, a 2011 film by the same Greek documentarians who made Twice a Stranger, Andreas Apostolidis and Yuri Averof, screened at H4C in May 2012; and Birds of a Feather, a 2012 film by Cypriots Stefanos Evripidou and Stephen Nugent (discussed below), screened in December 2012. In November 2011, H4C hosted the second annual documentary and short film festival, “With Brand New Eyes: Screenings for an Island,” attended by more than fifty people, many of them young and aspiring Cypriot filmmakers. On the program were several short documentaries by Cypriots, including Yetin Arslan and Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, who collaborated with the Cyprus Community Media Centre (CCMC) in their productions. A different kind of screening took place at H4C in June 2012, when the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO)–Cyprus Centre, a NorwegianCypriot institute for research and dialogue on conflict and peace in Cyprus, launched its multi-year project, “Internal Displacement in Cyprus: Mapping the Consequences of Civil and Military Strife.” With an audience of nearly forty people, PRIO staff disseminated and discussed seven reports, and showed one of three short documentary films hosted via YouTube on the PRIO website. These films were made by the same researchers who authored the massive reports on experiences of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots displaced between 1963 and 1974. The films were the keystones of PRIO’s multi-media project, supplementing the reports along with an intricate interactive map of displaced people hosted on the same website. The launch event at H4C was the first (and to date the only) public screening of any of PRIO’s documentaries. H4C was the first institution of its kind to open inside the buffer zone in old Nicosia, but kindred institutions preceded it on either side of the division. Sidestreets, a Turkish-Cypriot foundation for culture and art, was established on the north side of old Nicosia in 2007. The foundation today supports an array of projects such as art exhibitions, art and language classes, artists- and scholarsin-residence programs, and lectures on cultural and political issues. It has become the principal venue for art and documentary film screenings in north Nicosia, which have included the complete works of Turkish-Cypriot filmmaker

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Derviş Zaim, in April–May 2009; several films from the Festival of the Green Line in March–April 2011; a Tunisian short film series in March 2013; and the simulcast of selected works from the If Kare Squared (IF2) Istanbul Film Festival annually since 2010. A sort of counterpart to Sidestreets in south Nicosia is the Artos Foundation, a cultural and research institute housed in the old bakery complex of Agioi Omologites, refurbished in 2003 and opened soon after for theater performances, concerts, film screenings, poetry readings, book launches, and art exhibitions. In addition, the gallery space known as Eirini, or the “Peace Room,” has opened in a recently-renovated Venetian building adjacent to the Ledra Street checkpoint on the south side of old Nicosia. Unlike Sidestreets and Artos, whose events are organized by the foundations themselves, Eirini is a common space rented out by the municipality for public events. Over the last several years, Eirini has hosted many lectures, panel discussions, information fairs, art exhibitions, and documentary film screenings—including Parallel Trips, a 2004 documentary film by Derviş Zaim and Panicos Chrysanthou, shown as part of the Festival of the Green Line5 in April 2011; Chrysanthou’s films, Our Wall, A Detail in Cyprus, and Akamas in January 2012; and the 1976 documentary, Cyprus: The Other Reality, by Lambros Papademetrakis and Thekla Kittou, in November 2012. Next door to Eirini, between November 2011 and April 2012, an ephemeral venue for documentary film screenings emerged in the building occupied by participants in the Occupy the Buffer Zone movement, who gradually constructed a complex living space inside the dead zone between the Lokmacı and Ledra Street checkpoints in old Nicosia. Despite a lack of electricity, during the winter months, a number of documentary films were shown on the ground floor of their squat, open to the public. At the same time, the Occupy group became the subject of documentary filmmaker Chrysanthou. Some participants developed into skillful documentarians themselves, as they regularly posted short videos about their activities on their Facebook page (since shut down by Facebook). Documentary films were also shown regularly at two universities in south Nicosia: the University of Cyprus, the principal public university in the Republic; and the University of Nicosia, a private university on the western edge of the city whose cinema, Cine Studio, hosted many art and documentary film screenings, series, and festivals. Several venues for documentary film have recently emerged in Limassol, as well, including Art Studio 55, which hosted an exhibition of colonial film and photography as part of the Cyprus



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Film Days Festival in late April 2012. That exhibition, “We Made a Film in Cyprus,” featured a looping installation of the 1946 documentary film, Cyprus is an Island, made in Cyprus by British filmmaker Ralph Keene, with Michael Cacoyannis as a production assistant. A larger-scale documentary event in Limassol is the annual Lemesos International Documentary Festival, convened each summer since 2006. In August 2012, the eight-day festival held screenings at the historic B Municipal Market—now a performance space run by Theatro Ena—of films such as the Academy Award-nominated 5 Broken Cameras, a co-production by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, about protests in a West Bank village in the shadow of the Israeli West Bank barrier; Saving Face, the 2012 Academy Award-winning short documentary by Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, about acid attacks on women in Pakistan; and Children of the Riots, by Christos Georgiou, about the experience of the Greek crisis and street protest among Greek youth. The festival program included films from Cyprus as well as China, Turkey, Pakistan, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Canada, the United States, South Korea, Greece, the Netherlands, Egypt, Russia, Japan, Bulgaria, Palestine, and Poland—while offering seminars and workshops with international filmmakers at a nearby hotel. Crucial to the production and screening of many of the films described above was the material, technical, creative, and networking support of the Cyprus Community Media Centre (CCMC), a bi-communal Cypriot NGO founded in 2009 to foster media access, multi-perspectival media, and technical training in radio, television and film. The CCMC, funded exclusively at present by the UNDP, was located on the premises of the Ledra Palace Hotel within the buffer zone in central Nicosia, just across the road from H4C and a few buildings down from Crewhouse, an international for-profit media company that produces news pieces, news feeds, documentaries, and multi-media projects for local and international organizations. Members of the CCMC staff explained to me that the Centre had begun as a UNDP initiative in order to support the “messaging” of civil society organizations in Cyprus, all oriented toward peace and reconciliation; its member organizations now included HAD, the Rooftop Theatre Group, the Green Action Group, and the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research, among many others. The CCMC provided equipment and expertise to any member organization seeking to create videos, social media platforms, press releases, or other media-related tools. It also offered regular training workshops in media production, photography, blogging and podcasting, online activism, and social networking.

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In the early days of the CCMC, I learned, the staff had devised a long list of media-makers (filmmakers as well as those in television, radio, and web design) working in Cyprus whom they might enlist as freelance experts or collaborators. But of that original list, only a handful still worked with CCMC a few years later. It was difficult to raise the funds necessary to produce high-quality films, and talented, professional media-makers looked elsewhere for work, often leaving Cyprus altogether. The CCMC staff expressed frustration to me not only at the difficulty of fund-raising in Cyprus, but also at the pressures their funders placed on them to emphasize “peace messaging.” These pressures took specific de-politicizing and often absurd forms: for instance, the requirement always to represent Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot perspectives in literally equal numbers in any media project, and to avoid using certain loaded terms (such as “human rights” in reference to media access, or “invasion” in reference to the Turkish military intervention of July–August 1974) so as to avoid offense. In the view of one staff member at the CCMC, such balance was artificially contrived, and did not allow for organic collaborations to develop among people based on their common interests. Nor did it make for good stories; many peace-oriented documentaries suffered from an overly dramatic and rather humorless tone. The CCMC’s explicit valorization of media transparency ran counter to these pressures, which described a continuum between overt censorship by funders and forms of self-censorship enacted by many of the CCMC’s member organizations for fear of attacks by nationalists on either side of the divide.

Part Two: Uses of the documentary archive Documentary filmmakers in Cyprus have used archival material in a variety of ways to represent events of historical or biographical significance, particularly episodes of violence in 1963–4 and 1974. Archival footage and photographs from public media and private collections appear in recent films as transparent, uncontested evidence of the events; as enhancements of the personal or collective memories of the events belonging to personae in the film, or to the film’s director; and as open-ended explorations of the events, without clear veridical stakes or claims to historical truth. In this section, I explore these representational modes in Cypriot documentary film, focusing on the intercutting of archival and contemporary material to stage a relationship between the past and the present. The documentaries I discuss here fall into two main



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categories, which only loosely correspond to a historical chronology dividing the immediate post-war period from the period of “opening” after 2003. One category comprises nationalist documentaries made in the post-war period, such as Trimithi (1981–7) and Homeland (2010), most of which were intended for television broadcast to large audiences. In the other category are a number of feature-length documentary films screened to small audiences at public venues and festivals in the north, the south, and the buffer zone in between. These latter films—such as A Detail in Cyprus (1987), Parallel Trips (2004), and Voice of Blood (2004)—are the focus of my analysis, as they mobilize archival materials for anti-nationalist visions of history, and explicitly experiment with the relationship between the present and the past. A number of documentary films produced in Cyprus after the war in 1974 have become sources of archival material for more recent films. One of the best known among these, from the immediate post-war period, is Michael Cacoyannis’ film, Attila ’74, which focuses on Greek-Cypriot participants and victims in the war of 1974. Recorded in color, in Greek with English subtitles, the film was released in Greece in 1975 by Fox Lorber, an international distribution company, which re-released the film internationally in 2000 with a new epilogue. It has been widely seen both in and outside Cyprus over the last 35 years. Although its presentation of events is unarguably one-sided—apart from the Turkish-Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, Turkish Cypriots are never shown or heard in the film—Attila ’74 has been mined for original footage of the war’s aftermath by contemporary filmmakers with a more balanced eye. The film opens with scenes of bombed-out, divided Nicosia, its abandoned neighborhoods in rubble. A voice-over by Cacoyannis swiftly outlines the events leading up to the war and the unfolding of the war itself. The film shifts to interviews with Archbishop Makarios, Nicos Sampson (head of the short-lived, coupist-led government), and Glafkos Clerides (a Greek-Cypriot politician who briefly held the Presidency before the restoration of Makarios, and who was himself later elected president of the Republic); to a high-profile meeting between Clerides and Rauf Denktaş at the Ledra Palace Hotel; to interviews with Greek-Cypriot soldiers injured by coupists, doctors at a Nicosia hospital who treated those wounded during the coup and the invasion, rape victims at a Nicosia clinic, EOKA B combatants and supporters, a village priest who had buried most of his co-villagers, and two museum directors who had witnessed the destruction of their collections. These interviews are intercut with footage of refugee camps,

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villages in the south ravaged by the war, prisoners of war returning from Turkey, the incipient Missing Persons office in Nicosia, and the pro-Makarios rally in Limassol where Greek-Cypriot civilians were shot by Greek-Cypriot EOKA B gunmen in September 1974. The film uses very little archival material: overlaid radio broadcasts from the morning of the coup, falsely announcing the death of Makarios, play in several languages behind Cacoyannis’ footage of Makarios walking amidst the rubble of the presidential palace only a few months later; and several short film sequences, cut from archival CyBC footage, depict the deployment of unidentified soldiers, bombs exploding in Kyrenia, and refugees fleeing their homes. The proximity of those events to the time of Cacoyannis’ filming, a month or so later, establishes an easy continuity between the archival footage and his own. His use of archival material is minimal and unremarkable; it blends smoothly, both visually and narratively, into the unfolding drama of the war he is documenting. It is his original footage—notably, sequences showing refugee life in the camps, crowds awaiting the return of prisoners of war from Turkey, and his interviews with refugee children wounded during attacks on their villages—that has been quoted so extensively in documentary films made in the last decade. A very different use of the documentary archive was made by the GreekCypriot filmmaker, Andreas Pantzis, in Trimithi: Reconstruction with Words (Trimithi: Anaparastasi me Lexeis). Co-produced by the CyBC and the Cyprus Film Council, and recorded in black and white between 1981 and 1987, the film is anchored in interviews with refugees from Trimithi, a village near Kyrenia, who revisit the homes they abandoned, and the events of the coup and the war, through memories elicited by Pantzis. The interviews are interrupted at key moments by edited sequences of archival footage: of soldiers with machine guns, walking down a road toward the camera in advance of a tank; of hundreds of tents at a refugee camp; of soldiers and tanks deploying in fields; of helicopters and bombers filling the sky; of warships docking and paratroopers landing; of crowds waiting for prisoners of war to return from Turkey, and busloads of prisoners returning to embrace their family members. These archival sequences are juxtaposed with interviews in which villagers recall in intimate detail their own experiences of the war. In one remarkable segment, an elderly woman from Trimithi tells Pantzis of the advance on the village by Turkish soldiers, as archival footage of soldiers and tanks moving down a dirt road appears for the second time in the film—suggesting, falsely, its depiction of the Trimithi attack. Later, the film is punctuated by a disorienting and ominous scene, on which



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Pantzis dwells for several minutes. Four unidentified men are apprehended on a road by soldiers with machine guns and a tank; one of the men, shown from several angles, identifies their home villages in Greek—Peristerona, Gaidoura, Trimithi—before an officer orders their hands up. This sequence opens with the pulsing repetition of the four villagers putting their hands up, jumps back to the start of the scene, unfolds in slow motion, and then loops several times. The next cut is to an interview with an elderly villager, who recalls how Trimithi was taken by the Turkish army, the men separated from the women and children and then killed, their bodies left in the village for the others to find. In these sequences, Pantzis emphatically marks the archival nature of the footage. Although his own footage is also black and white, the archival material runs at an appreciably slower pace, and the grainy quality of both picture and sound is exaggerated. The archival footage appears in decontextualized fragments, looped and repeated at different moments of the film, precluding a straightforward visual narrative. These sequences only indirectly substantiate the villagers’ memories; their juxtaposition with interview footage confers these fragments a place in the film’s story of Trimithi, but not a stable place in a veridical history of the war. The archival material has ambiguous evidentiary value; it works more to haunt and disturb than to illustrate. Certain conventions of the documentary archive established in Trimithi—the intercutting of interviews with archival material; the visual differentiation of archival material; the emphasis on archival material to substantiate the memorywork of the film—are used in recent films that take a more multi-perspectival view of the conflict in Cyprus. One of the first Cypriot documentary films to emerge in the new era—that is, after the opening of the checkpoints, the failure of the Annan Plan, and Cyprus’ accession to the European Union—was Parallel Trips, “a Turkish-Cypriot/Greek-Cypriot co-production” by Zaim and Chrysanthou, as the credits announce. An early version of the film was shown to a small audience in Nicosia shortly after its release in 2004, and the final version had a public screening at Eirini during the second Festival of the Green Line in April 2011. The film was made (and set) in 2003, just before and just after the opening of the checkpoints. It is presented in two parts, each divided into parts—a structure evidently designed for balance between Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot narratives, even as the narratives themselves persistently upset that balance with the singularity and irreducibility of the deaths, injuries, and losses they communicate. The film’s first part explores two stories of massacres in August 1974: the first, at Palaikythro (Balıkesir), where 17 Greek Cypriots

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were killed; the second, at the villages of Muratağa (Maratha), Atlılar (Aloa), and Sandallar (Santallaris), where, altogether, 126 Turkish Cypriots were killed. The second part of the film presents five personae—three Turkish Cypriots and two Greek Cypriots—who were each deeply wounded by the war. The film closely follows documentary conventions of memory and commemoration, featuring lengthy “talking head” interviews in which each subject’s experience unfolds from beginning to end, anchored by a traumatic event and intercut with B-roll footage of the subject going about the everyday activities of his or her present life. Yet the use of archival material to concretize and enhance the memories of these subjects is striking. As noted above, many contemporary documentary films, such as Women of Cyprus, use stock photographs and footage of public events to illustrate the very personal memories of interview subjects who do not actually appear in the archival images. In Parallel Trips, on the other hand, archival photographs and footage depict the interview subjects themselves, as they appeared in public media at the time of the events they are now remembering on film. In Part Two of the film, for example, Panayiota, the wife of a man who went missing during the early days of the war, filmed in 2003 in her sixties, appears in an intercut sequence in archival black-andwhite footage as a young woman, living in refugee housing with her young son, recounting how her husband had disappeared only a few months before. Similarly, in Part One, Petros, who at the age of 10 survived an attack on his family at Palaikythro with several gunshot wounds, appears as a grown man; his young daughter is shown thumbing through a book documenting the massacre, pausing at several black-and-white photographs of Petros and his brother as young children, displaying their wounds to the camera. Petros might be familiar to audiences in Cyprus from his interview as a young boy by Michael Cacoyannis in Attila ’74 (Figure 1.1). His appearance in Parallel Trips alongside his brother, Costas, as they also appeared in Attila ’74, is not a direct quotation of the earlier film, but rather an echo that reverberates within the documentary frame between the original scene and the present memory, thus bolstering the legitimacy of film as a way of knowing about the past (Figure 1.2). In a later sequence, several unnamed Turkish-Cypriot men who survived the massacres at Muratağa, Atlılar, and Sandallar, interviewed in 2003 at ages ranging from their fifties to their eighties, appear as young men in archival color film footage, crying, praying, and staring at the military excavation of the mass grave in Muratağa in 1974. From an interview with one of these men in the present, the screen fades to black and then fills with archival footage. The



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Figure 1.1  Attila ’74. Petros and Costas in 1974, interviewed by Michael Cacoyannis.

Figure 1.2  Parallel Trips. Petros and Costas in 2003, interviewed by Panicos Chrysanthou.

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excavation slowly comes into focus, silent at first; crying is the first sound to arise, and then, in the background, shovels striking dirt and the clicking camera of a journalist. The film cuts back to the interview subject, and then to a series of archival black-and-white photographs of the survivors, covering their mouths or their noses or their eyes, kneeling by the grave or standing at a distance. Another interview subject speaks, drawing the momentum of the film back into the present and holding it there. The same horrifying scene of the excavation at Muratağa appears in several other recent documentary films. Tony Angastiniotis’ films, Voice of Blood and Voice of Blood 2: Searching for Selden, both feature several long sequences of photographs and footage from the excavation. The two films, narrated in Turkish and Greek, based on Angastiniotis’ interviews with survivors of the massacres at Muratağa, Atlılar, and Sandallar as well as footage from PIO archives, have been widely seen in the north of Cyprus. In the south, they have never been broadcast, and have been publicly screened very few times;6 Angastiniotis himself has been the target of press attacks and death threats. His films are available on DVD and on YouTube, however. In this online venue, they appear to have found a large audience among the Cypriot diaspora in Great Britain and the United States. The first film charts Angastiniotis’ investigation of the massacres, intercutting his interviews with survivors and their descendants in the present with photographs of the victims in life and with footage of the mass grave excavation at Muratağa in 1974. The footage is sepia-filtered, drastically slowed, and stroboscopically sampled so that it shutters and pulses like an old filmstrip. Archival material is treated just as dramatically in the second film, which opens with a direct address to the audience by Angastiniotis. He attributes to the investigative work he undertook for Voice of Blood his transformation from a vehement Greek-Cypriot nationalist invested in conflict into a truth-teller and insider critic of the Greek-Cypriot side. As he speaks, archival footage of soldiers, bombers, fighting and running in the streets is projected on a screen behind him in a series of rapid, abrupt cuts. The Muratağa excavation also appears in Homeland, a 2010 film directed by Serkan Hussein and produced by Seren Gazi with the Association of Turkish Cypriots Abroad (ACTA). Of recent Cypriot documentaries, this film is one of the most densely-packed with archival material—much of which has never appeared in films focused on Greek Cypriots’ experience of the conflict. Sources include the personal archives of the interview subjects, British



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and Turkish-Cypriot newspapers (Chening Standard, Daily Herald, Halkın Sesi), Turkish-Cypriot and Turkish radio and television outlets (Bayrak Radyo Televisyon and Turkiye Radyo Televisyon, respectively), the PIO in the north, and the United Nations archive. The film, narrated mostly in English, with English subtitles for interviews in Turkish, presents itself as a straightforward historical account of the conflict in Cyprus, tracing the bloodshed and the forcible displacement of civilians to decision-making by political leaders. The interview subjects, mostly Turkish Cypriots living outside Cyprus, reflect on the origins of the conflict in the colonial period, their experiences of violence, and their lives in the enclaves from 1963 onward. Archival material appears as transparent evidence of their experiences, presented with descriptive captions and dates. The film dwells insistently on violence, moving through dozens of photographs of Turkish Cypriots killed in 1963–1964 and 1974, and film sequences showing homes and shops in Nicosia burning, wounded civilians being put in ambulances, people leaving their villages en masse in buses, corpses in fields and on the floors of houses, public funerals, and the mass graves at Muratağa and Alaminos. Stock footage of the same scenes of bombers, paratroopers, and Turkish soldiers that appear in many documentary films about Greek-Cypriot victimhood are presented here as illustrations of the heroic rescue of Turkish Cypriots from Greek-Cypriot violence. Perhaps for that reason, Homeland has been received by anti-nationalist Cypriots in the north and the south alike as a propaganda film supporting the Turkish military presence in the north. In Homeland, as in Women of Cyprus and The Division of Cyprus (described above), archival material is treated literally and prosaically, without reflection on its conditions of production or its evidentiary status. Many recent documentaries about the conflict in Cyprus, however, take a more imaginative and complex approach to archival material. Films such as Our Wall (Panicos Chrysanthou 1993), Inside the Walls (Elias Demetriou 2001), Kayıp Otobüs (Lost Bus) (Fevzi Tanpınar 2007), Hidden in the Sand (Vasia Markides 2008), Still (Alana Kakoyiannis 2009), and In This Waiting (Anna Tsiarta 2011) all, in distinct ways, turn to the documentary archive to visualize the conflict. Interviews in the present anchor archival material in the personal memories of Cypriots, authenticating their very particular stories as truthful—if subjective—historical narratives, and transforming them into a common, collective experience. These conventions of archival use have yielded a rich repertoire of documentaries about the conflict in Cyprus. Yet one of the most recent additions to this repertoire, Birds of a Feather, made by Stefanos Evripidou and Stephen Nugent

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in 2012, makes a significant departure from these conventions, employing no archival material whatsoever. The film, which originated at the Cyprus Community Media Centre, developed into a collaboration with the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research and the Home for Cooperation. One of three Cypriot documentaries to be shown at the Lemesos International Documentary Festival in August 2012, it was subsequently screened at H4C in November 2012. It features interviews with Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots who lived through the violence of 1963–4 and 1974, as well as Cypriot researchers, activists, and educators. These people rarely appear in the film in conventional “talking head” interviews; instead, they are filmed together, already in dialogue with one another, and it is their conversations—with all the contradictions, tensions, and elaborations they contain—that form the true subject of the film. Only one sequence in Birds of a Feather features archival materials: old newspaper articles and photographs. These materials are presented not from the filmmakers’ point of view, but diegetically, by one of the film’s central characters. The sequence is structured around an interview with Androulla Palma, a wellknown widow of a Greek-Cypriot reservist who went missing after the second Turkish invasion in August 1974. In the film, Palma, who has become rather famous in Cyprus for pursuing a public campaign and then a lawsuit against the Republic of Cyprus for withholding evidence of her husband’s death, indicates to the camera the newspaper articles and photographs framed on the walls of her home: the documentation of her pursuit for information and her involvement with the Mothers of the Missing. This personal archive stands as evidence, not of the death of her husband itself, but rather of Palma’s attachment to him and her attempts over thirty years to determine his fate. This film, dedicated to pluralizing the histories of conflict in Cyprus, takes a decidedly forward-looking stance, declining the documentary archive altogether in its exploration of the past. A similar spirit—not to authenticate memory but rather to assemble a vision of the future—animates Chrysanthou’s innovative film, A Detail in Cyprus (Leptomeria stin Kypro 1987). The film was screened in Nicosia in January 2012, part of a month-long exhibition of Chrysanthou’s photographs and films at the Eirini gallery, on the southern edge of the “dead zone”. The exhibition, amounting to a retrospective of his entire corpus, was both an artifact and a sign of the transformation of the “dead zone” itself; as one of the speakers at the exhibition opening put it, venues like Eirini, Sidestreets, and H4C, along with



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the Occupy the Buffer Zone movement, were contributing to the “resuscitation” of the “dead zone”, transforming it from a space of death and impasse into a space of life and culture, activity, and activism. The popularity of documentary films in these emerging venues encouraged, perhaps, a new curiosity about Chrysanthou himself, whose works represented not only a robust realization of Cypriot documentary film as an artistic genre, but also an earlier moment—a formative moment—of documentary filmmaking in Cyprus. His early works, such as A Detail in Cyprus (1987) and Our Wall (To Teichos Mas 1993), novel and quite radical in their time, introduced the Cyprus Problem into the very grammar of post-war documentary film. Perhaps a dozen people gathered for the screening that evening, and a few more arrived while the film was underway. Chrysanthou introduced the film in Greek and then in English for the benefit of the few Turkish Cypriots in the room. He told the audience about the production of the film, shot in 1985 at Ayios Sozomenos, an ethnically mixed village near what had, by then, been established for ten years as the Green Line. The village, with a majority Turkish-Cypriot population, had seen two incidents of violent conflict between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots: one in 1958, during the Greek-Cypriot independence campaign in which Turkish Cypriots were targeted; and another in 1964, during episodes of violence between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots that forced many of the latter into enclaves. The village was abandoned entirely in 1974 after it was bombed by the Turkish air force. The film takes that history of conflict as its implicit premise. It follows a woman and her young daughter as they travel from their city to an unnamed abandoned village. Slowly, whimsically, they explore its crumbling houses and their rubble yards, their stairwells overgrown with brush, their dusty rooms full of broken furniture, piles of books, scraps of clothing, old photographs, forsaken belongings of all description. Gradually, other former residents of the village arrive on foot and gather for a feast in the village center as, one after another, they narrate in voice-over their memories of leaving the village in the summer of 1974. Their stories are intercut with long sequences of landscapes and ruins, and the forms of life that flourish in them: birds, flowers, insects, weeds. Occasionally, the mother speaks in voice-over to her child, inviting her to entertain the possibility of such a return to their village, such a reunion with their lost neighbors—thus positioning the action of the film as an act of imagination, a dream, or a vision (orama). At the end of the film, the audience was slow to ask questions. Chrysanthou introduced Mahan, a former resident of Ayios Sozomenos who was present at

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the screening, and who appeared in the film with her son, narrating at length (in Greek) her flight from the village after the bombings in 1974. A woman in the audience asked her, in Greek, about the neighborliness and the love between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots that Mahan had experienced in her village. Had she met with any of her old neighbors since they left? Mahan said that she did see a few of them, now and then. Chrysanthou explained that, while Mahan had been born and raised in Ayios Sozomenos, she had married in Dali, the next village over, on the south side of the Green Line. Hers was one of the very few Turkish-Cypriot families to stay in the south after the division in 1974. Mahan explained to the audience, in Greek, why they had stayed: “My husband said, ‘I’ve never done anything to anyone, this is our home, why should we leave?’” She was very afraid for her children, who were ill and close to death when the evacuation took place, and so they stayed with her father in Limassol, and raised their children there. She repeated some of the story she had told in the film, crediting her Greek-Cypriot neighbors for saving her and her children’s lives at several points after the bombings—but insisting, as well, on how terrifying the experience had been for Turkish Cypriots in mixed villages. Chrysanthou interjected: “Imagine Mahan, a Turkish Cypriot living in the south, going on camera saying these things in 1985! Now it seems innocent, but then, it was very dangerous.” He told the audience that he himself had received threats when the film was made, and guessed he had “gotten away with it” only because it was accepted at the Berlin film festival, which gave him some visibility and protection. The PIO in the south had co-produced the film, but once it was made, Chrysanthou said, PIO officials told him they were ashamed of it; the cultural institutions of the Republic of Cyprus had never acknowledged the film. Another audience member asked Chrysanthou why he had chosen to depict the conflict in Cyprus so indirectly. He said he had first conceived the film in a poetic form, through the figure of Adamantios Diamantis, a painter from the village “who has captured so much of Cypriot life in his paintings,” and whose massive multi-panel works, The World of Cyprus (1967–72) and When the World of Cyprus First Heard the Bad News (1975), are featured in the opening sequence and the credit sequence. Chrysanthou told us he had imagined the film unfolding through Diamantis’ return to the village ten years after he and all the residents had left; summoned by his presence there, his fellow villagers would slowly, one by one, return to meet him from the remote corners of Cyprus to which they had fled in 1974. Diamantis himself had, however, declined



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to participate in the film, so Chrysanthou imagined in his place a mother returning to the village and gathering the others around her, and introducing to them her daughter, born elsewhere, in the south, entirely cut off from the Turkish-Cypriot side. Chrysanthou intended the mother’s voice-over as a long lullaby that would send the young daughter into a dream as her mother put her to bed. “This is an imaginary return,” Chrysanthou explained. “It’s the mother’s imagination; it’s not meant to be ‘documentary.’” And yet the film had a reality-effect that tied this imaginary return to the real world, and precluded the film’s designation as strictly either fiction or documentary. The characters in the film were actual former residents of the village, to which they actually returned for the making of the film; the memories of leaving the village in 1974 that they recount in the film were, Chrysanthou said, “truthful.” He spoke of the film’s “reality” by way of the photographic motif, referring to a sequence in which the mother flips through a photo album that she finds in an abandoned house in the village. Chrysanthou described the contents of the album as “photographs of the past,” which he had found in archives in London and in Cyprus. In the sequence, the mother turns page after page, revealing a series of black-and-white images: an archeological excavation in the region, dated 1933; some construction at the village church, dated 1943; a large extended family; the town football team; a wedding couple; several older couples, both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot; all the men of the village gathered for a funeral. Chrysanthou explained that, as the mother turns the pages of the album, she comes across a few photographs that are not yet fixed to pages. These images, he said, depict events that had just happened in real time, “which are not yet part of the past”—for example, an image of a famous musician who visited Cyprus in 1984, and another of Chrysanthou himself during the film shoot at Ayios Sozomenos. He intended the unfixedness of these recent images in the album to illustrate the process of memory-making and the ongoing nature of that process, both before and after the events that were the overt subject of the film. Chrysanthou talked, in this light, about the footage of events in 1964 that he reproduced in the film. This footage, which he found in the PIO archives, was not taken from the village itself but elsewhere in Cyprus—yet it stood in, he said, for what happened in the village in 1964. Black-and-white and color film clips, mostly newsreel, show people running down the streets of Nicosia in a panic; men crawling across fields with rifles; men shot dead, their bodies lying on the floors of houses while others stand around aimlessly; men being

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arrested; wounded men being taken away in ambulances; UN soldiers patrolling village streets; city neighborhoods on fire; airplanes overhead; villagers hugging and kissing their neighbors goodbye as they board buses; buses full of people driving off; graves being dug; coffins in a hearse driving down a city street; women walking out of villages with their children, laden with their belongings; women in black, wailing and holding photographs of their missing relatives up to the cameras. That sequence, starting almost 52 minutes into the film, marks the beginning of the film’s ending, but recalls as its direct referent an earlier scene shot in the village’s overgrown graveyard. In that earlier scene, we see two graves of Turkish Cypriots, dated March 10, 1964; and then a whole row of graves culminating in a group headstone naming six Greek Cypriots, dedicated to “all those lost on February 6, 1964.” The relationship between these two earlier sequences and the later archival sequence determines 1964 as the “reality” of the film: not only the violence and death at the heart of the conflict in Cyprus, but also the object of the film’s documentary ambitions. The murders of villagers in 1964 are positioned here as the past of the events of 1974—the coup, the invasion, and the evacuation of Ayios Sozomenos—which are, themselves, positioned by the villagers as the past of this film as they recount, in 1985, their experiences of those events ten years later. What Chrysanthou described as the “poetic form” of the film—the fluid but patterned flow of the past into the present, and the present into the past—counts on a documentary framework for its archival material. “Using real images like this is more beautiful,” he told the audience at the screening. “It works better with the poetic form of the film, to show the past through these images.” The poetic potential of the documentary archive has been mined as well by another Cypriot artist, Alev Adil, positioned in the Turkish-Cypriot diaspora in Great Britain. A poet and a theorist of literature and technology, Adil also works with photography and film to address the experience of conflict in Cyprus. Her collection, “An Architecture of Forgetting: Journeys in the Dead Zone,” produced between 2006 and 2008, includes the short film, “A Small Forgotten War,” and two photographic series, “Dead Zone” and “Havana/Levkosha,” which concatenate present-day images of divided Nicosia in a virtual walk through the city. She has also incorporated film footage of Cyprus in a series of multi-media pieces performed in Nicosia in the last several years. One of these, “Memory in the Dead Zone,” which Adil performed at Sidestreets in April 2011 and at the Artos Foundation in March 2012, features stock footage of the war from official archives in the north, as well as home video footage of family gatherings,



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children playing, friends walking down a calm neighborhood street. The juxtaposition of such domestic scenes from the lives of strangers with scenes of mass violence that have so insistently formed the public imagination of the war introduces unease into the domestic scenes, and likewise imbues the war footage with an uncanny intimacy. Adil’s performance of this work at the Artos Foundation in 2012 was part of the collective event, “Vivid Poetry: Allios,” featuring works by Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot poets. The main performance space and the overflow room were packed with an audience of at least a hundred people: artists and art students, actors, journalists, scholars, writers, and readers. Film footage, distorted and superimposed, was projected on a screen behind Adil as she read two poems. After the performance, she described the piece as an attempt to weave together the political and the auto-ethnographic, drawing from her childhood in an enclave in the north, her memories of the war and its aftermath in divided Nicosia. She explained that she did not use much material from official archives, but rather focused on home videos that she had borrowed from a friend’s personal archive. Originally on Super 8 film, the footage was converted to low-quality video, which was not only grainy and overly colorsaturated but also an incompatible aspect ratio, cutting off the top and side edges of the original frame (along with people’s heads). The footage was digitized and transferred to DVDs, and then copied again by Adil. She said she deliberately chose the worst quality video segments, and put it through the most damaging processes of transfer, in order to emphasize the age, texture, and plasticity of the material. She also chose what she called “the most political” footage from this private, domestic source—such as the sequence of a young man holding up a piece of the wall from his house with a bullet hole in it, and smiling into the camera. By design, this material resonated with the generic home videos and family photographs employed in many Cypriot documentary films to construct a nostalgic narrative of peacetime prior to the war—but its visual distortion precluded its assimilation to that narrative, and its departure from stock scenes of peaceful family life to include evidence of collective violence within the domestic scene illustrated the inherently political nature of home.

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Conclusion The documentary archive in Cypriot film is a limited resource, as yet. Beyond the political and practical restrictions on access to state and personal archives, the repertoire of images and footage transferred from those archives to documentary films has largely been conventional and repetitive. Family photographs and wedding portraits, for instance, appear in almost every documentary film on the conflict. These images elicit an affective reaction based not necessarily in viewers’ own family relationships—which might describe a broader and more complex array of emotions—but rather in a social consensus on the family as a vital object of emotional and social investment in Cyprus. The loss of family members in the conflict, or the rupture of family life caused by displacement, stand as generic reckonings of the toll taken on Cypriots generally by the conflict, regardless of whether a particular individual experienced them personally. In this sense, the conventional depictions of family that documentary films present, in the form of archival photographs and home video footage, contain a premeditated affective charge that is released in the viewing of the films—a gratification of expectations that perhaps accounts for some of the appeal of these films to Cypriot audiences. Stock footage from the war—scenes of bombers, soldiers, ambulances, refugees fleeing their villages and mourning the loss of loved ones—is equally conventional in Cypriot documentary film. But the war materials may provoke a different affective reaction in viewers. At the screenings I attended, audiences were composed largely of “the usual suspects:” Cypriots of the war and post-war generations with aspirations to a political settlement and a multi-communal society. Many of these viewers came to film screenings informed by their own projects of cultural production: research, writing, theater, art. Their historical knowledge of the conflict was extensive but second-hand; their expertise lay in representation. They engaged these documentary films in the mode of what Marianne Hirsch calls “postmemory”—a mode of recognition and recollection “distinguished from memory by generational distance and from history by deeply personal connection” (1997: 22). However, a number of older Cypriots also frequently attended these film screenings: people who had lived through the events of the 1960s and 1970s as adults, and who thus came to documentary films about the conflict with their own direct and vivid memories. These viewers perhaps more easily identified with the subjects of the films, people like them who were being interviewed about their experiences of the conflict. In the



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discussions that followed screenings, these audience members often spoke of how sequences in a film had stirred their memories: they named the village or city street shown bombed out or burning in archival footage; they recognized the sound of Makarios’ voice trembling on the radio after the coup; they recalled what it was like to live in an enclave, or to run from the army, leaving their belongings behind. They took the occasion of a film screening to tell their own stories about leaving their villages, to express the warmth they felt toward their former neighbors and their sadness at losing them, to vent their frustration and anger at the corruption and incompetence of their political leaders after the war. These stories, related to an audience largely of younger Cypriots who did not share those experiences, transformed these subjects of memory into subjects of history. Public screenings of documentary films in Cyprus have formed a new social space where this inter-generational and inter-communal encounter and reckoning with the past can happen. But the affective dynamics of identification and catharsis in these encounters may work to deflect examination of the documentary archive as a source of evidence—a question I heard discussed only once at a screening (Chrysanthou’s A Detail in Cyprus). Contemporary documentary films about the conflict in Cyprus clearly aim to expose historical secrets, to highlight neglected dimensions of the conflict, to provoke new reflections on personal and social responsibility for violence and division. In their aspiration to transparency, opening, and pluralism, these films have assembled a “believable public language of truth,” as John Tagg (2009: xxxiii) describes documentary—a language to displace the murky, hermetic, biased representations of the conflict in earlier nationalist films. On the other hand, the archival material in these films—conventional and repetitive sequences of family life and violent conflict—depict only a partial reality, contingently captured on film under conditions unknown to the filmmakers putting them to use so many years later. The structure of quotation from the archive in these films thus invisibly reproduces the original framing of people and events, rousing contemporary audience reactions within that frame. If documentary film in Cyprus has radical potential, it resides in film’s address to all that stands outside the frame, and in what remains in the archives, as yet unseen.

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Works cited Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. [1975] 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by D. Polan. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1995. Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression. Translated by E. Prenowitz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hirsch, Marianne. 1997. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kleanthous, Alexis. 2005. O Kypriakos Kinimatografos (Cypriot Cinema), 1962–2005. Athens: Aigokeros. MacDougall, David. 1994. “Films of Memory.” In Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from V.A.R., 1990–1994, edited by Lucien Taylor, 260–70. New York: Routledge. Osthoff, Simone. 2009. Performing the Archive: The Transformation of the Archive in Contemporary Art from Repository of Documents to Art Medium. New York: Atropos. Tagg, John. 2009. The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Notes 1 In his essay, “Films of Memory,” David MacDougall (1994: 261, 265) reflects on the prevalence in “current social and political documentaries” of this “simple format,” which pairs interview testimony with unrelated archival materials “presented quite illegitimately as the memories of the speaker.” 2 Only a handful of Cypriot documentary feature films about the conflict were produced in the years after the war in 1974, although many documentaries were made for television during this period. The feature films include those by Michael Cacoyannis and Andreas Pantzis discussed in this chapter, as well as Cyprus ’74 (Kypros ’74) by Markos Siapanis (1974), Cyprus Betrayed (Etsi Prodothike i Kypros) by Giorgos Filis (1975), Cyprus, the Other Reality (Kypros, i Alli Pragmatikotita) by Lambros Papademetrakis and Thekla Kittou (1976), and Makarios, the Long March (Makarios, i Megali Poria) by Evangelos Ioannides (1977). See Kleanthous 2005 for a thorough catalogue. 3 In Greek, Ραδιοφωνικό Ίδρυμα Κύπρου (Radiofoniko Idryma Kyprou [RIK]); in Turkish, Kıbrıs Radyo Yayın Kurumu (KRYK). 4 The UNDP initiated a “peace-building project” in Cyprus in 2005 to “strengthen the capacities of Cypriots to actively participate in reconciliation” (see www. undp-act.org/). In a partnership with USAID extending through 2013, the UNDP



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has been funding civil society organizations, activists, and leaders from “both communities” (i.e. Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities) in their efforts to develop bi-communal cooperation toward political and social change. 5 The Festival of the Green Line in 2010 and 2011 was curated by Chrysanthou and supported financially by the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus. 6 Angastiniotis’ short documentary film, Memory, about a Turkish-Cypriot man and a Greek-Cypriot man who fought in Lekfa on opposite sides of the war in 1974, and who met again and became friends and peace activists thirty years later, was screened at Cine Studio (University of Nicosia) on October 11, 2011.

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Aesthetics, Narratives, and Politics in GreekCypriot Films: 1960–1974 Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert and Nicos Philippou

Introduction This chapter deals with what Higson (1989) termed an “inward-looking” process of exploring national cinemas. This inward-looking process juxtaposes cinema not with other national cinemas, but with the other economies and cultures that coexist with the cinema production of a nation and especially other lens-based media such as still photography. The period of 1960–74 was selected because it is framed by two of the most important political events that marked the modern history of Cyprus: Cyprus’ independence from Great Britain in 1960 and the 1974 Turkish invasion. During this brief period of time, Cypriot cinema made its first steps and within its narrative and form we can observe the concerns and priorities of the new republic. Two forces seem to have marked the Republic of Cyprus during its formative years and are reflected in the cinematography and photography of the period: (a) the struggle to define “Cypriotness” and establish its characteristics; and (b) sociocultural changes due to rapid economic development and tourism. The first force has to do with Cyprus’ past and the struggle to define its current identity, the latter with Cyprus’ economic development and its future. These two forces developed side-by-side and shaped the dilemmas of the period: traditional values as opposed to economic development and modernization; the desire to cling onto a rural identity and its associated nostalgia as opposed to urbanization and the development of beach resorts; romanticizing the past as opposed to looking toward the future. Before we open our main discussion we would like to note that terms like modern, tradition (and traditional), authentic, and pure refer to the emic meanings (i.e. how these were used by locals). These terms have been widely

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critiqued in the social sciences as analytical categories for many reasons, beyond the scope of this chapter. Hence, they should be treated as accompanied by invisible quotation marks. Also, this chapter focuses exclusively on Greek Cypriots who were in control of the Republic of Cyprus, given that for most of this period Turkish Cypriots lived in enclaves, due to the ethnic conflict that erupted in 1963, and did not produce any feature films. The first steps of Greek-Cypriot cinema took place alongside the first steps of the new Republic of Cyprus. Two years after Cyprus’ independence in 1960 the first short films, Cyprus, Where It was Ordained for Me (Kypron, ou m’ Ethespisen) and The Root (I Riza), were released, while the first feature film, Loves and Sorrows (Agapes tzai Kaimoi) followed shortly after in 1965 (Kleanthous 2005). During the 1960s, poor conditions prevailed in film production in Cyprus. Ninos Fenek Mikelides, the director of Cyprus, Where It was Ordained for Me (1962) states: There were no workshops, no studios, not even cameramen. The only people who were involved in cinema were the cameramen of Cypriot state television (CyBC) who were filming exclusively documentaries—usually folkloric or touristic—for Cypriot audiences. (Kleanthous 2005: 5)

Since the creators of the first films had experience with folkloric and touristic documentaries, it comes as no surprise that the films we examine in this chapter view Cyprus as a folk nostalgic paradise or alternatively as a modern tourist destination. Furthermore, due to the lack of studios and other filming infrastructure, most of the films shot between 1960 and 1974 use the Cypriot landscape to the full. As we will see, depending on how Cyprus was viewed, the Cypriot landscape was either presented as pure, ideal, and inhabited by traditional village types or alternatively as the backdrop for a beautiful resort inhabited by modern, sexy Aphrodites and their suitors. In this chapter we examine four key films that we feel marked the period. The four films are: Loves and Sorrows (Agapes tzai Kaimoi, Giorgos Filis 1965), The Last Kiss (To Teleutaio Fili, Giorgos Filis, 1970), Money, Mischievous (O Paras o Maskaras, Vangelis Oikonomides 1969), and Vacation in Our Cyprus (Diakopes stin Kypro Mas, Orestis Laskos 1971). In a parallel analysis we look at the work of photographers Takis Demetriades, Jack Iacovides, and John Hinde. Film and photography will help us see how both tourism and the search for an ethnonational identity influenced the content, form, and aesthetics of both visual forms of the period.



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Film and photography are usually separated in cultural studies analysis even though this separation is an artificial one. According to Willis (1995), “film has entered into the humanities via literature and photography via art history. There has been a disciplinary separation that is at odds with their interconnection as material culture forms” (78). Despite this disciplinary separation, still and moving images are interconnected since they echo and refer to each other. For example, films dealing with a past era are dependent on photography, drawings, and paintings for the reconstruction of the scenery, costumes, and decorations (Willis 1995). Also, the representations and aesthetics of iconic paintings or photographs have influenced many filmmakers and cinematographers (Smith 2005). Very importantly, the two media are based on the same fundamental technologies, principles, and methods and are both perceived to have a unique relationship with reality. Furthermore, both visual forms help define a sense of place and ethnonational identity. Given the dearth of films produced during this period, the comparison with photography, especially through their similarities, can render the implicit ideology guiding filmmaking (and photography) visible and render their visual language explicit. In Cyprus, the bond between photography and film is especially strong due to the fact that the creators of the films produced during 1960–74 usually have a dual identity as photographers and cinematographers. Most directors and cinematographers at the time were employed by Cypriot state television,1 the only television channel at the time. CyBC required its cinematographers to have some qualification in photography (personal communication with Takis Demetriades, March 2013) and managed to employ some of the most prominent photographers on the island: Reno Wideson, George Lanitis, and Takis Demetriades. As a matter of fact, Wideson recruited Lanitis as his cinematographer along with another young Cypriot called Unal to form state television’s film unit, which Demetriades later joined. Since the roles of photographer and cinematographer were merged in many cases, the photographs and films of the period, which were produced by Greek Cypriots, shared similar content and aesthetics.

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Aesthetics, politics, and national identity Politics, narratives, and aesthetics are so interwoven that it is difficult to separate one from the other. When examining film and photography production of the period it becomes apparent that the politics of seeing, that is, the way Cyprus was perceived and its future imagined, has influenced their form. Choices of subject matter and aesthetic decisions are essentially political decisions even though, more often than not, their creators do not perceive them as such. Costas Farmakas, the producer and cameraman of the first Greek-Cypriot comedy, told us: The film Money, Mischievous had no political references. I want to believe that the first movies of Filis also had no political references. Our films were influenced by Greek movies; especially comedies of the “Veggos”2 type and romantic movies with love as a central theme. (Personal communication, February 2013)

As we argue later, however, national culture and identity are reflected in, as well as constructed through, movies even without the conscious intention of their creators. As Monaco (2009) put it: Historians argue whether the movies simply reflected the national culture that already existed or whether they produced a fantasy of their own that eventually came to be accepted as real. In a sense, the point is moot. No doubt the writers, producers, directors, and technicians who worked in the large studio factories during the great age of Hollywood were simply transferring material they had picked up in ‘real life’ to the screen. No doubt, too, even if those materials weren’t consciously distorted towards political ends, the very fact that the movies amplified certain aspects of our culture and attenuated others had a profound effect. (291)

As in the case of Hollywood, so in the case of Cyprus, “real life” influenced the subject matter and aesthetics of early Greek-Cypriot film, but at the same time certain cultures were highlighted while others, such as minority cultures, were distorted or ignored. For example, tourism, a phenomenon which had dramatic economic and sociocultural effects on Cyprus after 1960, left its mark on some of the films of the period. This effect is evident in the films Money, Mischievous (1969) and Vacation in Our Cyprus (1971). On the other hand, the four films we examine do not have any explicit references to current political events, even though the



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1960s were marked by bitter inter-communal conflicts between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. Actually, these specific films seem to go out of their way to exclude the Turkish-Cypriot presence by overemphasizing the Greek heritage of the island. After all, “the search for a stable and coherent national identity can only be successful at the expense of repressing internal differences, tensions and contradictions—differences of class, race, gender, region, etc.” (Higson 1989: 43). The lack of direct political reference and visual evidence of the presence of different cultures, as well as the choice to turn to Greek cinema for inspiration, are themselves implicit political decisions tied up with (and suggestive of) the perceptions and aspirations of Greek Cypriots.

Pastoral landscapes, village life, nostalgia, and purity Did the films produced right after the 1960 independence of the island help define Greek-Cypriot ethnonational consciousness? Anderson (1983) defines a nation as an imagined community which is limited to a specific place and whose members share a common sense of belonging. National identity is then the experience of belonging to a community which shares specific traditions, rituals, and political orientation. There is a large debate regarding the definition of national cinema and its value (Higson 1989). Whether or not we can talk about a purely Cypriot—or better Greek-Cypriot—cinema, it is clear that in their attempt to define a national cinema, researchers usually focus on films which “narrate the nation as just this finite, limited space, inhabited by a tightly coherent and unified community, closed off to other identities besides national identity” (Higson 2005: 66). The following section looks at the films of Giorgos Filis and the photographs of Takis Demetriades, which implicitly attempted to create a sense of (Greek) Cypriotness by precisely emphasizing a closely unified community in a specific, by default rural, environment.

Giorgos Filis’ bucolic vraka dramas and Takis Demetriades’ romantic lens During the period 1960–74 the Greek-Cypriot director Giorgos Filis worked on two feature films which are aesthetically and thematically alike: Loves and

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Sorrows (Agapes tzai Kaimoi 1965) and The Last Kiss (To Teleutaio Fili 1970). Both films present a common Greek-Cypriot past set in the miniature world of a traditional village. The emphasis is on the common way of life, language, traditions, rituals, and religion which make up the imagined community of Greek Cypriots. Alternative points of view, for example of the Turkish or Armenian communities, are not presented. Therefore, the imagined community of a nation, as imagined by Greek Cypriots, is one that excludes all other cultures which existed on the island, other than Greek. Moreover, any signs of modernity are excluded. This is very much in line with the local romantic photographic tradition and is a symptom of what Argyrou (1996) calls the “Sisyphus syndrome,” a form of denial through which Cypriot aspirations to modernity are refuted. The notion of the West, and by extension modernity, is presented by Argyrou, here, as a technology of power monopolized by a set, or block, of nations. Argyrou (1996) explains: In the case of Cyprus, circumstances, primarily a relatively high living standard, call for the deployment of two specific techniques of denial—accusations of imitation and loss of local character. In the former case, the West essentializes itself as the only true source of legitimate culture so that the practical manifestations of Cypriot claims to modernity seem a poor version of the “original”. In the second case, the procedure is reversed. Cypriot culture is itself reified by being endowed with certain essential characteristics. In this way, it is frozen in time, and any changes that may occur appear as a loss of “true” identity. (177–8)

Thus, Cypriot modernity cannot be acknowledged, presented, or negotiated within a context of constructing and celebrating a sense of “true” and “authentic” Cypriotness. Giorgos Filis is the first Greek-Cypriot director to direct a feature film in Cyprus (Kleanthous 2005). Loves and Sorrows is a bucolic drama set in a traditional Cypriot village. The film attempts to construct a grand visual narrative of a lost way of living which is authentically Cypriot. At every opportunity we are confronted with beautiful rural landscapes and ruins of an ancient past, with traditional costumes, games, songs, and, often, unnecessarily long traditional dances. The actors talk in stylized rhythmic Greek-Cypriot dialect that rhymes. The Last Kiss is another bucolic drama, but this time the narrative is less awkward and the actors do not communicate in rhymes. Interestingly, the dialogue this time is in standard modern Greek instead of in the Greek-Cypriot dialect. Perhaps the desire to distribute the film in Greece as well as Cyprus played a role in this decision.



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Overall, both films present village life as harmonious, innocent, apolitical, and carefree. This idealized view of “pre-modern” rural life has as its key characters the noble villager and the well-behaved maid who will nevertheless go against the wishes of her parents for love. Indeed, the only conflict that drives both films is the well-tested formula of love between young men and women from different social classes. In Loves and Sorrows, a rich man has two daughters. The first daughter is in love with one man while she has been “promised” by her parents to another man. The second daughter is in love with a poor worker well below her social standing. The father does everything he can to reason with his daughters and show them the “right” way but in the end love prevails. Similarly, in The Last Kiss two families that have been in conflict for years because of a past dispute agree to marry their unborn children in order to put an end to the ongoing vendetta. However, when the children reach adulthood things do not go as smoothly as imagined by the parents. The rich daughter falls in love with a poor shepherd who works for her father and who saved her from being eaten by wolves. When she finds out that she is getting married, she secretly runs off one night to find her beloved shepherd. However, when she discovers that her once handsome shepherd lost one eye in his effort to save her she runs back to her parents’ house scared and confused. The next day, the unaware father forces the shepherd to kill his favorite sheep for his daughter’s wedding. The shepherd, realizing that his beloved one has abandoned him, loses his mind. He kills the sheep, wears its bell around his neck and runs away into the wilderness. In one scene, we see him contemplating jumping from the top of a cliff in order to end his life. However, his beloved appears and saves him. Together, they visit a chapel, pray, and miraculously his eye heals. After spending some time together, the father agrees to marry them and a long wedding ceremony follows. Alas, when the couple finds itself alone in their bedroom and are kissing passionately, the film cuts back to the crazed shepherd with the bell around his neck ready to jump off the steep cliff. This time there is no one to save him. This tragic end comes as a surprise since it takes place during the last three minutes of the film and there is no indication that the viewer was watching a 20-minute-long dream sequence before that. Filis insists on recording with documentary precision some of the traditions of the Cypriot village, as was indeed common with folklorists of the period, even at the expense of the film’s narrative. Of particular interest is the dream sequence in the film Loves and Sorrows of a traditional wedding ceremony,

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a custom that was rapidly disappearing in the cities at the time the film was released (see Figure 2.1). Even though the wedding scene is merely a dream, it is the only part of the film that was shot in color and it lasts 29 minutes, about one third of the entire film. Its duration is extremely long for a dream sequence and has a disorienting effect on the viewer. Truer to a documentary than a dream, the whole traditional wedding process unfolds step by step: the sewing of the bed, the dressing and shaving of the groom, the dressing of the bride, the violin procession to the church, the church blessing, women’s dances, the preparation of the wedding feast, the feast itself, men’s dances, and the couple’s dance. The last scene of this sequence takes place in the newlyweds’ bedroom where they are finally left alone. The bride disappears into thin air and the “groom” wakes up only to realize that it was all a dream. Traditional Cypriot weddings (and dream sequences) are a favorite subject for Filis. Just two years before Loves and Sorrows he filmed a theatre presentation of a Cypriot wedding (Shiafkalis 1995). Furthermore, as already mentioned, The Last Kiss also contains a long traditional wedding scene as part of a dream sequence. Unless one is an expert on Cypriot folk costumes, there are no specific clues as to when the story in Love and Sorrows takes place. There are no modern buildings, and no references to political events or historical figures. The only technological reference is a photographer with his bulky camera on a tripod, which places the story sometime at the end of the nineteenth or beginning of

Figure 2.1  Wedding scene, Loves and Sorrows, 1965



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the twentieth century. The absence of other historical or political events makes the viewer feel that this story could have taken place at any time in the Cypriot past. In a sense, the past is presented as continuous, common and unchanging. Interestingly, the first feature film produced in Greece, Golfo (1914/15, now lost) was also a folk costume rural drama. According to Karalis (2012) Golfo: inaugurated the characteristic genre of bucolic fustanella dramas, which maintained its appeal for many decades through its idealization of rural space and the pre-urban time of communal village innocence. Its story was derived from a popular love idyll in traditional rhyming verse written for the theatre by Spyridon Peresiadis in 1893. (8)

Love and Sorrows, with its rhyming verse, folk costumes, and rural setting, appears very similar to its Greek counterpart. However, instead of inaugurating the bucolic fustanella (Greek traditional male garment) drama, it promoted the bucolic vraka (Cypriot traditional male garment) drama. Bucolic dramas became very popular in Greece for decades and they “reminded audiences of their origins by extolling the virtues of the ‘true nation,’ monumentalized by the symbolic ethnicity of their ‘authentic’ costume” (Karalis 2012: 30). Filis was looking at Greece for inspiration (personal communication with his colleague, Costas Farmakas) so he was likely familiar with such films. Bucolic dramas, or vraka dramas, in film appeared at a time when Greek Cypriots needed to define themselves most. By focusing on a pre-modern rural environment with Cypriot costumes, traditions, and rituals, it provided Greek Cypriots with the visual representations they needed to construct their sense of identity. These visuals are in line with other visual arts and especially the photography of the time. A comparison with the “romantic school” of Greek-Cypriot photography reinforces the major observations made above. A romantic school of GreekCypriot photography produced by local photographers emerged in the 1950s and grew along with the new independent state in the 1960s. The product of this school constructs an image of Cyprus that is both romantic and reductive. It brings to the fore visual signs of an unspoiled nature and culture and tends to ignore any signs of modernity that might reduce the intensity of the promise for an authentic image of Cyprus. One of the most prominent photographers and cinematographers of the period and who best represents the romantic school of Cypriot photography is Takis Demetriades. Demetriades was trained as a

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photographer and cinematographer and worked for state television from 1965 to 1995. While he worked for CyBC, he is best known for his photographic work, which was publicized mainly through book publications. It is not just a coincidence that the product of the local romantic school of photography is ideologically and aesthetically closely related to its respective schools of painting, poetry, literature and, of course, film. For example, the first generation of Greek-Cypriot painters who are considered the “fathers” of GreekCypriot painting, such as Adamantios Diamantis, Georgios Pol. Georgiou and Michael Kassialos, emphasized rural life, picturesque villages, men wearing vrakes sitting in traditional coffee shops or working in the fields, and in general the Cypriot customs and traditions. A painting by Kassialos or Diamantis could have easily served as inspiration for a Filis film or a Demetriades photograph. As a matter of fact, Demetriades knew Adamantios Diamantis3 as a boy and was greatly influenced by the painter. Diamantis lived next door to Demetriades and let the young boy sit with him while he was painting (personal communication with Demetriades, March 2013). Rigid gender roles appear to be common in Diamantis’ paintings, Demetriades’ photographs and Filis’ films. Diamantis’ (2002) description of the characters in his 17.5-meter-long painting, The World of Cyprus (1967–72) can effectively describe these gender roles: In their communal gatherings solemn senators, priests and men, the men of Cyprus. They govern. The women are in the margin, not humbled, but always obedient, ruling over their own domain with the great strength of the mother, always vital and dominant. (82)

Likewise, Filis’ men are the decision makers, the ones with a strong public life which revolves around the coffee shop life. Women occupy the domain of the home patiently waiting to be married or be involved in childcare. A few things need to be said here about both gender and the coffee house. And by doing so inevitably what comes out in sharp relief is the awkward relationship these creators had with Cypriot modernity and tradition. Let us first remember that they had produced their main body of work in the period between 1960 and 1974. It has been stated already that in Filis’ films the only clear indicator of time is the bulky late nineteenth-century camera of the traveling photographer in Loves and Sorrows. This is of course fiction and thus the creator consciously places his story at a specific time in the past, pre-modern Cyprus, which he constructs according to his vision of what that would be like.



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With Diamantis things are quite different. He names numerous characters in his monumental The World of Cyprus, whom he met and had the opportunity to sketch their likenesses. “Papayiorkis from Assia,” “Theonitsa,” and “Kosmas from Lysi,” then, despite the fact that they resemble in appearance characters from a Filis film, are not nineteenth-century characters but Diamantis’ contemporaries. Demetriades, being a sort of poetic documentary photographer, was also depicting his contemporaries. But, as in Diamantis’ painting, his characters look like pre-modern Cypriots and they were selected because of that. We will return to Demetriades further on. What needs to be stressed here, though, is that the characters in Filis, Diamantis, and Demetriades, whether constructed or selected, look like pre-modern, archetypal Cypriots unaffected by the various modernizing movements that were reshaping Cyprus. What all three creators have done was to skip Cypriot modernity by ignoring fundamental social, political, and cultural changes and conflicts that have taken place in the meantime. Let us take the coffee house for instance. If we take nineteenth-century travelers’ accounts at face value—in this case that of the celebrated British photographer John Thomson—then a visitor to a café in a central location in Famagusta in 1878 would observe idleness, apathy, and silence “for [its patrons] have long ago exhausted all the subjects of conversation” (Thomson 1985: 52). By the time our three creators were constructing their worlds of Cyprus, the coffee house had become a platform where nationalism would be preached, where working class subcultures would emerge, where the Left would organize itself, and where it would eventually confront the Right. It is, also, where Cypriots would first come to consume media content, where they would watch performances by traveling theater groups and in some cases cinema projections (Panayiotou 2006; Philippou 2007, 2010b). In other words the coffee house would be a space within which Cypriots would experience modernity and would be anything but “silent.” And its walls would not be bare and muted but busy and loud, adorned by political paraphernalia and other forms of modernist material culture that our romantic and tradition-loving creators here would shy away from. We turn now to gender to support the argument further. We stated earlier that women are cast in Diamantis and Filis as being obedient, passive, and dependent. But, as Loizos (2001) reports, in the period between 1878 to 1955 Cypriot society had undergone significant structural changes with a particular impact on relations of authority. Loizos (2001) highlights an education and

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literacy boom in the period from which both sexes benefited and claims that this helped challenge traditional authorities of all sorts and provided opportunities for women’s emancipation. He sums up his account of these structural changes thus: So a series of challenges take place within our period. The British displace the Ottomans and challenge the Church. Sons challenge fathers. Workers challenge employers. Communism and socialism challenge the Church and its traditional leadership in both ethical and political life. Women challenge men, at first more by their educational and occupational achievements, then by direct confrontation. But later as militant Greek Cypriots came to challenge the legitimacy of British colonial rule, then those schoolgirls mobilised by EOKA came to confront the men of the British security forces. (138)

In Loizos’ account the women of Cyprus come across as anything but obedient and quiet. Let us now return to Takis Demetriades and his most recent photography book, which is entitled The World of Cyprus 1960–1974: Through the Lens of Takis Demetriades AFIAP (2006). Not surprisingly, the title of the book echoes Diamantis’ own The World of Cyprus. Furthermore, the book—as the title reveals—aspires to provide a comprehensive review of Cypriot society and culture during the period we are examining. The years in between 1960 and 1974 are presented as years of innocence. Demetriades’ Cyprus is visually purified and appears to be populated by old men and women, peasants, fishermen, and artisans that live in a pre-modern heaven much like Filis’ films. Modernity and an intensive urbanization process only feature rarely as a de-emphasized and out-of-focus, unavoidable annoyance. The political and ideological confrontations that divided the Greek-Cypriot community in the 1960s and 1970s and involved political assassinations and bomb attacks, culminating in the 1974 coup d’état, do not feature even in the distant background; nor does the violent confrontation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots (Philippou 2010a). The photograph in Figure 2.2 was taken in 1969 and shows one of Demetriades’ favorite subjects: a proud mustachioed man wearing a vraka. Under the image we read: “1969, Lefkara: What a pose by Grandfather! All the best to you! Cyprus needs men like you” (2006: 74). Demetriades has a special relationship with the Cypriot landscape and its “traditional people.” Members of his father’s family were refugees from Asia Minor and he still remembers his grandmother lamenting the loss of her motherland (personal communication, March 2013).



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This feeling of loss preoccupies the photographer to a large degree even today. He feels that the world of Cyprus that his parents, and later he, experienced is almost gone forever. Demetriades, who was working as a stage designer for the Cyprus Theatre Organization (from 1965 to 1970) at the time Filis was its director, remembers Filis as the director who always drove a Vespa scooter and wore a trench coat. In Filis’ work, he recognized a kindred passion for the Cypriot landscape and the island’s “traditional people” (personal communication with Demetriades, March 2013). Both photographer and director were struggling to preserve the appearance of this disappearing world, as folklorists of the period were also attempting to do (Azgin and Papadakis 1998). It is evident that representing Cyprus within such aesthetic and thematic parameters is a highly political stance. Demetriades himself is, nevertheless, reluctant to make such an explicit connection between his photographic output and his political views. In a personal interview he attributes his refusal to include any political references in his records of Cyprus to aesthetic reasons or “to a sense of beauty” (personal communication, November 2011). Katsaridou (2014) makes a thorough discussion of the so-called apolitical stance of the International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP) of which Demetriades is a member and co-founder of the Cyprus branch. Katsaridou (2014) links FIAP’s apolitical stance with ideas about the universality of photography and the focus on aesthetic considerations. As is the case with Filis’ emphasis on a common past, tradition, and purity, Demetriades, consciously or unconsciously, uses an idealized view of Cyprus as a tool for creating a common heritage through folklore. Modernity would be perceived as neither Greek nor Cypriot but as foreign, and thus, no claims of common heritage could be made through visual records of modern experience.

Tourism, modernity, the city, and the beach While Filis’ and Demetriades’ lenses were searching for representations of Cypriotness in the local customs and traditions of the country, some filmmakers and photographers constructed a sense of place through images of colorful tourist destinations and popular ancient Greek myths. Instead of highlighting only traditional, pure, vraka-clad men located in ideal bucolic landscapes, this parallel trend also highlighted contemporary, modern Aphrodites and their suitors within the realms of the busy city and the carefree beach.

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Figure 2.2  Takis Demetriades, 1969: 1969, Lefkara: What a pose by Grandfather! All the best to you! Cyprus needs men like you, courtesy of Takis Demetriades



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Tourism was a powerful force that changed the way Cyprus was viewed, both by foreigners and locals. Conveniently, the first phase of tourist development in Cyprus (1960–74) coincides with the film period under examination. Even though the island had been a destination for travelers for many years, it was only in 1960 that it emerged as a center for mass tourism (Ayres 2000). While in 1960 just 25,000 visitors were recorded per year, by 1973 the number rose to over 260,000 (Sharpley 2001). The photographers/architects Manuel Baud-Bovy and Aristea Tzanou were among the first to point out that the beach, and not the mountains, held the key to Cyprus’ tourism potential (Baud-Bovy, Tzanou, and Philippou 2008; Campagnolo 2012). Indeed, during the period 1960–74 Cyprus emerged as a prime Mediterranean summer destination with the coastal resorts of Kyrenia and Famagusta attracting the majority of the tourists (Sharpley 2003). This marked a shift from the traditional mountain resorts of Troodos, which were visited mainly by locals and the diminishing number of wealthy visitors from Egypt (Ayres 2000; Varnavas 2012). The space of the beach and the myth of Aphrodite became increasingly important when promoting Cyprus as a tourist destination and this is reflected in some of the films of the period. In the following sections we look at the films Money, Mischievous (O Paras o Maskaras 1969) and Vacation in Our Cyprus (Diakopes stin Kypro Mas 1971), as well as at the work of the photographers Jack Iacovides and John Hinde. In these films and photographs, tourism plays an important role. In the film Money, Mischievous and the photographs of Jack Iacovides, tourism is a source of internal contradictions. On the other hand, adopting an outsider’s point of view, the film Vacation in Our Cyprus and the postcards of John Hinde aim to attract tourists to the island and therefore adopt a more light and commercial approach.

Internal contradictions: Money, Mischievous and the photographs of Jack Iacovides Money, Mischievous was co-produced by FOTOCINE in Cyprus and SOFIA PRESS in Bulgaria in 1969.4 It was directed by the Greek director Vangelis Oikonoimides in a small village called Tseri which is now a suburb of Nicosia (Papageorgiou no date). At the time, the Cypriot producer and photographer of the film, Costas Farmakas, returned to Cyprus from London, where he had studied film advertising and commercial photography. Money, Mischievous,

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Farmakas’ first production, was a way to prove to the local and international market that his company, FOTOCINE, was capable of producing films. After this film, several companies from abroad collaborated with FOTOCINE on various international film projects (personal communication with Costas Farmakas, February 2013). Money, Mischievous is a comedy about a comic, poor, and lonely villager, Giorkoui (a diminutive version of the name George), who craves money, women, and respect (see Figure 2.3 for the original poster of the movie). Giorkoui discovers that he can fool tourists into buying fake Greek statues which he sells as originals. Easy, illegal money buys Giorkoui new clothes, an expensive car, the respect of his fellow villagers, sex with foreign women, and finally a new, more formal and respectable name: Mr. Giorgos. Tourism brought to the lead character, as it did to Cyprus, rapid economic development and a change in social standing. Selling the ancient Greek heritage of the island to tourists is not unlike what the new republic was doing in order to attract tourists. Promotional material for Cyprus mainly emphasized the island’s ancient Greek past and its natural beauties. As tourism became the dominant economic drive in Cyprus, it substantially influenced the sociocultural fabric of society. There were fears that exposure to foreign manners would have an effect on traditional family life or result in commercializing customs and traditions (Ayres 2000). In the film, Giorkoui is constantly seduced by sexy foreign women who were always available. Furthermore, his quick success leads him away from his true love, Ellou, who patiently waits for him. When his rival, Prokopis, finally discovers how Giorkoui makes his money, he notifies the police but subsequently follows his illegal footsteps by selling fake folk handicrafts. As soon as Giorkoui gets out of jail he returns to the village without any money. However, he does not resemble the old “Giorkoui” anymore. Still in his new clothes and with a new attitude, he is a changed man. Ellou, who is still in love with him, runs to him and they walk hand in hand across the village, happy and in love. Interestingly, Demetriades’ photograph of a man in a vraka (see Figure 2.2) was shot the same year as Money, Mischievous. Even though men in vrakes can be seen in the film, the lead characters and the majority of the villagers wear modern clothing. Indeed, the lead character of the film is not the pure, hardworking male Cypriot who dominates Filis’ films or Demetriades’ photographs. He is cunning, ambitious, and in constant search of cigarettes, money, and sex. According to the producer and photographer of the film, Costas Farmakas:



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Figure 2.3  Poster for Money, Mischievous, 1969, courtesy of FOTOCINE

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Giorkoui’s character steers away from the idealized version of the Cypriot male and reflects on the effects of tourism on the local population. Tourism brings wealth and a sense of modernity but at the same time it can seduce and corrupt. When asked whether or not the film was consciously emphasizing the effects of tourism in Cyprus, Farmakas responded: It was not the purpose of the film to critique anything and I feel that any critical references in the film are incidental. Because of the cooperation with SOFIA PRESS and the possibility of an international distribution, our aim was to document the authenticity of our homeland with humor, and to promote the special character of its residents. We wanted to promote tourism rather than critique it. (Personal communication, February 2013)

Even though one of the intentions of the producers was to promote tourism, the film is notable for its interest in some of the social contradictions of Cyprus at the time that preoccupied the locals: hard work vs. easy money, marriage with a “proper” Greek-Cypriot girl vs. sex with foreign women, tradition vs. modernity, and finally, the village vs. the city/beach. One of the apparent and more fascinating dichotomies to appear in the film is the difference between the traditional village life and that of the city or the beach. The city and the beach, in contrast to the village, appear to be places of modernity and corruption. Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, is shown to be bursting with commercial energy during the day and decadent nightclubs and cabarets (a local euphemism for brothels) during the night. Furthermore, the beach appears in the film twice and in both instances it is associated with sex. A beach scene at the beginning of the film, which also sets the mood for the rest of the film, is populated with a few foreign women in bikinis. One is suggestively caressing her body while talking to Giorkoui; another is not wearing a top. At some point the lead character stumbles upon a man lying on the sand and falls onto his legs. The man removes his hat and whispers to Giorkoui: “I like you.” Giorkoui immediately gets up and looks at the man in disbelief and then says: “But it’s women that I want … money and women.” The next scene cuts to the only coffee shop in Giorkoui’s village. The coffee shop is a male-dominated space where traditional characters sip their coffee and play backgammon. The



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contrast between the beach, the city, and the village space is huge. Curiously, the lead character seems to easily manipulate all three spaces while not feeling completely at ease in any of them. Similar contradictions are evident in the work of photographer Jack Iacovides, one of the most prominent twentieth-century Cypriot photographers. Iacovides was described as “a great lover of nature” and “intensely proud of his homeland Cyprus and its sights” (Somekh 2000, 44). Iacovides summarizes the way he feels about Cyprus with an introductory poem at the beginning of one of his books titled Cyprus Through the Lens of Jack Iacovides, ARPS, AFIAP (1999, Vol I and II) The first two lines read: I shall sing of you Cyprus, my sweet Homeland, my dazzling sun, island of my joy.

Iacovides, like Demetriades, found beauty in nature and in the face of the traditional village characters. However, unlike Demetriades, many of his photographs borrow the language of commercial photography, and a substantial body of his work departs from the romantic school of Cypriot photography. Caught between a romantic notion of Cyprus and the modern forces of tourism, Iacovides’ photography contains contemporary Aphrodites and colorful views of busy cities along with natural landscapes and village characters. The female characters in Iacovides’ work take two forms. They are either young and sexy or aged and mother-like. Karayanni (2014), who examined female representations in the work of Iacovides, observed: The women are either direct descendants of the Cyprian goddess Aphrodite, forever young, beautiful, sexy and available to please the male heterosexual gaze, or aged and museum-like and with a confusing and confused relationship with our ancestral goddess. (2014: 132)

These modern “Aphrodites” and the “museum-like” women inhabit different spaces. Both in Iacovides’ photographs and in the film Money, Mischievous the space of the city, village, and beach are sharply separated and inhabited by different characters who raise questions related to gender. For example, like in Giorkoui’s world, Iacovides’ beach is almost exclusively inhabited by “Aphrodites,” while in the villages you find elderly men and women. It is established that images of women in their swimsuits at the beach is the most common signifier of a beach vacation (Marshment 1997) with no comparable images of men. Indeed, in

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both Money, Mischievous and Iacovides’ work, only young, slim, white, foreignlooking women appear at the beach. No images of the elderly grandmothers clad in black, commonly found in the villages, ever appear in the sphere of the beach, or, as a matter of fact, in that of the city. Of course women in the village are still present but are nevertheless restricted in their homes or work while the coffee house, which is physically and socially located at the heart of the village, is dominated by men. The only women who appear at the village coffee shop in the film Money, Mischievous are two foreign tourists who do not seem to comprehend the culture of the place and seem at odds with the easy-going male clientele of the establishment, who constantly stare at their long legs. Therefore, in both film and photography of the period, the beach is personified as a young, attractive female and the village/coffee shop as an elderly male.

Cyprus as a tourist paradise: Vacation in our Cyprus and the postcards of John Hinde No other film resembles a colorful promotional trailer for Cyprus more than Vacation in Our Cyprus5 (1971). With a mainly Greek cast, it was the last film by Greek director Orestis Laskos6 and was produced by Dionisis Kourouniotis and the Greek-Cypriot film entrepreneur Diogenis Herodotou. Herodotou was the owner of Othellos Cinemas and OTHELLOS FILMS and aimed at producing Cypriot films in order to also supply his own cinemas. He is the producer of a number of films and played a leading role in establishing a collaboration between the Greek film industry and Cyprus (Shiafkalis 1995). The film is a romantic comedy/musical with a loose Romeo and Juliet scenario. Two rich wine-producing families, the Hadjipavlous and Hadjigiannis, have been in conflict with each other for many years. The only son of Hadjipavlou, Andreas, arrives in Cyprus after his studies in Greece with the intention of having a vacation. The only daughter of Hadjigianni, Julia, arrives from London after completing her studies with the same intention. In both cases an arranged marriage is waiting for them. Andreas decides to adopt another last name and work as a fisherman in Paphos along with a friend of his. Julia meets Andreas in Paphos, while on tour with a girlfriend, and they fall in love. Despite the fact that they both hide their identities and pretend to be poor, the happy couple hops from one sightseeing destination to the next, praising each location on the way. Driving fast, late-model cars in an always sunny Cyprus, Andreas and Julia



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seem determined to visit every guidebook destination on the island: Platres, the ports of Paphos, Limassol and Kyrenia, the Rock of Aphrodite, Famagusta, the ancient site of Salamis, the center of Nicosia, the Limassol wine festival, and the Colossi Castle. The director even made sure that viewers got a glimpse of the new Nicosia Airport, the popular Apollonian Beach Hotel, and the cosmopolitan Ledra Palace Hotel. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the film feels like a long tourist trailer, an excuse to show Cyprus as the perfect carefree tourist destination. Apart from a panning scene showing the buildings along the Kyrenia Port where a minaret of a mosque forces itself into the frame, there is no indication that a Turkish-Cypriot community exists in Cyprus or that conflict had recently taken place with Turkish Cypriots having moved into shabby enclaves. Nor were the serious political conflicts among Greek Cypriots presented. Instead, the island is portrayed as the happy birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love, just like in the Cyprus Tourism Organization’s promotional material. As a matter of fact, Aphrodite is a constant joke in the film. In one scene, Andreas and his friend are surprised to find out that the “ugly” hotel owner who accommodates the girls is called Aphrodite. In another, Julia asks her friend to visit Paphos in order to become “Aphrodites emerging from the waves.” Actually, Julia is seen bathing as a contemporary Aphrodite, not at Paphos, the goddess’ birthplace, but at Caledonia Falls, in the mountainous Platres area (see Figure 2.4). As has been argued, the rise of Aphrodite as the ultimate female, classical Greek, cultural symbol of Cyprus is connected with sociopolitical events and the dominant Greek-Cypriot sense of a Greek national identity (Papadakis 2006; Paphitou 2010). In the characters of Julia and Andreas, who are both portrayed by Greek actors, we find the personification of a specific class of a new generation of Cypriots: affluent, educated, and independent. Like the mainly Western tourists who visit the island, both Julia and Andreas seek a carefree vacation on their own island. Julia is a far cry from the shy, quiet, and patient female characters who live in the shadow of their fathers or husbands that inhabit Filis’ films. Just arriving back from her studies in London, Julia simply dismisses and ridicules her father’s decision to have her marry a rich man of his choice. In contrast, in Filis’ films, when a heroine is informed of her father’s decision to marry someone she does not love, she is crushed with the realization that the choices she has are to either follow what convention and tradition dictates in a patriarchal society or be expelled from her home and rejected by society.

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Furthermore, Julia appears to be free, independent, and with a will of her own. She drives her own car, travels without reporting back to her father, and even bathes naked in an act of spontaneity (see Figure 2.4). Filis’ women are secluded in their home and rarely take any initiatives. This liberation from traditional gender roles is a sign of a new generation of Cypriots and a mark of disruption with tradition. When one compares scenes from the film Vacation in Our Cyprus with popular postcards of the time one can find many similarities. John Hinde’s postcards of Cyprus seem like film stills from Vacation in Our Cyprus (see Figures 2.5 and 2.6). John Hinde ran one of the most successful postcardpublishing companies in the world, which produced brightly colored images of Ireland and Britain but also postcards of “exotic” destinations such as Africa, the Bahamas, Malaysia, and Cyprus (Burt n.d.; Smyth 2011). Hinde sent two photographers, Edmund Nägele and Elmar Ludwig, to produce postcards of Cyprus (John Hinde collection website n.d.). Hinde’s photographers were gazing at Cyprus from an outsider’s point of view, the same way they were gazing at the Bahamas or Malaysia, using the same stylistic and aesthetic recipe in each

Figure 2.4  Julia bathing at Caledonia Falls, Vacation in Our Cyprus, 1971



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location (Stylianou-Lambert 2014). “Pretty girls in the foreground” arranged like props was a favored theme in many of John Hinde’s postcards, regardless of the country or location featured (Nägele n.d.). As Nägele (n.d.) states, apart from pretty girls in the foreground Hinde also favored dramatic changes in color and careful removal of unwanted objects: telephone posts, TV aerials etc. This selection/omission process is one of the main characteristics of photography and film that determines the aesthetics of an image as well as its content. While Demetriades excluded any items that pointed to modernity, such as cars and people with modern clothing, choosing to highlight instead the older people with traditional costumes, Hinde’s photographers and the film Vacation in Our Cyprus aimed at highlighting what was omitted from Demetriades’ frame: the modern, commercial aspect of Cyprus, which might have attracted tourists and made them feel comfortable. Demetriades was in search of a Cypriotness he could call his own and which he could share with the imagined community of Greek Cypriots. In contrast, Hinde and the director of Vacation in Our Cyprus were searching for landmarks, sightseeing locations, and tourist facilities, which could be shared among

Figure 2.5  Andreas and Julia at Famagusta Beach, Vacation in Our Cyprus, 1971

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Figure 2.6  Famagusta, The Beach, Cyprus, Photograph by E. Nägele, John Hinde Studios, courtesy of the John Hinde Studios

tourists in a colorful language common to advertising and which would have spelled “sun, sand, sea, and sex.” It is visually implied, in other words, that the primarily Western tourist can use the familiar and “safe” modernist infrastructure of Cyprus as a launch pad to enjoy whatever “exotic,” “exciting,” and “risky” the island has to offer.

Conclusion The period 1960–74 is an interesting period for Cypriot film and photography because we observe the first attempts in both fields to establish a purely GreekCypriot imagery. Within the twin forces of identity construction and tourism, lens-based media produced a variety of representations during this period. The films of Filis and photographs of Demetriades emphasize certain aspects of the past in their attempt to define Cypriotness visually. The appropriate stages for such imagery are pastoral landscapes and the village. On the other hand, the first Greek-Cypriot comedy produced by Costas Farmakas and the photographs



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of Jack Iacovides bring to the foreground the changes that tourism brought to Cyprus and are completely omitted by Filis’ and Demetriades’ work. Finally, with an outsider’s point of view, the film Vacation in Our Cyprus and the postcards of John Hinde present Cyprus as a perfect tourist destination. In these last works, cameras move from the village to the city and the beach. We have seen that the choice of story, characters, and set are influenced by the ideology and point of view of their creators. However, what is even more interesting is that even in the case when the subject matter is exactly the same, ideology and politics still influence the way that the subject is represented and the aesthetics of the final result. The following paragraphs try to elaborate on this by looking at different framings of the traditional character of the mustachioed village man wearing a vraka. Scenes from two films that include a photographer as one of their characters are chosen as illustrations. In a scene in the film Loves and Sorrows a photographer arrives at the village with his bulky camera equipment. He immediately stands out from the other villagers with his modern European suit, his hat, and his city manners. He hides behind his camera, which is placed on a tripod, and gives directions to a proud mustachioed man in a traditional vraka and a cane. The villager straightens up and tilts his head toward the sky for a statuesque pose. The photographer directs him backwards and forwards as he attempts to stage the perfect shot. The villager wonders why it is taking so long and is finally forced to end the session when the photographer attempts to straighten his moustache. Ironically, the photographer is the only comic character in the film, an outsider set apart by his clothing, posture, and manners. The camera creates a strong boundary between the photographic subject and the photographer, the hard-working and proud villager and the funny, modern city person. In the film Money, Mischievous the photographer is once more an outsider and appears to be invading the space of the villagers. However, this time she takes the form of a beautiful, sexy tourist. Two foreign women with short summer dresses enter the traditionally male coffee shop of the village. One of them kneels down next to an old man wearing a vraka and a large moustache who is sleeping in his chair7, the other takes a photograph of her friend. While the coffee shop owner is trying to flirt with the women, one of them points into the distance and shouts “Oh, look!” She is pointing at the main character, Giorgoui, who is sitting on a donkey. The donkey becomes the focus of their attention and they instantly run toward it and start photographing it while posing with it. After they photograph it, they loose all interest in the coffee

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house and its patrons and they depart without even finishing the drinks they ordered. In both films the focus of the photographer remains the same: a mustachioed man wearing a vraka. These images dominate photographic representations of Cyprus of the period regardless of how “romantic” or “commercial” the filmmaker or photographer is. However, what is included or excluded from the image, as well as the aesthetics of representation, is determined by the ideology and the feelings of the creator about his/her subject. For example, the photographer in Loves and Sorrows, with his fancy equipment recording disappearing village life, attempted to produce a carefully staged image of a proud villager in his natural habitat. In contrast, the carefree tourist with her compact camera whose attention was caught by the unfamiliar sight of the traditional villager aimed at recording a spontaneous memento of her visit for later consumption. This less formal and serious memento also included her friend who willingly posed for the picture. Similarly, the films and photographs of the period we are examining, even when dealing with the same subject matter, use dramatically different forms and aesthetics. For example, the director Giorgos Filis and the photographer Takis Demetriades believed that the true Cyprus can be found in the traditional village and its “characters.” Thus, their men in vrakes are completely isolated and are represented as hard-working, pure, and honest (see Figure 2.2). In Money, Mischievous and in the photographs of Jack Iacovides, village (stereo)types are juxtaposed with modern men and women and bring forward the coexistence of tradition and modernity. Finally, in Vacation in Our Cyprus and the postcards of John Hinde, men wearing vrakes are just another sightseeing opportunity that defines Cyprus but are not necessarily the main attraction. Therefore, content, form, and aesthetics are bound up with ideology and politics.

Works cited Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Argyrou, Vassos. 1996. Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean: The Wedding as a Symbolic Struggle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ayres, Ron. 2000. “Tourism as a passport to development in small states: reflections on Cyprus.” International Journal of Social Economics 27, 2: 114–33.



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Azgin, Bekir and Yiannis Papadakis. 1998. “Folklore.” In Zypern, edited by K. Steffani Grothusen and Peter Zervakis, 703–20. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Baud-Bovy, Manuel, Aristea Tzanou, and Andreas Philippou (2008). 1962: A Photographic Record of Cyprus by Manuel Baud-Bovy and Aristea Tzanou. Nicosia: Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation. Burt, Kate. n.d. “King of Technicolour Tourism: A New Exhibition Celebrates John Hinde’s Postcards.” The Independent. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ art/features/king-of-technicolour-tourism-a-new-exhibition-celebrates-johnhindes-postcards-2307780.html (accessed July 9, 2011). Campagnolo, Matteo. 2012. “Tourism Development in Cyprus: A French Mission (1962– 1963).” In Proceedings of the IV International Cyprological Congress. Vol. III.1, edited by Antoniou Eleftherios, 227–32. Nicosia: Society of Cypriot Studies. [In Greek] Demetriades, Takis. 2006. The World of Cyprus 1960–1974: Through the Lens of Takis Demetriades AFIAP. Nicosia: Armida Publications. Diamantis, Athanasios. 2002. The World of Cyprus. Nicosia: Ministry of education and Culture. Higson, Andrew. 1989. “The concept of national cinema.” Screen 30, 4: 36–46. —2005. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema.” In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie, 63–74. London, New York: Routledge. Iacovides, Jack. 1999. Cyprus Through the Lens of Jack Iacovides, ARPS, AFIAP. Vols. 1 and 2. Nicosia: Jack Iacovides. John Hinde Collection. n.d. “Cyprus.” www.johnhindecollection.com/cyprus1.html (accessed January 19, 2013). Karalis, Vrasidas. 2012. A History of Greek Cinema. New York, London: Continuum. Karayanni Stavrou, Stavros. 2014. “En-gendering Cypriots: From Colonial Images to Postcolonial Identities.” In Cyprus and Photography: Time, Place and Identity, edited by Liz Wells, Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, and Nicos Philippou, 123–42. London: I. B. Tauris. Katsaridou, Iro. 2014. “Imagining Cyprus: Photographic Exhibitions on Cyprus and their Reception in Greece, 1950–1980”. In Cyprus and Photography: Time, Place and Identity, edited by Liz Wells, Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, and Nicos Philippou, 55–78. London: I. B. Tauris. Kleanthous, Alexis. 2005. Cypriot Cinema 1962–2005. Athens: Aigogeros [In Greek] Loizos, Peter. 2001. “Cyprus, 1878–1955: Structural Change, and its Contribution to Changing Relations of Authority.” In Unofficial Views/ Cyprus: Society and Politics, edited by Peter Loizos, 127–40. Nicosia: Intercollege Press. Marshment, Margaret. 1997. “Gender Takes a Holiday: Representations in Holiday Brochures.” In Gender, Work and Tourism, edited by Thea M. Sinclair, 16–34. London and New York: Routledge. Monaco, James. 2009. How to Read a Film: Movies, Media and Beyond. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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Nägele, Edmund. n.d. “Wish You Were Here: The Early Days of my Photography.” http://nagelestock.com/2010/Postcard.html (accessed October 23, 2010). Papadakis, Yiannis. 2006. “Aphrodite Delights.” Postcolonial Studies 9, 3: 237–50. Papageorgiou, Kostas (no date). Money, Mischievous: a Cypriot Movie that was filmed in Tseri the Summer of 1969. Tseri Local Newspaper. [In Greek] Paphitou, Nicoletta. 2010. “Representations of ‘Aphrodite’ in the Margins of Europe: Mapping the Ancient Goddess on the Cultural Map of Cyprus.” Paper presentation at ATLAS 2010 Conference, Limassol, Cyprus, held on 3–5 November. Panayiotou, Andreas. 2006. “Lenin in the coffee-shop.” Postcolonial Studies 9, 3: 267–80. Philippou, Nicos. 2007. Coffee-house Embellishments. University of Nicosia Press: Nicosia. —2010a. “Representing the Self: Cypriot Vernacular Photography.” In Re-envisioning Cyprus, edited by Loizos, Peter, N. Philippou, and T. Stylianou-Lambert, 39–51. Nicosia: University of Nicosia Press. —2010b. “The legibility of vernacular aesthetics.” Photographies 3, 1: 85–98. Sharpley, Richard. 2001. “Tourism in Cyprus: challenges and opportunities.” Tourism Geographies 3, 1: 64–86. —2003. “Tourism, modernisation and development on the island of Cyprus: challenges and policy responses.” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 11, 2–3: 246–65. Shiafkalis, Nicos, ed. 1995. The History of Cinema in Cyprus. Nicosia: 7th Art Friends Club. [In Greek] Smith, Anthony. 2005. “Images of the Nation: Cinema, Art and National identity.” In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie, 45–59. London, New York: Routledge. Smyth, Diane. 2011. “Endframe: John Hinde.” British Journal of Photography, July: 98. Somekh, Sammy. 2000. “Remembering Jack Iacovides.” PSA Journal 66, 10:44–6. Stylianou-Lambert, Theopisti. 2014. “En-gendering a Landscape: The Construction, Promotion and Consumption of the Rock of Aphrodite”. In Cyprus and Photography: Time, Place and Identity, edited by Liz Wells, Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, and Nicos Philippou, 143–66. London: I. B. Tauris. Thomson, John. 1985. Through Cyprus with the Camera in the Autumn of 1878. London: Trigraph. Varnavas, Andreas. 2012. “History of Cyprus Tourism for the Period 1950–1974.” In Proceedings of the IV. International Cyprological Congress. Vol. III.1, edited by Antoniou Eleftherios, 133–40. Nicosia: Society of Cypriot Studies. [In Greek] Willis, Anne-Marie. 1995. “Photography and Film: Figures in/of History.” In Fields of Vision: Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography, edited by Leslie Devereaux and Roger Hillman, 77–93. Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press.



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Notes 1 The Cypriot state television—officially called Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC)—started airing in 1957 and was initially established by the British for propaganda reasons (Kleanthous 2005). 2 Thanasis Veggos (1927–2011) was a popular Greek actor and director who performed in many films, mainly comedies, in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. 3 Adamantios Diamantis (1900–94) is a Cypriot painter considered one of the fathers of Cypriot art. He was also an active member of the Cypriot Studies Association and worked toward the creation of a Folk Arts Museum, which he directed until the end of his life. “The World of Cyprus” is a large painting consisting of eleven panels, which shows a traditional coffee shop scene. The title was borrowed from one of Giorgos Seferis’ (1900–71, Greek poet) poems. 4 FOTOCINE in Cyprus (and more particularly its owners Costas Farmakas and Giorgos Katsouris) was in charge of the production of Money, Mischievous and SOFIA PRESS in Bulgaria for its postproduction. 5 Vacation in Our Cyprus is also known as Mr. George and His Mischief (O Kyr Giorgis kai oi Trelles Tou) in an attempt to capitalize on the success of the popular Greek actor Dionisis Papagiannopoulos, who played the role of Mr. Hadjigianni in the film. 6 Orestis Laskos (1907–92) directed perhaps the only masterpiece of the silent film period in Greece titled Daphnis and Chloe (1931). However after the Second World War he consumed himself with slapstick comedies and period pieces and his films became increasingly conventional (Karalis 2012). 7 The old man, whose name was Kostas Eythimiou (Kostaris), was an actual villager who was paid to become an extra in the film. The director felt that the 80-year-old, who sold eggs for a living, would best fit the role of the old man at the coffee shop. Costas Farmakas had to buy all the eggs Kostaris was selling during the day of the shooting as well as pay for the extra’s fee (1 Cypriot pound) to film this scene (Papageorgiou no date).

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Cyprus Past, Present, and Future: The Derviş Zaim Trilogy Laurence Raw

Introduction In a recent article about Derviş Zaim, published in 2011, I described him as someone operating at the transnational margins (Raw 2011: 287); the protagonists of his films frequently embark on a search for identity in a world defined by multiple national and cultural attachments, while much of his work has been produced in collaboration with non-Turkish artists and producers. Mud (Çamur) (2005) was made with the support of the Italian television network RAI, while the documentary Parallel Trips (Paralel Yolculuklar/Paralliles Istories) (2004) was co-written and directed with Greek-Cypriot filmmaker Panicos Chrysanthou. Zaim tries to highlight the inadequacy of received assumptions about “cultures” and “nations” as self-contained, bounded, and unified constructs (Bayrakdar 2009: 122). His decision to make such films is hardly surprising in view of his background as a Turkish-Cypriot filmmaker. Born in 1964, in the middle of civil war between the Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus, he migrated to Istanbul to complete his undergraduate education—in management—at Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University, plus a one-year scholarship in Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He needed a special permit to work in the Republic of Turkey; they were often difficult to procure. Even when the bureaucratic procedures had been completed, Zaim still had to undergo two years’ compulsory military service in the Turkish army (Raw 2011: 290). He began his directorial career with the low-budget Somersault in a Coffin (Tavutta Rövaşata) (1996), followed by the political thriller Elephants and Grass (Filler ve Çimen) (2000). Mud is the first fictional film in which he directly explores Cypriot identity politics—even though it encompasses several of the themes characteristic of his earlier work (the interconnection of past and present, the

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metaphor of layering) (Raw 2011: 287–8). Zaim tried to make a film tentatively titled Beirut Road (Via Beyrut) after Somersault in a Coffin with a TurkishCypriot theme, but could not find the funding to do so. He wrote Elephants and Grass instead (Raw 2011: 293). Zaim’s next works Waiting for Heaven (Cenneti Beklerken) (2007) and Dot (Nokta) (2008) focused on the Republic of Turkey’s Ottoman heritage and how it continues to affect the present, despite the efforts of successive governments to erase it since the creation of the Republic in 1923. Shadows and Faces (Gölgeler ve Suretler) (2010) looks once again at Turkish traditions, but this time applied to Cypriot history in the mid-1960s. His latest film The Cycle (Devir) (2012) returns to an Anatolian Turkish setting, looking at the ways in which nature affects the inhabitants’ lives. This chapter looks in detail at Zaim’s three films dealing specifically with Cyprus: Parallel Trips, Mud, and Shadows and Faces.1 I argue that his principal concern lies in challenging existing political discourses (for example, describing the events of the last five decades as “The Cyprus Problem” or “The Cyprus Question,” implying that there are ready-made solutions and/or answers if the parties involved are prepared to sit down and search for them). The term “The Cyprus Question” was used in a document published by the Turkish Embassy in London expressing the Turkish Cypriots’ objections to Greek claims of sovereignty over the island (Turkish Embassy in London 1956: 12). Almost half a century later the term (and related synonyms) still dominated political parlance: Zenon Stavrinides’ polemic The Cyprus Conflict defined the country’s recent history as a perpetual and insoluble “problem” (Stavrinides 2006: 12). Zaim himself prefers to look for solutions by analyzing how “social and political turmoil can affect human beings” (Raw 2011: 294). Set in the present, Mud looks at the impact of the past on the protagonists’ lives—particularly the events of summer 1974, when Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriot alike were forced to move and many massacred. Parallel Trips takes up the theme once more by interviewing members of two families—one Greek Cypriot, the other Turkish Cypriot—about their experiences during that period, and how (or whether) they have subsequently managed to come to terms with it. The film ends on a note of qualified optimism with a defining moment in Cypriot history, when the checkpoints separating the two sides of the island were partially opened on April 23, 2003, permitting families to visit their former homes. Shadows and Faces is set in 1964, and returns to the theme of the relationship between past and present through the experiences of Karagöz puppeteer Salih (Setta Tanrıöğen) and his daughter Ruhşar (Hazar Ergüçlü).



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Parallel Trips I begin with Parallel Trips, a documentary in two parts, offering a valuable example of how filmmakers from different communities treat similar material very differently. Whereas Panicos Chrysanthou focuses specifically on the Greek Cypriots’ experiences following the Turkish army’s invasion of the island, Zaim takes a longer-term view by focusing on the Turkish Cypriots’ experience of displacement dating back to the mid-1950s, when the growth of the EOKA movement changed the relationship of the two communities forever. At the same time the Turkish-Cypriot family bears no malice toward the Greek Cypriots; in interviews they suggest that they might have remained friends, living in peaceful coexistence, if it had not been for the politicians’ interventions. While acknowledging Chrysanthou’s efforts, my principal focus in this chapter will be on Zaim’s segment of Parallel Trips. Mud and Shadows and Faces use a series of symbols to communicate similar views. By drawing on Vamık Volkan’s psychoanalytic analysis of the two ethnic groups (1979), I suggest that such symbols provide a means for Cypriots to make sense of a world in perpetual flux by offering visions of stability as well as identity definition. Karagöz, the ancient art of Turkish shadow-play, not only provides a link between past and present, but can impart moral lessons about the importance of sustaining a balance between mind, soul and redemption. Mud not only provides a convenient way to bury the past, but it possesses life-giving qualities; hence it is much sought after, even though it is located in restricted ground, policed by the Turkish army. Zaim has repeatedly described himself in interviews as an alluvionic filmmaker: strictly speaking the term refers to the increase in an area of land due to sediment (alluvium) deposited by a river. In Zaim’s construction this sediment—represented in physical terms by the mud, or in historical terms by Karagöz—represents traces of the past that need to be disinterred and kept alive so as to understand the present. His use of symbols reveals this process of discovery at work (Zaim 2008: 88–109). Parallel Trips adopts a far more direct treatment of Cypriot politics. The film begins with a series of title cards, informing us that Cyprus was a British colony in 1950; a decade later the territory acquired independence in an agreement that also gave certain intervention rights to Britain, Greece, and the Republic of Turkey. This fragile settlement was shattered by the 1963–1964 civil war,

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followed by that moment a decade later when the “Greek junta government organized a coup” (Zaim’s and Chrysanthou’s phrase) under the leadership of “extreme Greek nationalist [Nicos] Sampson.” Five days later—on July 20, 1974—the Turkish army invaded the island in an attempt to protect its fellow Turks, and on August 14 “took over the north part of Cyprus.”2 The introductory section concludes with a statistical summary of the ensuing refugee crisis: 180,000 Greek Cypriots were rendered homeless in the north, while 70,000 Turkish Cypriots had to move from the south to the north. Ever since that time, “there has been no communication between south and north.” That day (August 14) was a tumultuous one for the villagers of Palaikythro and Muratağa (aka Maratha); the subjects of the documentary. Throughout this sequence we hear the ominous drumbeat of Mete Hatay’s music, but the impression left at the end of the film is quite the reverse. Hitherto there might have been little contact between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, but this has been challenged by the making of Parallel Trips. This is what makes the film so important; it’s not just a documentary, but the product of a heart-felt collaboration between two filmmakers determined to rebuild friendly relationships between the two communities. However this process is not an easy one. Ever since August 1974 representatives of the two sides have held countless meetings, but the question of sovereignty has not been resolved. The former British Conservative Member of Parliament Andrew Faulds wrote rather impatiently that since the mid-1950s the international community had repeatedly ignored the Turkish Cypriots’ claims “to decide for themselves their future status” (1988: ii). Whether one believes this statement or not, it is clear that Zaim and Chrysanthou had to tread carefully while making the film to prevent long-standing animosities resurfacing. The film begins with interviews of the Liasis family from Palaikythro.3 Eight of their members were among twenty villagers murdered in August 1974.4 The Turkish army went from village to village in the north of Cyprus, stealing GreekCypriot farm animals and taking all men aged over 15 away from their families. While insisting that their memories of the events are sketchy, the family’s recollections prove the opposite—as boys, the youngest members watched through cracks in the walls, as their mothers and sisters were mown down in cold blood and their corpses stretched out in the dust. Despite the trauma of such events, the interviewees remain strikingly calm; they understand that their experiences were not unique. Many of their Turkish-Cypriot counterparts endured similar atrocities.



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Chrysanthou contrasts these recollections with the serenity of their present lives, as they are seen working the land or sitting in their front rooms, the birds trilling merrily on the soundtrack. However the atmosphere changes once the subject of displacement comes up; the Liasis family was forcibly driven out of their village and thrust into a refugee camp, where nine of them had to sleep toe-to-toe in two tents. Chrysanthou cuts to a black-and-white photograph taken in 1974 of the refugee family having a makeshift open-air meal, then pulls the camera outwards to show the front room of their new house in the south of Cyprus. This is a poignant moment, reminding us of the consequences of the conflict, where families were forcibly resettled without even finding out what happened to their loved ones who had been captured by the Turkish army. Chrysanthou’s segment ends with a series of questions, as the Liasis family reflect on the events of that period. They remain remarkably sanguine— despite their experience of violent bereavement, they admit that “everyone shot everyone else.” They cannot condemn the Turkish army for their actions, after all, 1974 was a time of war. The Liasis family adopts a broader view by reflecting on how the two communities continue to coexist peacefully at the personal level. They believe that it is time to place more importance on informal rather than formal contact as a basis for a more stable peace on the island. Zaim’s segment begins with a shot of an Edenic landscape on a glorious summer’s day. The camera pans to the right and stops abruptly; through an unexpected dissolve the landscape changes to a wasteland with derelict

Figure 3.1  A desolate Cypriot Landscape, surveyed by Hüseyin Akansoy (from Parallel Trips)

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buildings in the distance (Figure 3.1). In voice-over we hear the voice of Hüseyin Akansoy, the patriarch of a Turkish-Cypriot family living in Muratağa, describing what life was like before the growth of the EOKA movement. While the two communities were not especially close, they shared common pursuits such as “housekeeping, farming or running coffee shops.”5 As the other family members contribute their reminiscences, we see images of people working on their smallholdings, tending their sheep, or gathering watermelons. The impression is one of lifestyles continuing for decades without interruption. Zaim cuts to a close-up of Hüseyin talking about the common schools in Atlılar (aka Aloa) and Sandallar (aka Santallaris) villages—one Greek, the other Turkish—each one with only twenty learners, but both “trying to do their best for one another.”6 Villagers would gather at the coffee shops and play cards, and Greek Cypriots would attend Turkish-Cypriot weddings. While obvious economic disparities separated the two communities (the Greek-Cypriot houses were more securely constructed), no one questioned the status quo. In Hüseyin’s view the trouble started with EOKA, the organization created in 1956 by George Grivas, favoring Cyprus’ union with Greece. Their presence was very much resented by Turks at that time: Hüseyin’s father suggests that this group sowed the seeds of discord that culminated in the 1963–1964 civil war. He recalls one occasion when he was cycling with his late brother and an EOKA member told him in no uncertain terms not to go near a meeting held close to Hüseyin’s home, for fear of reprisal. As the two men moved off, the EOKA member threw a stone at them, and “after this the relationship [between Greek and Turkish Cypriots] was broken.” Like Chrysanthou, Zaim suggests that the conflicts in Cyprus have destroyed entire ways of life, but from a Turkish-Cypriot perspective this has been continuing for over five decades. By contrast the Liasis family implies that the trouble really only started with the 1974 invasion. Neither viewpoint can be considered “reliable” or “truthful”: the filmmakers invite us to contrast them to show how politics has impacted in different ways on the two communities. Hüseyin believes that the conflict really intensified after an incident on 13 July 1958, when five Turkish Cypriots were battered to death (Hüseyin calls it “martyred” to death) near İnönū (aka Sinta) village. They were taking their sheep to market, but found the road blocked by Greek Cypriots (ostensibly their friends). After a short altercation they were allowed to pass, whereupon the Greek Cypriots shot them dead in the back. Such skirmishes also find their way into Shadows and Faces, suggesting that Zaim himself was profoundly affected by them.



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As the 1960s unfolded, so Hüseyin’s family felt increasingly isolated, as the Greek Cypriots assumed more power in defiance of the 1960 Agreement. No one bothered to react at that time; like most of the villagers, Hüseyin’s father preferred to “wait and see” if peace would prevail. Partly this was a defensive gesture, borne out in the knowledge that the Turkish Cypriots were heavily outnumbered. Through a series of rapid cuts between close-ups of the Akansoy family, Zaim suggests this sense of powerless; none of them could consider any alternative course of action. In this kind of atmosphere, it’s not surprising that they perceived the 1974 invasion as an act of “liberation”; the Turkish army had at last come to rescue them. On the other hand, this placed the Muratağa villagers in an impossible position, as they realized that their way of life was about to be destroyed. On the soundtrack we hear the sound of Mete Hatay’s mournful strings being played to the sound of regular drumbeats, suggesting a kind of dirge: the villagers—for better as well as for worse—no longer exerted control over their own lives.7 The remainder of Zaim’s segment follows a familiar pattern; like the Liasis family, the Akansoys had to endure the horror of seeing their relatives burned to death, or being transported to makeshift prison camps for two months or more. However Hüseyin makes an important point as he recounts his narrative; everyone—both Greek and Turk—has “had to live with this fact” of death. In times of war civilians have no power; they just have to cope with its consequences. For Zaim this is the most harrowing aspect of the entire conflict: physical destruction can be readily repaired, but mental destruction lasts a lifetime. The film wears its emotions on its sleeve as it cuts between shots of deserted buildings, their tattered drapes fluttering in the summer breeze, their interiors chock-full of domestic detritus, revealing how families were so hastily evicted in 1974 that they scarcely had time to pack their belongings. Hüseyin recalls in hushed tones how such movements left “an enormous silence”—both physical as well as emotional—“as if an organism had just died,” and a “deep darkness […] that you can see, you live and you feel.” Even though they resettled in the north, Hüseyin’s family refused to change their ways; since 1974 the male members have found partners and had children of their own, who have been brought up to continue working on the farm. We see them crowding around a tractor, as it is being repaired. It is this sense of continuity that has helped the family to deal with its emotional trauma: Zaim emphasizes this point by cutting to close-ups of the children smiling into the camera as their elders speak. They are the “descendants of our ancestors.” The

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Akansoy family inhabits a world in which past influences present and future and vice versa. Zaim leaves us with the distinct impression that “the Cyprus Problem” is not a “problem” at all, but a product of historical forces that might be readily dealt with by learning from the past. For Hüseyin this means returning to time-honored rituals of rural life, while recognizing that the Greek Cypriots find such rituals equally significant—getting up early, going to the garden, plowing the land, and learning the rudiments of self-sufficiency. Such chores, according to Hüseyin, might “prevent the new generations from suffering,” and thereby re-establish “a culture of peace.” The two families might thereby form one big family, dedicated to resolving problems through negotiation rather than violence.8 Yet perhaps this task should be undertaken from the bottom up rather than top-down. Hüseyin’s father rather cynically observes that politicians have spent half a century talking to little effect; ordinary people, on the other hand, can learn to coexist through dialogue. Parallel Trips ends with a shot of the two families talking to one another in English, following the decision to open up checkpoints in April 2003 (Figure 3.2). Such informal conversations might seem insignificant in themselves, but they help to expedite the reconciliation process.9 Zaim and Chrysanthou’s documentary focuses on the lives of ordinary people and how they have dealt with the pain of living in a country racked by conflict. Perhaps the best solution is to adopt a broader view: to look beyond strictly

Figure 3.2  The Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot families reconciled at the end of Parallel Trips.



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political issues and search for points of contact between the two communities in the past in ordinary lifestyles, and how such issues can help to achieve reconciliation—both physical as well as emotional—in the future. Zaim summarized the film’s significance in a newspaper interview: Our film is trying to find out why—why we did this to one another […] we did live together well. Put two Cypriots together and we will eat, drink and dance. The problem is when you bring Greeks and Turks to the table.

(Gibbons 2004: 19)

Mud These concerns also determine the narrative of Mud, a film for which Chrysanthou served as executive producer. The film begins with a shot of a Turkish army platoon being lectured by their sergeant (Nadi Güler), who confidently informs them that peace still reigns on the island. However there are signs that the Greek Cypriots are planning military operations; thus the Turkish army must remain extra-vigilant in the future. As he speaks, Zaim’s camera photographs the platoon from above, as they stand to attention in boiling hot weather. Ali (Mustafa Uğurlu)—a conscript noticeably older than his fellows—collapses to the ground, apparently a victim of sunstroke. This opening sequence sums up one of the film’s principal concerns: representatives of official bureaucracies (the army, the media, politicians) are too preoccupied with their own interests either to understand the changed circumstances in Cyprus, or to acknowledge the concerns of ordinary citizens. The Greek-Cypriot army’s presumed aggression is nothing more than a rumor, deliberately designed to remind the recruits of the importance of their task in protecting Turkish interests, even though there is nothing really left to protect. Zaim makes a similar point through repeated shots of televisions broadcasting the latest developments in Cypriot politics, as reported by the Turkish media. In one sequence the conscripts are shown eating in the mess; as they do so, we hear the news anchor referring in general terms to the necessity of maintaining bilateral relations, even if that means reminding the Greek Cypriots of the importance of Turkish-Cypriot interests in Cyprus. The point is totally lost on the conscripts, who pass the time eating, chatting, or playing games; only Ali looks up briefly at the television screen, but without much

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interest. Later on another newsreader refers to the alleged skirmishes taking place between Greek-Cypriot and Turkish troops, without giving any specific details. We are left to speculate whether the report is actually a fiction, conjured up in Wag the Dog style as a way of keeping “the Cyprus Problem” on the public agenda, and thereby diverting attention away from domestic troubles.10 The politics are not really important for Zaim: what matters more is to show how the media deliberately overlook the day-to-day realities of people’s lives in search of a good story. In Elephants and Grass we see repeated footage of a government minister (Bülent Kayabaş) seeking photo-opportunities to announce fresh antiterrorism campaigns, while at the same time engaging in activities that promote terrorism—such as drug-smuggling—in return for favors (both financial and political). He meets a gruesome end—shot to death in one of his boats—and the media deliberately represent him as a victim of a corrupt system that deprives individuals of power and their basic human rights. The fact that the minister has been directly responsible for preserving that system is conveniently overlooked (Aksoy 2009: 28–29). The media are unconcerned with someone like Ali, who is trying to complete his military service while trying—and failing—to deal with past traumas. During the 1974 conflict both he and his friend Temel (Taner Birsel) were responsible for the cold-blooded massacre of innocent Greek-Cypriot citizens, in retribution for what the Greek Cypriots did to their fellow Turkish Cypriots. They had buried the corpses close to their homes and tried to forget about what they had done. Temel sets himself up as a would-be documentary filmmaker, determined to persuade his friends to talk into a video camera about their experiences of the past and thereby expiate themselves; a laudable exercise in itself, but basically an evasion. Media representations of the past are seldom concerned with truth; their principal objective lies in entertaining audiences. Temel’s friend Zeki (Arslan Kacar), who lost a limb in the conflict, understands this well, hence his reluctance to talk in any meaningful sense on camera about the past. Ali likewise cannot participate in the project, having been rendered speechless as a result of an unspecified medical condition. Perhaps he suffers a panic attack, but Zaim leaves the explanation deliberately unclear. What matters are the consequences, not the cause of Ali’s malady. The only way to deal with the past is to confront it—either directly or through drawing upon images which are in a sense beyond words. The TurkishCypriot scholar Vamık D. Volkan, recalls that when he was growing up in post-war Cyprus, the territory was believed by most Turks to be attached to



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Anatolia, whose Turkish name Anadolu means quite literally “full of mother” (Volkan 1979: 12). Yet this association might not seem as significant in the present day, particularly for those families forced to move from the south to the north of the country. One way to sustain it has been through symbols, which are believed to contain the power necessary to restore the former state of affairs. In Mud the mud surrounding the Turkish army compound is believed to have life-enhancing qualities: Turkish-Cypriot people of all backgrounds regularly fill empty bags with it, in spite of the guards’ protests. Ali smears his throat with it in the hope of recovering the power of speech; for him it not only contains lifeenhancing qualities, but it provides a symbolic experience of being restored to his Anatolian “mother,” in a world free of conflict between communities. Volkan believes that, by denying public access to any valuable piece of ground, the Turks help to sustain conflict by fostering the illusion that they enjoyed “power” and that the Cypriot Greeks had none […] [This strategy] gave […] the psychological means of handling their problem of low self-esteem and permitted them to retain a certain secrecy about their lives […] and contributed to the possibility of magical repair of their narcissistic injuries. (1979: 103–4)

Ali’s gesture in Mud looks beyond this narrow view into a world where conflicts are healed and people are brought together. More significantly mud mostly comprises water, which is itself associated with ultimate wisdom. It grows forests and destroys cities; it fills our bodies, builds our blood, but its ever-presence lulls us into complacency (Figure 3.3). When we awaken our imagination, however, water offers up its lessons freely. It can make us aware of the importance of the past (Bolland 2011). Temel comes

Figure 3.3  Turkish Cypriots benefit from the healing powers of mud (from Mud)

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to understand this in his attempts to come to terms with the past. He participates in a well-meaning but ultimately doomed project—funded by foreign embassies—to bring the two communities together, whereby former owners of homes on both sides of the island would send statues back to their former homes. This strategy might help new and old owners of homes to learn how to coexist. In an attempt to put this into practice, Temel has a statue of Ali made, but discovers to his cost that no one really wants to accept it. He throws the statue to the bottom of the sea; but once he realizes that he cannot evade the consequences of what he has done, he goes out to sea and rescues it. The film ends with a shot of Ayşe (Yelda Reynaud) sitting by the sea nursing a newlyborn child; next to her sits another such statue (Figure 3.4). This is a powerful composite image of how water has helped make the characters aware of the interconnectedness of past (represented by the statue), present (Ayşe on the beach) and future (the child). Ali’s statue assumes the kind of symbolic power similar to that associated with Volkan’s “living statue,” as personified by an elderly Turkish-Cypriot male who had lost seven members of his family (his wife, two sons, father-in-law, mother, sister-in-law, and his sister-in-law’s son) during the 1974 conflict. The man considered two options—either to commit suicide or become what he considered a living memorial for the loss of his loved ones. He chose the latter by pursuing the kind of monastic lifestyle that he believed would be suitable for the seven family members he was keeping “alive” (Volkan 1979: 139). He rejected any distinctions between life and death, past and present; through his new persona as a living statue, people could understand how those who perished in the conflict were still significant, even though they could no longer speak up for themselves. Through the juxtaposition of the statue and the newborn baby, Zaim suggests that there might be some hope for the future—a new world free of conflict, in which the two communities might talk to one another once more. Not everyone in Mud accepts these ideas: Halil (Bülent Yarar) is far more preoccupied with searching land and water alike for ancient relics, in the belief that they will fetch a good price with illegal dealers. When Ali discovers the remains of an ancient statue while digging for mud, Halil becomes immediately interested, and encourages the conscript, Ali, to make regular forays underground in order to find as many fragments as possible: the more complete the statue, the greater the financial benefit. However the statue also bears witness to the glories of an ancient civilization;11 to regard it as a commodity to be bought and sold represents an exploitation of the past, which perhaps explains why



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Figure 3.4  Past, present, and future intertwined: the final scene of Mud

Halil, Temel, and Ali suffer such violent retribution, as they are cold-bloodedly gunned down by the would-be purchasers. Despite its mythic associations, Mud is also an intensely political film that does not ignore the realities of living in a divided island.12 The Turkish army believe that their responsibility consists in protecting their citizens, hence their nervousness of permitting anyone to gather up the mud close to their compound. Temel remarks at one point that the sewage surrounding them is both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot; the two communities’ interests remain inextricable, despite all attempts by politicians to divide them. The really important question focuses on how people deal with this. One of Ali’s fellow soldiers (Veli Doğan) remarks at one point that “everything [that happens here] is just fate” as he patrols the outer ring of the compound, suggesting that individuals have little or no capability to determine their destinies.13 Mud puts forward a quite different view: Cyprus’ future can perhaps be determined by engaging with the past. The viewpoint here is reminiscent of that expressed in Parallel Trips, as Hüseyin Akansoy and his family emphasize the importance of farming the land as a basis for collective security encompassing both Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The past determines the present as well as serving as a framework for the future. Zaim employs a similar strategy in his next film Waiting for Heaven (Cenneti Beklerken) which, although not directly concerned with Cypriot politics, engages with historical issues essential to Mud and Shadows and Faces. The film explores the career of a seventeenth-century miniaturist Eflâtun (Serhat Tutumluer), who is asked to travel into Anatolia to make a portrait of the rebel

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prince Danyal (Nihat İleri), so that the Ottoman authorities can verify the prince’s identity. However Danyal captures Eflâtun and orders the miniaturist to fulfill another commission—a deliberate pastiche of Diego Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” (The Maids of Honor). By such means Danyal will fulfill his ambition to be recognized as the new Muslim Messiah. Through this plot-strand Zaim shows how representations—whether they are miniatures or cinema films—can embody “different realms, times and spaces” (Danyal’s phrase).14 On one level we are invited to contrast our memories of the Velázquez painting—the subject of protracted critical dispute—with the version represented in the film.15 Both contain images of the artist reflected in the mirror working on the image we see before us. On another level we see Danyal’s commission being fulfilled, as Eflâtun and his female companion Leyla (Melisa Sözen) paste an Ottoman image of a ruler—cut out from one of Eflâtun’s other miniatures—over the artist at the back of the painting, producing a palimpsest combining western and eastern motifs. On a third level we are exposed to complex levels of historical representation, as the modern director recreates the Ottoman past, while a fictional character within the film undertakes precisely the same task, as he recreates a new version of a European masterpiece. As W. J. T. Mitchell observes, such strategies in the visual arts (both painting and film) draw upon our knowledge of particular cultures, “but also extends, obstructs, fragments and negates that knowledge” (1990: 17). Zaim problematizes issues of space and time in an attempt to “create a more comprehensive representation of what might be understood as ‘reality’” that not only collapses distinctions between past, present, and future, but has a strong religious basis: If you do not look at it [religion] you cannot understand the purpose of traditional Ottoman art [….] In order to create what I perceive as an accurate representation of this country [the Republic of Turkey] and its cultures, I have to take religion into account. (Raw 2001: 296–7)

Waiting for Heaven not only emphasizes the symbolic power of history to bring people together over time—including Zaim (as director), the characters within the film, as well as audiences watching it in the theater—but also shows how paintings (in common with other artistic productions) can be transcultural in terms of their appeal, uniting “Western” and “Eastern” traditions.16 Stylistically speaking, the structures of both Waiting for Heaven and Mud are good examples of an aesthetic of layering that runs throughout Zaim’s work. Elephants and Grass (Filler ve Çimen) (2000) juxtaposes a tale of political



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corruption with a meditation on the power of marbling to reveal intimate connections between past and present. His first major film Somersault in a Coffin (Tavutta Rövaşata) (1996) criticizes the free-market policies that still predominate in contemporary Istanbul, while offering some thoughts on the symbolic power of history as represented by the peacocks that live in the Rümeli Fortress (built between 1451 and 1452), situated on the European side of the Bosphorus. Mud offers an interpretation of the Cyprus conflict from the point of view of someone who lived and grew up with it (Zaim was born in 1964), showing how it continues to affect the lives of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots alike. Zaim suggests at the same time that the statues can remind people of the connections between past and present, and how they represent some kind of hope for the future. This is particularly significant in the light of recent Turkish history, where successive governments since 1923 have tried to obliterate the country’s Ottoman past through educational and political reforms. Zaim takes up the same issue once again in Waiting for Heaven—although ostensibly set in the medieval past, he shows how both the miniaturist and filmmaker are preoccupied with the multi-layered nature of representation.

Shadows and Faces Shadows and Faces is an ambitious attempt to explore these issues in terms of Cypriot history. Like Mud we are exposed to two different pasts: the immediate past of the mid-1960s, in which Turkish-Cypriot villagers are forcibly evicted from their villages by the Greek-Cypriot police; and the past evoked by the Karagöz—a cultural practice dating back to the medieval period shared by Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike—that forms a background to the action. The film begins with a historical introduction comprising title cards (similar to Parallel Trips), telling us about EOKA, the 1960 agreement, and the subsequent relocation of Turkish Cypriots following the decision by Greek-Cypriot leader Archbishop Makarios on December 5, 1963 to “‘amend’ the constitution, or, as they [the Greek Cypriots] put it, to ‘remove the negative’ element by altering it unilaterally without the Turkish Cypriots’ consent” (Foley 1964: 165). This is followed by an opening sequence showing puppeteer Salih (Setta Tanrıöğen) staging a Karagöz show in the half-light; the shadows are not only projected onto the white screen separating puppeteer from audience, but they can be seen on the back wall of the room where the performance takes place. This image not

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only emphasizes the communal nature of the event—involving performers and audience alike—but underlines the importance of tradition. The shadows of the past inevitably influence present-day realities. Erol İpekli emphasizes that this is one of the “unwritten, oral rules of the shadow puppetry art”: the social, moral, and religious lessons—as well as the mannerisms—of the Karagöz are passed down from generation to generation, and thereby promote an understanding of the importance of Ottoman history, as well as promoting performing arts training (İpekli 2009: 8).17 Shadows and Faces perpetually reminds us of the importance of Karagöz as a means of dealing with present-day realities. In one sequence that exemplifies Zaim’s preoccupation with the aesthetic of layering, the shepherd Cevdet (Settar Tannöğen) is shown burying the puppets in the ground. His fellow-villager Christos (Konstantinos Gavriel) watches him, while hiding himself in a bush nearby. Once Cevdet has moved off, Christos reports what has happened to the police, in the belief that the shepherd has concealed a secret vital to the island’s future security. Soon afterwards Cevdet is shot dead by Greek-Cypriot militia as an alleged conspirator, leaving his sheep to wander unattended. The soldiers put one of the puppets in his pocket as a mark of contempt; for them, a Turkish Cypriot is as worthless as a cardboard figure. Shortly afterwards, however, Cevdet’s fellow Turks discover the shepherd’s whereabouts; one of them bends over the corpse, takes out the puppet and holds it aloft (Figure 3.5). The shepherd might be dead, but his soul lives on in the form of the “living statue” of the puppet. Like the ancient statue in Mud or the miniatures in Waiting for Heaven, the puppets bear witness to the presence of different layers of life in Cyprus that exist as alternatives to present-day realities. For the Turkish-Cypriot community the puppets evoke the Ottoman period, when Cyprus administratively was part of “mother Anatolia,” while at the same time providing a living reminder of a more immediate past before the civil war when individuals of different faiths and/or nationalities could peacefully coexist with one another. However not all Turkish Cypriots share such views. Like Temel in Mud, Veli is suspicious of what he perceives as superstitions—especially those that invest inanimate objects such as puppets with special significance. He thinks of them as frivolous, associated with the kind of entertainment that detracts attention away from the “real business” of protecting the community. However Zaim undercuts this view through the repeated use of shadows, which not only appear in the Karagöz show at the beginning of the film, but form a backdrop to the sequence where Veli plans his next course of action to resist the Greek



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Figure 3.5  Uncovering the past: the puppets disinterred from the earth in Shadows and Faces

Cypriots. In another sequence Salih’s daughter Ruhşar (Hazar Ergüçlü) has a dream of what might happen, should the Greek Cypriots assume undisputed power over the island; this vision combines live action with Karagöz puppetry, suggesting that the shadow theater—and the values associated with it—will exert a powerful influence over her future. The film ends optimistically, with Ruhşar traveling from her village to the town of Famagusta, apparently deprived of her home and with no particular future to look forward to, except as a permanent refugee. She comes across a Karagöz performance, taking place in the market square in front of an audience of fellow refugees; their situation might be desperate, but their reaction to the entertainment suggests that they have momentarily cast aside present exigencies in favor of past glories. This is not just a mindless diversion; if they believe in what they see, then they might be able to organize their futures more efficiently, in spite of being harassed by the Greek-Cypriot police. Ruhşar understands the power of the Karagöz as she discovers to her delight that Salih is running the show; hitherto she thought he was missing, presumed dead. A continuing faith in the power of the Karagöz might even produce the odd miracle (Figure 3.6). This view of the civil war forms a corrective to a view expressed by certain historians who believed that the Turkish Cypriots should have accepted Enosis, so long as they were given “safeguards” as to their future security: “Cyprus is, after all, a Greek island and has remained so through many centuries and many foreign occupations. The Turks were merely the last interlopers there before the British came” (Foley 1964: 186). Such views not only exclude significant parts

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Figure 3.6  Karagöz as a site of reconciliation: the end of Shadows and Faces

of the island’s history—it fell into Ottoman hands in 1571 and remained part of the Empire until the late nineteenth century—but fail to acknowledge the absence of “safeguards” in the years following the outbreak of conflict in the mid-1960s.18 Salih and Ruhşar are not only driven from their village, but forced to take refuge in caves by the roadside to avoid discovery by the Greek-Cypriot police (in a sequence clearly inspired by Hüseyin Akansoy’s recollections in Parallel Trips). In this kind of environment, one-time friends are rapidly transformed into enemies: whereas Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots would once congregate in the village coffee house, run by Greek Cypriot Anna (Popi Avraam) and her son Christos, now it is a place where secrets are exchanged and careless talk costs lives. Veli is careful not to disclose his plans too vociferously, as he is well aware that Christos will report them straightaway to the GreekCypriot police. Karagöz offers a source of stability and wisdom in a world apparently hell-bent on self-destruction. Zaim includes several shots of a wall, on which the Greek word EOKA (the Greek-Cypriot fighters’ organization striving for Enosis) has been crossed out and replaced with the Turkish word Taksim (meaning division, or partition).19 Eventually that word is also obliterated. This image suggests the fluidity of the conflict (areas of land are occupied at different times by Greek and Turkish forces) as well as the apparent impossibility of a peaceful settlement: the



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Cypriots will be governed either by the Greek Cypriots or by Turkish Cypriot, but not by any alliance between the two. Visually speaking Shadows and Faces recalls Parallel Trips in its use of panning shots surveying the village landscapes, once peopled by peace-loving citizens. Now the buildings have been destroyed and possessions left behind in the burning sunshine. In one sequence Anna returns to Salih’s village to find anything of value to return to Salih. Zaim cuts to a point of view shot of her surveying the detritus of people’s lives, then cuts back to her expressionless face; the level of destruction she witnesses is both literally and metaphorically beyond words. The only things she can find are the Karagöz puppets, a living reminder of the past. The film ends with a violent climax, provoked initially by the TurkishCypriot villagers’ lust for revenge, in spite of being heavily outnumbered. Their plan to hoodwink the Greek-Cypriot police goes horribly wrong and leads to a shoot-out in which the Turkish Cypriots are driven from their village, while Anna and Salih are shot dead. As the Turks retreat, Zaim cuts to a shot from inside one of their cars, looking out at the carnage in the streets; the windscreen is covered with blood, a violent reminder of what has just happened. Anna is perhaps the most tragic victim of this skirmish; a Greek Cypriot who can also speak Turkish, she has spent many years catering to both communities. Forced by her son to side with the Greek Cypriots, even while trying to help Salih and Ruhşar escape, she ends up being respected by no one. Placing friendship above community loyalty condemns her to a life of isolation and violent death. Yet it’s not just the two communities who destroy one another; for years the brothers Salih and Veli have been at loggerheads on account of a longstanding feud that began over a woman. When Salih fetches up at Veli’s house as a refugee, he is given a frosty reception. Zaim suggests that the only way to deal with the feud is for the participants to learn how to come to terms with the past; in other words, to accept the moral lessons of the Karagöz. This is something Salih finds difficult to understand, despite his obvious qualities as a community leader. Ruhşar eventually forces him to confront the truth one evening, as the two of them sit in Salih’s house surrounded (almost inevitably) by shadows—a perpetual reminder of how Karagöz can influence both present and future. This sequence functions as a metaphor for the peace process on two levels—not only involving Veli and Salih’s family, but involving the Greekand Turkish-Cypriot communities. Once people learn to come to terms with the past, they can prepare the way to move forward in the future.

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Through the use of images—such as the Karagöz, the statues, or the mud—which function as leitmotifs throughout his work, Zaim’s films reveal a preoccupation with adaptation. This is not the kind of process relating to textual issues (characteristic of many existing works within the discipline of adaptation studies),20 but is conceived rather as a psychological and historical process. Vamık Volkan has discussed how Turkish Cypriots became accustomed to adapting to “loss and change” in the wake of the 1974 conflict: “disorganization gave way to organization, in which the loss of one’s land and identity was accepted as an irreversible event, and strategies were formed to deal with it” (1979: 128). The process of psychological adaptation was achieved by investing objects with quasimagical powers that connected individuals with what they had lost and what they set out to recover. Such processes “put the work of mourning [as well as recovering] ‘out there,’ so to speak” (Volkan 1979: 129), enabling people to come to terms with (or “adapt”) to the changed environment. Described by psychologist Jerome Bruner as a means of transfiguring the commonplace so as to shape our everyday experiences (Bruner 2002: 6), this phenomenon clearly determines the Turkish Cypriots’ view of the world in Mud: when Ali smears mud on his face, he believes he can be reunited (if only momentarily) with the “whole mother” Anadolu. Likewise the Karagöz in Shadows and Faces encourages audiences and puppeteers alike to look beyond the immediate concerns of the civil war and observe the shadows—the gateway to a world of mental and emotional purification that transcends time. Hence the delight experienced by the audiences at the end of the film, who not only enjoy the slapstick comedy, but have also been transported into a world of harmony and community support.

Past, present, and future In the introduction to a recent anthology, Defne Ersin Tutan and I considered how history has been adapted across different contexts. We were especially concerned with the means by which individuals drew on the past to make sense of the present and future: in this process factual accuracy seems less significant in comparison to psychological satisfaction. It does not really matter whether the historical narratives are factually “true” or “false;” what they reveal about the writers’ view of the cultures they inhabit is far more significant.21 Histories are first and foremost stories constructed for specific purposes: to render the unfamiliar familiar, and hence help us come to terms with new or unexpected



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phenomena. At the same time historians are also creative artists in their own right, who have the capacity to transform their worlds through experimental behavior (Raw and Tutan 2013: 10–11). Although dealing with events based on historical fact, Zaim’s films should be approached in similar fashion; such questions as whether or not they are “slanted” toward Turkish Cypriots or whether they accurately portray the events of 1963–4 and 1974 are not especially significant, rather they should be seen as attempts on the director’s part to make sense of “loss and change” over the past half-century. That “loss” is less concerned with politics and more with emotional and/or communal issues: since the mid-1960s it has become more and more difficult for Turkish and Greek Cypriots alike to coexist on the island. This is something that affects both communities, as Parallel Trips indicates. Zaim is also preoccupied with the consequences of change (how Turkish Cypriots have reacted to the experience of enforced displacement) as well as continuities, as represented by the mud, the statues or Karagöz. Such issues are both political and personal, an attempt on the director’s part to make sense of his own past as a Turkish-Cypriot citizen forced by circumstances beyond his control to complete his education in the Republic of Turkey. This aspect of Zaim’s oeuvre cannot be underestimated: in Shadows and Faces he makes a cameo appearance as a military officer offering little or no assistance to Ruhşar in her quest to find her father’s whereabouts.22 Most government representatives treat individuals as unimportant, while accepting without question the half-truths or distortions broadcast by the media via radio and television. The bureaucrats’ presence in Shadows and Faces—as in Zaim’s non-Cypriot work such as Elephants and Grass—emphasizes the importance of listening to ordinary people, whose experiences tell us far more about the daily realities of living in a divided country than many politicians can. In view of Zaim’s political preoccupations running throughout his work, we might wonder why he chooses to characterize himself as an “alluvionic” filmmaker, rather than someone working from a specifically Turkish-Cypriot perspective. Zaim himself has tried to answer this question in an interview; having grown up in the postcolonial world of northern Cyprus, and subsequently moved to Istanbul, which has never been colonized, he tries to reflect on the relationship between history, politics, and colonialism from a pluralist perspective (Raw 2011: 297). He calls himself a “historian”—understood as someone concerned with the past, but only insofar as it impinges on the lives of his characters (or interviewees) as well as his own life. His films can be

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considered “timeless” in the sense that they show how old traditions embodied in statues or Karagöz rituals still have the power to transfix individuals in the present—proving beyond doubt that the distinctions between past, present, and future are relative, depending very much on the conditions (whether political, social or institutional) that shape them. While his Cypriot films can be treated as pluralist responses to a particular set of events, they are more concerned to offer alternative ways of thinking about the past and the way it can shape the country’s future. If more politicians and other decision makers shared Zaim’s concerns, then perhaps greater strides could be made toward achieving greater rapprochement between the two communities.

Works cited Aksoy, Ümit. 2009. “Kemalizimin Yedeğinde Politika Yapmak: Filler ve Çimenlere Dair” [Kemalism as a Political Weapon: The Case of Elephants and Grass]. In Yönetim Sineması: Derviş Zaim, edited by Ayşe Pay, 23–40. Istanbul: Kire Yayınları. And, Metin. 1975. Turkish Shadow Theatre. Ankara: Dost Yayınları. Bayrakdar, Deniz. 2009. “Turkish Cinema and the New Europe: At the Edge of Heaven.” In Cinema and Politics: Turkish Cinema and the New Europe, edited by Deniz Bayrakdar, 118–32. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bolland, Peter. 2011. “The Wisdom of Water.” Thinking Through: Philosophy, Mythology, and Transformational Wisdom. http://sandiegotroubadour.com/2011/08/ the-wisdom-of-water/ (accessed January 21, 2013). Bruner, Jerome. 2002. Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Faulds, Andrew. 1988. Foreword to Excerpta Cypria for Today: A Source-Book on the Cyprus Problem. 2nd edn. vi-ix. Nicosia and Istanbul: K. Rustem and Brother and the Friends of North Cyprus Parliamentary Group. Foley, Charles. 1964. Legacy of Strife: Cyprus from Rebellion to Civil War. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Gazioğlu, Ahmet C. 1980. The Turks in Cyprus: A Province of the Ottoman Empire 1571–1878. London and Nicosia: K. Rustem and Brother. Gibbons, Fiachra. 2004. “We Know We Can Live Together” (Interview with Derviş Zaim). The Guardian Review, 1 May. Hamit, Mertkan. 2009. Cypriotism as an Ideology in between Greek and Turkish Nationalisms. Unpublished MA diss. University of Athens. İpekli, Erol. 2009. “The Use of Karagöz Shadow Theatre as a Way of Teaching Traditional Turkish Theatre in Performing Arts Training.” ATINER Conference



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Paper Series No. ART2012-0209. Athens Institute for Education and Research. www. atiner.gr/papers/ART2012-0209.pdf (accessed January 22, 2013). İrvan, Sūleyman. 2007. “Oral History as a Method for Peace Journalists: Sevgūl Uludağ as a Case Study.” Second International Conference in Communication and Media Studies: Communication in Peace/Conflict in Communication, Eastern Mediterranean University Faculty of Communication & Media Studies, 2–4 May 2007. http://fcms.emu.edu.tr/images/stories/articles/Suleyman_Hoca/oral%20 history%20as%20peace%20journalism.%20suleyman.pdf (accessed January 20, 2013). “Karagöz.” 2010. Karagöz.net. www.karagoz.net/english/shadowplay.htm (accessed January 22, 2013). Kotlowski, Dean J. 2013. “Nixon.” The Oliver Stone Encyclopedia, edited by James M. Welsh and Donald M. Whaley, 158–67. Lanham, MD, and Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Kyratji, Helen, and Chryso Pelekani. 2012. “The Linguistic Profile of Turkish Speaking People in Cyprus: Case Studies of Turkish Speaking Children Living in a Cypriot Neighborhood at the City of Limassol, Cyprus.” International Journal of Business, Humanities and Social Science I:2 (November). www.ijbhss.com/journal_ database/41.pdf (accessed January 21, 2013). Lewis, Mary Tompkins. 2008. “The Alluring Enigma of Velázquez’s ‘Las Meninas.’” New York Times, 25 September: W11. “Mete Hatay.” 2007. Peace Research Institute Oslo. www.prio.no/People/Person/?x=4731 (accessed January 20, 2007). Mitchell, W. J. T. 1990. “Representation.” In Critical Terms for Literary Study, edited by Frank Lentriccia and Thomas McLaughlin, 11–21. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. “Palaikythro.” n.d. http://wikimapia.org/1714132/Palaikythro-Balikesir-Παλαίκυθρο (accessed January 20, 2013). Raw, Laurence. 2011. “Derviş Zaim: To Return to the Past Means Embarking on a New Journey.” In Exploring Turkish Cultures: Essays, Interviews and Reviews, 281–98. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Raw, Laurence and Defne Ersin Tutan. 2013. “Introduction.” The Adaptation of History: Essays on Ways of Telling the Past, 7–25. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland and Co. Stam, Robert. 2005. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Malden, VA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Stavrinides, Zenon. 2006. The Cyprus Conflict: National Identity and Statehood. 1996. 3rd edn. Nicosia: Cyprus Research and Publishing Centre. Suner, Asuman. 2010. New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory. London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co., Ltd. Thubron, Colin. 1986. Journey into Cyprus. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

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“Traditional Turkish Shadow Theatre: Karagöz.” 2009. YouTube www.youtube.com/ watch?v=87_ty8dfHh0 (accessed January 22, 2013). Turkish Embassy in London 1956. Turkey and Cyprus: A Survey of the Cyprus Question with Official Statements of the Turkish Viewpoint. London: Press Attache’s Office, Turkish Embassy. Volkan, Vamık D. 1979. Cyprus—War and Adaptation. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. Zaim, Derviş. 2008. “Your Focus is Your Truth: Turkish Cinema, ‘Alluvionic’ Filmmakers and International Acceptance.” In Shifting Landscapes: Film and Media in European Context, edited by Miyase Christensen and Nezih Erdoğan, 88–109. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Notes   1 The Turkish titles for the films are used throughout the chapter. All three films have been released on DVD with a choice of subtitles—English and German—and are available for purchase at the time of writing (early 2013) through the Turkish site D&R (www.dr.com.tr) and the American-based mail order firm Tulumba (www.tulumba.com).   2 I quote from the English subtitles on the film.   3 The name means “Old Kythrea” in Greek. In 1959, Turkish Cypriots adopted the alternative name Balıkesir, derived from a town of the same name in the Turkish mainland.   4 See “Palaikythro” (n.d.). wikimapia.org/1714132/Palaikythro-Balikesir-Παλαίκυθρο (accessed January 20, 2013).   5 For more on Akansoy’s recollections, see İrvan (2007).   6 The Greek-Cypriot names for villages are placed in parentheses after the TurkishCypriot names.   7 Mete Hatay, the composer, is also a Senior Research Consultant at the PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo) Cyprus Centre. He has researched and written about Cyprus since the mid-1980s, writing about cultural history, immigration, Islam, and ethnic and religious minorities. He worked on the “Public Information Project” for the Annan Plan from 2003–4 (at the time when Parallel Trips was made). His music is thus a heartfelt expression of immediate reactions to current events. See Hatay’s profile on the PRIO website (www.prio.no).   8 Such encounters had long been discussed, at least at a personal level. Colin Thubron’s Journey into Cyprus, published a year after the 1974 invasion, reports an encounter with a Greek-Cypriot farmer, who recalled how “You would see them



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sitting—Greek and Turk together, Turk and Greek.” Thubron continues: “I heard the farmer say: ‘Yes, the Turks are all right. They are a decent people.’ I smiled back at him in amazement, a great warmth spreading through me. His remark was like one of those comets which burst in a summer sky […] a promise that other worlds and other possibilities existed, however remote” (Thubron 1986: 135). By 2003–4 this had translated itself into an active desire for reconciliation. Many Turkish Cypriots who once proclaimed loyalty to the Republic of Turkey now considered themselves Cypriots first and foremost, believing that the unification of the island would be the solution to much of the country’s political difficulties. When Mehmet Ali Talât assumed presidential power on April 17, 2005, he immediately proclaimed: “I am holding out my hand towards the Greek-Cypriot people for peace. My hand will stay there until the time that they hold it” (Hamit 2009: 46). After April 2003 the two communities were allowed to circulate in the island and some Turkish Cypriots attend bi-communal state schools on the Greek-Cypriot side. This has led to Turks learning Greek as well as Turkish, as well as developing friendship networks with strong ties amongst both communities. See Kyratji and Pelekani (2012). Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog (1997) is a black comedy in which a government spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer collaborate to fabricate a war in order to cover up a presidential sex scandal. At the time when the action of Mud takes place (2003–4), the Turkish Parliament was debating whether to allow American troops to use Turkish bases, or whether to send Turkish troops to the Iraq war. The Cyprus story could have been deliberately magnified to emphasize the army’s effectiveness as a fighting as well as peacekeeping force. This technique of combining ancient and contemporary symbols within a single cinematic structure has been described by Asuman Suner as “ebruesque,” a term drawn from marbling that suggests “movement, permeability and contingency” (Suner 2010: 162). The film was actually shot near a salt lake near Konya in the Republic of Turkey, due to possible political risks that might have arisen had it been filmed in Cyprus, with the presence of a Greek-Cypriot producer (Chrysanthou) and a 70-strong crew from both sides of the island (Raw 2011: 294–5). All quotations taken from the English subtitles on the DVD version of the film. All quotations taken from the English subtitles of the DVD version of the film. See Mary Tompkins Lewis (2008). This view has been expressed slightly differently by the poet Cemal Süreya, who wrote in 1966 that in the “New Turkey”

  We are the novices of new life / All of our knowledge is transformed, / Our poetry, our love all over again. / Maybe we are living in the last bad days, /

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Cypriot Cinemas Maybe we shall live the first good days too, / There is something bitter in this air,/ Between the past and the future/ Between suffering and joy / Between anger and forgiveness (Italics mine). (trans. Talât Halman, qtd. Raw 2011, 122)

17 The classic text on Karagöz in English is Metin And (1975). The website www. karagoz.net offers a comprehensive survey of the history, characters, technique and music of Karagöz; clips from performances are available on YouTube (“Traditional Turkish Shadow Theatre: Karagöz.” 2009). www.youtube.com/watch?v=87_ ty8dfHh0 (accessed January 22, 2013). 18 See Gazioğlu (1980). 19 The word was deliberately used by Turkish Cypriots to denote a belief in the partition of Cyprus as a means of guaranteeing their security. 20 See, for example, Robert Stam (2005). 21 This view challenges received opinions such as those expressed by Dean J. Kotlowski in a recent essay, where he argues that, while artists and filmmakers can draw upon “great gulps of imagination,” historians “use their imagination to interpret, arrange, and assign weight to the evidence, not to make it up” (Kotlowski 2013: 162–3). 22 Zaim also appears in Somersault in a Coffin as another bureaucrat determined not to assist those seeking help from him.

4

Tormenting History: The Cinemas of the Cyprus Problem Costas Constandinides and Yiannis Papadakis History is what hurts. Jameson (1981: 102)

Introduction During the period 4–10 December 2009, The Cyprus Film and Television Directors’ Guild organized the first “Festival of Films by Cypriot Directors,” titled “Coup, Invasion, Occupation, Refugees.” Greek-Cypriot filmmaker Andreas Pantzis, the artistic director, later argued that these elements “define the history of Cyprus and Cyprus as a country.”1 The festival was backed by the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus; the films were screened on the Greek-Cypriot side of divided Nicosia and it only included films by Greek-Cypriot directors. The day after this finished, another film festival began titled “Against Intolerance and Fanaticism.” This was a heavy charge clearly levied against the former festival. The press release of the festival “Against Intolerance and Fanaticism,” organized by another Greek-Cypriot filmmaker, Panicos Chrysanthou, included the following statements: a festival with Cypriot films that show that in our country there exists another cinema … in which Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot filmmakers participate … [most of the films presented here] have been deemed inferior, or have been persecuted or have been defamed due to their views … films made by people who feel they share a common country irrespective of religion and national descent.2

The former festival became an annual event. Chrysanthou also organized yearly film festivals subsequently titled “The Festival of the Green Line,” in collaboration with the Turkish-Cypriot cultural foundation Sidestreets, based

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in northern Nicosia, films that speak of “humanity, peace and reconciliation.”3 These films were shown in both sides of divided Nicosia, as well as inside the Green Line, the UN-controlled area dividing Nicosia. The ideological differences between these two festivals exemplified the two major Greek-Cypriot positions on the island’s recent history, politics, and identity. We argue that the films that we discuss in this chapter should be seen as primarily expressing (different and opposed) political positions on the Cyprus Problem. They are explicitly constructed as narratives aiming to establish who is to blame for the tragedies of Cyprus’ recent history, what actually happened, and who are the villains and the victims of this story. We thus privilege a reading of the political in these films because this is how they were meant to be read, and because this is how they were in fact emically read, i.e. by Cypriot commentators. A short reminder of the recent history of Cyprus is necessary here as background to the ensuing discussion on the different political positions and contested histories. Three centuries of Ottoman rule in Cyprus were succeeded by British colonialism in 1878. The twentieth century witnessed the gradual rise, first of Greek nationalism and, later, of Turkish nationalism, with Greek Cypriots supporting Enosis—the union of Cyprus with Greece—and Turkish Cypriots demanding Taksim—the partition of Cyprus. From 1955 the Greek-Cypriot struggle was led by an armed organization called EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters), and in 1958 Turkish Cypriots set up their own armed group called TMT (Turkish Resistance Organization). Yet, in 1960, Cyprus became an independent state, the Republic of Cyprus, with a population of 80 percent Greek Cypriots and 18 percent Turkish Cypriots, an outcome that frustrated both communities’ political goals. Both ethnic groups continued to pursue their separate objectives and in 1963 interethnic fighting broke out. This continued intermittently until 1967, with Turkish Cypriots bearing the heavier cost in terms of casualties, while around a fifth of their population was displaced in armed enclaves. With the rise to power in Greece of a military junta, the Greek-Cypriot leadership gradually edged away from Enosis and sought instead to preserve the independence of Cyprus from attempts by Athens to dictate politics, and to solve the inter-communal dispute. While armed confrontations between Turkish and Greek Cypriots ceased after 1967, a new conflict emerged, this time among Greek Cypriots. With the support of the Greek junta, a small group of Right-wing extremists calling itself EOKA B staged a coup in 1974 against the island’s president, Archbishop Makarios, in



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order to bring about Enosis. This led to a military offensive by Turkey dividing the island, followed by population displacements of almost all Greek Cypriots to the south and Turkish Cypriots northwards. Greek Cypriots suffered more in terms of people killed, missing, and other social traumas of war and dislocation. In 1983, the Turkish-Cypriot authorities unilaterally declared the establishment of their own state in northern Cyprus, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which has since remained internationally unrecognized except by Turkey. For much of the twentieth century another conflict persisted, this time within each ethnic group between forces of the Right and the Left, each with its own record of violence against the Left. In broadly dividing the films we discuss in two categories, we follow the categorization that has been established by the two opposed festivals previously discussed. These reflect the two major political positions expressed officially and by the largest political parties on the Greek-Cypriot side. One, the Hellenocentric position, posits Cyprus as historically part of Hellenism and Cypriots as Hellenes, descendants of ancient Greeks, with Turks presented as Hellenism’s historic barbaric arch-enemy and Cyprus as their latest victim. This is expressed in history schoolbooks, official rhetoric, and has been traditionally adopted by the largest Right-wing party DISY (Democratic Rally) (Papadakis 2005; 2008). This is an ethnocentric Greek (Cypriot) perspective reflected in the films’ viewpoint, as well as the location and choice of directors of the first two film festivals organized by the Directors’ Guild. The words Coup, Invasion, Occupation, Refugees are the standard mantra of Greek-Cypriot political rhetoric since 1974 and refer exclusively to the Greek-Cypriot experience of 1974, and to Turkish violence against Greek Cypriots (silencing violence against Turkish Cypriots). The films O Viasmos tis Aphrodites (The Rape of Aphrodite, Andreas Pantzis 1985), O Teleutaios Gyrismos (The Last Homecoming, Corinna Avraamidou 2008), Kato ap’ ta Astra (Under the Stars, Christos Georgiou 2001), Dromoi kai Portokalia (Roads and Oranges, Aliki Danezi-Knutsen 1996), Avrianos Polemistis (Tomorrow’s Warrior, Michael Papas 1979), and O Dromos gia tin Ithaki (The Road to Ithaca, Costas Demetriou 1999) exemplify this viewpoint. They are discussed together in the following section. The opposing political stance is the Cyprio-centric position: Cyprus is placed at the center of history, with Greece and Turkey posited as external political actors whose interventions (the Greek junta-led coup and the subsequent Turkish military offensive) had a negative impact on Cyprus. This view lays blame on external interventions (Greece and Turkey, usually adding vague

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references to Anglo-American imperialism) as well as the actions of GreekCypriot and Turkish-Cypriot Right-wing nationalists. This position is associated mostly with the Greek-Cypriot Left and the largest Left-wing (communist) party AKEL (Uprising Party of the Working People). In addition, it posits a past of “peaceful coexistence and cooperation” by the two communities in Cyprus, this having become the other mantra of Greek-Cypriot political rhetoric since 1974, an official Greek-Cypriot political position propagated through the publications of the Press and Information Office (PIO) (Papadakis 2003, 2005). It should come as no surprise then that, as for example in the case of Israel and many others, the interethnic love story has been used as an allegory of peace and reconciliation (Shohat 2010: 223). This Cyprio-centric viewpoint aims at being inclusive of both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, as reflected by the choice of films and directors of the festivals organized by Chrysanthou, and their symbolic location (taking place in both sides of divided Nicosia and in the “common,” “in-between,” or “neutral” ground of the boundary itself, i.e., the Green Line dividing Cyprus). The words reconciliation (symfiliosi) and rapprochement (epanaprosegisi) are symbolic markers of this position. As these two views officially coexist, we shall note how to an extent, they may both be expressed in the films under discussion while one predominates. For example, almost all Greek-Cypriot films present a “good” Turkish-Cypriot character, though as Greek Cypriots would like to imagine him or her. The official Greek-Cypriot rhetoric of “past peaceful coexistence” was an explicit political statement that Cyprus should be reunified since “the past proves that the two communities can coexist.” This was countered by the Turkish-Cypriot opposing official view of “conflict and persecution throughout history.” This claimed that, especially in the 1960s, Turkish Cypriots were mercilessly attacked by Greek Cypriots (until saved by the “Peace Operation” of “motherland Turkey”). By positing a past of conflict, it was suggested that the island should not be reunified. This was the position mostly espoused by the Turkish-Cypriot Right advocating a more Turko-centric position. The Turkish-Cypriot Left, however, especially the largest Left-wing party CTP (Republican Turkish Party), has argued that despite past conflict reunification is desirable, espousing a more Cyprio-centric position on history and identity, also favoring reconciliation (Papadakis 2003). The film Mud (Çamur 2003) by Turkish-Cypriot director Derviş Zaim is closer to this position, and will thus be discussed under the heading “Films of Reconciliation” along with the film Akamas by Chrysanthou (2006). Significantly, and in a symbolic political



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gesture, Mud and Akamas were co-productions by these two directors. Finally, the film Shadows and Faces (Gölgeler ve Suretler 2010) also by Zaim, employs a strong Turkish-Cypriot viewpoint suggesting division rather than reunification, and for this reason it is discussed in the final section. The Turkish-Cypriot film Codename Venus (Tamer Garip 2012), also presenting a Turkish-Cypriot viewpoint is discussed in the same section. The juxtapositions of films made by Greek-Cypriot filmmakers with those by Turkish-Cypriot filmmakers, or with jointly made films, or by directors in the same community with different political positions open up possibilities for comparative critical and aberrant readings. As in Lebanon (Khatib 2008), Turkey (Suner 2010), and Israel (Shohat 2010) to name just a few examples, cinema has been an arena of negotiating highly contested issues of identity, memory, and politics, while, as Williams (2002) points out, national identity has been contested and negotiated in all cinemas. Our reading of the films draws heavily on Jameson’s seminal essay on Third World literature as “national allegories” where “the telling of the individual story and the individual experience cannot but ultimately involve the whole laborious telling of the experience of the collectivity itself ” (Jameson 1986: 85–6). Despite critiques of Jameson (Ahmad 1986) and the liminal geopolitical status of Cyprus on the edge of the EU, we believe that his analysis offers useful theoretical insights for our purposes. In addition, as it has already been pointed out elsewhere, it corresponds to a popular mode of discussing the recent past in Cyprus by local social actors through narratives linking the personal with the collective (Papadakis 1998). Shohat employs Jameson’s theoretical insights in her analysis of Israeli cinema, citing various reasons for her allegorical readings, which also apply to Cyprus: a nation in the state of self-formulation … shifting borders of the state itself… constant questioning of nature of Israeli identity … all the ways in which the individual is implicated in collective destiny … the personal and the political, private and the historical inexorably linked … where individual dramas tend to be writ large on a national scale. (Shohat 2010: 163)

More importantly, the Cypriot films, in our view, demand an allegorical reading due to this usually being the explicit intention of the filmmakers. The reading of the political privileged in this chapter will be presented in conjunction with other readings, discussing aspects such as form, narrative, characters, and dramaturgy. Political constraints (or pressures) influence, we

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argue, such aspects of the films resulting in what we call an excess of the political. This may take different forms depending on the political issues that concern the filmmakers: an excessive desire to get the political point across, a fear of being accused as unpatriotic, or a worry regarding the anticipated political reading of the films, among others. This excess manifests itself in various ways, mostly through redundancies: lengthy political diatribes by characters, scenes unnecessary to plot development yet making (absolutely) clear who the evil side is, and various narrative problems, to name a few. The choice of form itself (national allegory) also suggests an excess of the political. We return to Jameson in the conclusion to offer some reflections on the challenges of “Third World” cinema vis-à-vis popular “Western” cinema.

Greek (Cypriot) visions: Missing persons, refugees and victimization in 1974 We argue that the dominant paradigm of Cypriot cinema is that of a politically ethnocentric cinema, since the majority of Greek-Cypriot films tend to erase the internal conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots during the 1960s and employ a strong Greek-Cypriot viewpoint focusing on 1974. As Papadakis (1993) argued, the pre-1974 conflicts have been silenced and largely erased from Greek-Cypriot social memory. Thus the return of history on film is predominantly limited to the Greek-Cypriot reading of the events of 1974. One of the key films that strongly resonates Greek-Cypriot cinema’s ethnocentric (Hellenocentric) approach to the Cyprus Problem is Pantzis’ atmospheric fiction film The Rape of Aphrodite. The film is about the individual quest of Greek-Cypriot Evagoras, who returns to Cyprus (also known as the legendary birthplace of Aphrodite) a few days after the Turkish military offensive in the summer of 1974 in search of his wife (Aphrodite) and son who went missing while on holiday on the island. Evagoras, a former EOKA freedom-fighter, who emigrated to the UK in the 1960s and holds a post at the University of London as a Greek studies scholar, embarks on a journey that expresses a loss that is personal, but at the same time, through Pantzis’ allegorization of the journey, a collective angst is revealed. Evagoras’ character formation is based on the premise of the insider and the outsider. He has been active in struggles that contributed to a specific identity formation in Cyprus; however, he is also an expatriate. The events he experiences during the search for his family are



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criticized by him through references back to an “original” national goal: the abandoned cause of Enosis. Therefore, his gaze does not only represent an insider’s longing for an “original” past, but it is also structured as an account of an outsider’s visit to an “unfamiliar” space. The account of the events of 1974 is subjectively constructed not only because of Pantzis’ personal allegorization, but also because Evagoras is the main narrator of the story. “Evagoras” was the name of a fighter with EOKA for Enosis, as well as a king of ancient Cyprus whom nationalist historiography has cast as a proto-Enosis nationalist. Evagoras’ subjective (Hellenocentric) point of view facilitates the voicing of the director’s personal point of view since Pantzis is a filmmaker who presents himself as an intellectually apprehensive outsider and an insider who experienced the consequences of the war. In an interview, Pantzis explicitly pronounces himself as an enotikos, a supporter of union with Greece, a position widely discredited among Greek Cypriots who experienced 1974 as “betrayal from Greece,” and for various other pragmatic reasons.4 The end of the search—Evagoras’ suicide attack on the territory controlled by the Turkish army—is an attempt to honor the national aspirations that Evagoras fought for when he was a young man. Such a militant vision and the way it is portrayed by Pantzis is a product of a strong personal point of view, which does not “open up a concrete perspective on the real future” (Jameson 1986: 77). The director’s view broadly supports the official Greek-Cypriot understanding of the events, while the references to Enosis are not only symbolically articulated, they are explicitly expressed through a play of symbols and documentation, which we discuss shortly in reference to the National Struggle Museum. However, Pantzis silences other sociopolitical formations who might not share this vision (e.g., Left-wing Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots). Instead, Pantzis is keen to draw a distinction between a heroic-nationalist rhetoric—expressed through the “pure” EOKA struggle—and a corrupted nationalism—expressed through the treacherous EOKA B organization. The ending of the film is ambiguous as it is not clear whether Pantzis shatters any hope for the return of the refugees or calls for a more dynamic (Palestinian-inspired, perhaps) resistance against the continuing Turkish military presence on the island. Pantzis activates the “good” Turkish-Cypriot image during the narration of a wounded pro-Makarios soldier, who received friendly treatment from a Turkish-Cypriot shepherd; however, this treatment is described as unexpected behavior, in contrast, as we shall explain, to other Greek-Cypriot films. Pantzis’ representation of the Turkish-Cypriot perspective is in essence absent, as the

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Turkish-Cypriot shepherd is introduced as a silhouette on the horizon through a series of flashbacks that frame him as part of a Greek-Cypriot character’s memory. Our reading of The Rape of Aphrodite’s political dynamics focuses on Pantzis’ voicing of bitterness for the loss of an “original” national vision, Enosis, which was poisoned and penetrated by outside interference. On another level, Pantzis offers a critique of the economic growth of Cyprus after 1974 as depoliticizing Greek Cypriots due to an influx of foreign financial aid and an emphasis on personal economic enrichment, through the character of Onisilos, also a former member of EOKA now turned unscrupulous entrepreneur. Therefore, certain choices like the overbearing presence of the British flag imply that the enemy is not only Turkey. The film offers a reductionist point of view of the violent period of inter-communal conflicts in the 1960s, blaming TMT for the victimization of Turkish Cypriots. Evagoras’ visit to the Museum of National Struggle in the Greek-Cypriot side of Nicosia, dedicated to the EOKA struggle for Enosis, is a key scene that revisits idealized images of past struggles in order to stress the current national disorientation that the director emphatically expresses through a loose causality in the development of the narrative, and through a focus on desolate spaces. This is a museum whose aim is to commemorate the Enosis struggle, and urge future generations to continue it (critically discussed by Papadakis 1994), much in line with Pantzis’ romantic vision. The film maps a tour of the “monuments” that glorify the 1955–9 period; Evagoras’ gaze in this sequence transforms the mise-en-scène from an externalization of the personal to a documentary-like commemoration of the EOKA struggle. The Rape of Aphrodite’s libidinal and political dimension share the same representational space; therefore the rewriting of memory in the film is organized around discontinuous elements that build a direct relationship between the private and the collective (national). The haunting opening frame of the film does not prepare us for a conventional introduction of Evagoras and his search. The sound of a jet fighter ripping across the sky and dropping a bomb is heard while the close-up of a male character fades in from black. The character is a Greek-Cypriot soldier, who remains unknown, with a bandage over his wounded eyes. The soldier describes what he experienced during Turkish air raids. His narration is a cry of disappointment due to the “betrayal” from “Mother Greece,” which did not protect Cyprus from the Turkish military offensive. The landscape in the background of the shot is a field of olive trees—a Mediterranean landscape—and black smoke comes from the left and right of



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the off-screen space. Pantzis starts to build up a motif in this shot, where the elements of the battlefield are transposed to a seemingly isolated landscape. The foreground of the frame—which enacts an attempt to document the horrors of war as witnessed by the soldier—and the background are discontinuous. This pattern is repeated twice more, however, the third time reveals that the soldiers narrating their experiences are placed on a raised platform and they perform for Onisilos and his family, who are dressed like members of the haute bourgeoisie. Onisilos indifferently applauds the soldier’s monologue, while other characters parade in the foreground and add a realist dimension to the already fragmentary presentation of elements in the specific shot. Pantzis begins his film with a close-up instead of a range of establishing shots that would provide concrete information about the space and time of the narrative. This leads to a philosophically inclined construction of a symbolic political and libidinal space that transcends the limitation of the close-up since Pantzis does not really intend to invite an emotional identification with the character centered in the frame. Even though Pantzis denies the viewer the presentation of historical information about Cyprus in the opening (as is common with other historically-inclined Cypriot films), this first allegorical shot exemplifies the failure of the realization of Enosis, as the culmination of the politically and culturally “naturalized” bond between Cyprus and Greece. When the soldier in the opening shot expresses his disillusionment with the historical circumstances, his eyes start bleeding (see Figure 4.1). This suggests Oedipus’

Figure 4.1  Oedipal preoccupations with “Mother Greece” in Pantzis’ The Rape of Aphrodite

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tearing out of his own eyes when he learned the truth about his predetermined fate. Pantzis reinvents this symbolic act in a Freudian fashion, as the desire for “Mother Greece,” which has been prohibited by higher political machinations. The Oedipal conflict, as interpreted by Pantzis, seems to be unresolved since on another level the male characters in the film (including Evagoras, who failed to prevent the tragic end of his family) fail to fulfill their “proper” role as protectors and therefore they retreat to an undefined space, which may suggest a lack of being. The soldiers-performers remove their clothes and cover their naked body with a piece of white cloth and then they disappear in the background. Alternatively, they are shown to be consumed by a newly formed bourgeois mentality due to the post-1974 rapid socioeconomic growth. The role of the protector is finally fulfilled by Evagoras whose actions— including his mature sexual role—suggest the reinstatement of a sense of balance; yet, his actions can also be seen as manifestations of an extreme superego, which transcends the established political reality that abandoned the cause of Enosis. The rebirth of Evagoras’ moral drive through his encounter with Aphrodite, a prostitute, suggests that the discontinuous elements associated with Evagoras’ screen presence, before this encounter, are outbursts of the id. In this case the id is to be read as a lethargic superego. For example, while Evagoras is riding a taxi at the start of the film, unexplained machine-gun style shots make the dust explode on the edge of the road. These explosions, we suggest, could be interpreted as outbursts of the id. The awakening of the superego is realized in the end, where Evagoras’ suicidal final action may seem irrational on the individual level, but Pantzis’ obvious allegorical intentions elevate this action to a subjective “national” level. This act is, in our view, meant to be perceived as a “rational” act of resistance in the face of shifting historical circumstances. Pantzis names all his young female characters Aphrodite, yet Evagoras’ encounter with the prostitute is the one that marks his, as well as the raped female body’s (that of the prostitute and Evagoras’ female cousin) transformation into a metonymy of the national body. Through Evagoras’ encounter with the female characters of the film, Pantzis exposes concealed elements of patriarchal Cypriot society; yet Evagoras’ awakening toward the end of the film is performed in a manner that reinforces the centrality of masculinity in maintaining social order. Pantzis is criticizing a system that failed to care for the victimization of women during the turbulent period of conflict and war. In accusing Turkey, Greek Cypriots have often referred to rapes of women by the Turkish army. Pantzis is, in our view, criticizing the exclusion and



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stigmatization of these women due to the patriarchal structures of GreekCypriot society, while at the same time they have been used as symbols of “Turkish barbarism.” Such women were excluded because their community read their “ruined” body as a disruption of the homogeneity of the GreekCypriot community. In contrast to Evagoras’ idealized masculinity, Pantzis creates a perverted image of masculine authority through EOKA B members, who are consistently represented as uncivilized brutes. Pantzis, however, also employs the image of the female body (of Cyprus-Aphrodite) that has been violated (by the invading Turkish army), just as Greek-Cypriot official discourse has used the rapes of Greek-Cypriot women as a symbol of “Turkish barbarism.” Michael Papas’ film Tomorrow’s Warrior is another ambitious film privileging the Greek-Cypriot point of view. Interestingly, the heroic ending of the film is similar to Pantzis’ ending; the main difference is that the didacticism of Papas’ film is more blatant than Pantzis’ nightmarish confusion of values caused by the events of 1974. The young protagonist of Tomorrow’s Warrior, called Orestis (an ancient Greek name with mythological connotations), devastated by the events of 1974 and inspired by the heroic past of his ancestors, imagines himself as a warrior. The externalization of his desire to avenge the death of his grandfather by the Turkish military forces is lifted to the level of the national and the boy’s final surreal suicidal attack on the cease-fire line embodies a call for resistance, which like Pantzis’ film honors the values of past struggles. This entails the vague proposition for the emergence of a purified hero whose fighting spirit is inspired by the stories of EOKA heroes, like Orestis’ uncle, Markos. The national allegory expressed through the individual experience is also achieved through Papas’ notable montage sequences, where the reaction shots of the characters to the advancement of the Turkish army take the form of an Eisensteinian typage, through which the main characters become representative figures of the agonizing Greek-Cypriot population. Thus, in these reaction shots individual characters represent the external traits of a collective experience. In a manner similar to Shohat’s description of the intentions of allegorical Israeli cinema faithful to the Zionist cause, the above films wish to “inspire commitment and dedication” (Shohat 2010: 10) to a cause specific to the liberation of Cyprus from the continuing Turkish military presence. The films’ efforts to inspire loyalty through a superfluous/excessive rewriting of history on film are interlocked with authentic radio announcements, which aim to establish historical realism. Papas’ and Pantzis’ films shape a historical memory that reflects the

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most simplistic (and official) construction of the past shifting all blame on Turkish aggression and British-American machinations. Two other films that explore 1974 and its consequences from a GreekCypriot viewpoint are Under the Stars and Roads and Oranges. The narratives of these films echo two major Greek-Cypriot governmental campaigns to sustain the collective memory of loss: the Greek-Cypriot refugees (prosfiges) and the missing persons (agnooumenoi) from the 1974 war. Under the Stars tells the story of Loucas, a young man whose parents died during the 1974 war and who lives with his uncle in the old city of Nicosia, near the dividing line, which continually reminds him of the fact that he was violently displaced from his village. Thus he resists adapting to the new conditions of his life, exemplifying what Zetter described as a “refugee consciousness” (1994: 311), a rejection of the present situation and refusal to integrate. Loucas is obsessed with his desire to visit his inaccessible village in order to reclaim his childhood memories. If Loucas represents the problem of being stuck in the past, Phoebe—whom he meets while she is smuggling goods across the border—represents those who have tried to bury the past by focusing on material gain (even by profiting from smuggling with the Turkish army). Phoebe seems to know how to get across and he pays her to drive him to his village on the other side of the division. It turns out that Phoebe and Loucas are from the same village, even though Phoebe initially concealed her past. When the characters reach their destination, their memories emerge as a poetic shared space, which allows them to rejoin with their lost families and their community. While Loucas and Phoebe’s birthplace is constructed as a deserted space devoid of current Turkish-Cypriot inhabitants, their rediscovery of positive past memories animate the “barren” space with a village festival in a celebration of community. Both partake in this (magical–realist) experience of their extinct village community. As Zetter observed, in his studies of refugees, “images are frequently borrowed from the past and presented almost as an idealized mirror with which to emphasize the current disorientation and to convey the wish to return” (1994: 311). Georgiou offers a similar description through the way he reinvents the past; however his intention is not to recycle the Greek-Cypriot official political rhetoric of return. By contrast, Georgiou quietly deflates the mechanisms that sustain the mythical dimension of return. The dreamlike encounter the characters had with their families is soon over; yet, the love that grows between them suggests the formation of a new identity. The two young lovers are, in our view, too hastily freed from the dilemmas



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Figure 4.2  On the road to childhood memories in Georgiou’s Under the Stars

imposed by the division of the island and now seem to be able to move on. The film suggests that, while aware of the complexities the division has caused, the characters recognize that old communal structures cannot be rebuilt as they cuddle among ruins in a way that does not idealize space. Parallel to this action, at the end of the film Georgiou chooses to return to the daily routine of soldiers guarding the cease-fire line and frames the fatal shooting of one of the Greek-Cypriot soldiers by a Turkish soldier. He could be suggesting here that despite the partial resolution of personal issues which haunted the two main characters, the solution of the Cyprus Problem is far from close, given the presence of the Turkish army. However, the Turkish soldier’s aggression, as well as the beginning of the film which silences the events before the 1974 Turkish invasion, reactivates narratives pertaining to the presentations of the Greek Cypriots as the sole victims. It is, in our view, as if the director wished to make clear that, at the end of the day, the Turks are aggressive and violent, and thus realigns himself with the dominant Greek-Cypriot political viewpoint (which he somewhat challenged on the issue of return). The scene with the unprovoked, brutal shooting of a Greek Cypriot by a Turkish soldier was not necessary for plot development. For this reason we regard it as an example of what we earlier called the excess of the political. Roads and Oranges is about the daring journey of two sisters to Turkey in search of their missing father. The missing persons issue has been described “as the purest representation of Greek-Cypriot righteousness and victimhood

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against the Turkish aggressor” (Yakinthou 2008: 16). While enjoying the sun at an isolated beach, the central character (Daphne) listens to a news announcement on the radio that two Greek-Cypriot war prisoners had escaped from Adana prison camp in Turkey. The older sister (Anna) is indifferent to the rumors; however the younger sister is determined to go to Turkey. Eventually, Anna joins Daphne and together they discover a diverse space which maintains its otherness, but at the same time invites them to challenge their fixed beliefs through their encounters with local people. The main characters in this film and in Under the Stars, which are essentially road-movies, mature throughout their journeys. This maturity can be read as a rejection of (over-optimistic) Greek-Cypriot political orthodoxies of return, either of the missing persons, or of refugees to recreate lost communities. Eventually, the two sisters return without their father, having realized that the news report was probably based on rumors, and the film presents them as having lost some of the agonizing “burden” associated with the questions surrounding their father’s fate. Hence, the director appears to subtly deflate rumors associated with the fate of the missing persons. The director expresses her dissatisfaction with the dominant social structures of Greek-Cypriot society represented here through the inertia of the male characters and the way media play up the myth of return. However, the film at various points reproduces naïve Greek-Cypriot views (e.g. of Turkey as a space of ancient Greek ruins) and remains almost entirely within the Greek-Cypriot political imaginary. Much later, in 2004, the location and exhumation of human bodies buried in mass graves in parts of the island began by the United Nations Committee for Missing Persons. According to Yakinthou (2008) this development has destabilized the mythical presentation of the missing persons issue. The Last Homecoming is an interesting film insofar as it strives toward reconciliation in the broadest sense: both among Greek Cypriots and between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. The film presents an idyllic period in the summer of 1974 (just before the July coup and Turkish military offensive) during which Alexandra, a young woman who comes from Greece to marry Orestis, falls in love with his brother Stephanos, creating familial havoc just as Cyprus is falling apart due to interferences from “Mother Greece.” As regards Greek Cypriots, the character of Manolis, an EOKA B conspirator participating in the coup against the democratically elected government, is presented as driven by the noblest ideals of unfettered love and admiration for Greece, which may ultimately make him go too far. It is implied that all this could also be due to his frustrated love for Phaedra, the mother of Orestis and Stephanos.



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In the end, Manolis’ effort to save Stephanos leads to his death by other EOKA B terrorists, thus ultimately presenting him in a sympathetic light. In contrast to how the EOKA B members are presented in Pantzis’ film (a highly negative presentation), the effort here is to suggest that Manolis was carried away by high ideals and even sacrificed his life to save the son of the woman he loved. The representation of Turkish Cypriots is even more problematic. Greek Cypriots are presented as political, cultured, and sophisticated, with Turkish Cypriots as simple, apolitical, and happily working for the Greek-Cypriot boss. Even in a village, it is implied, ordinary Greek-Cypriot villagers partake in the highest form of culture, busily preparing to stage an ancient Greek tragedy on the seafront, while Aziz, the main Turkish-Cypriot character is presented as joyfully tending the garden. Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots are shown as happily coexisting, while it is (surprisingly) revealed in the end that this whole nostalgic view of the summer before the tragic 1974 events was actually the reminiscences of the Turkish-Cypriot narrator, Nellin. Nellin, the mute daugher of Aziz, has almost no role in the film, though it is suggested that she is in love with Orestis, who does not care for her. This is a clear case of what Shohat has called “ventriloqual monologism” (2010: 231), where what the director wants to say, or in this instance, the political message the (Greek-Cypriot) director wishes to present, is put in the mouth of the (Turkish Cypriot) Other. Thus, while the film is about reconciliation, the Greek-Cypriot viewpoint totally dominates, even while it purports to present events from the perspective of a young Turkish-Cypriot woman. The script could have worked without the employment of a Turkish Cypriot to tell the story, i.e., make the political points that a Greek Cypriot wished to make, in a further instance of the excess of the political.

Figure 4.3  The all-too-happy Turkish-Cypriot gardener in The Last Homecoming

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If in The Last Homecoming the interethnic (Greek-Cypriot/Turkish-Cypriot) romance does not bloom, it holds center stage in The Road to Ithaca (1999). The protagonist, Turkish Cypriot Yasmin, is desperately searching for her lost Greek-Cypriot lover Telemachos from whom she has been separated due to the events of 1974. We do not dwell on this film as it is another stark example of “ventriloqual monologism,” except to note that it takes the notion of betrayal from “Mother Greece” further than any other Greek-Cypriot film discussed. The main Greek character Michalis, lover of Yasmin’s Greek-Cypriot friend Eleni, whom he impregnated and abandoned, is revealed in the end to have been a major in the Turkish secret services.

Visions of reconciliation In a joint statement, Zaim and Chrysanthou explained: One of us is Turkish Cypriot and the other Greek Cypriot. Some years ago we began cooperating in the production of films. In this way we wanted to show people that we were aiming for peace, reconciliation and the reunification of our island. Together we made a documentary (“Parallel trips”). Panicos was the co-producer for the film ÇAMUR (“Mud” 2003, directed by Derviş Zaim) and Derviş is the co-producer for the film AKAMAS (2006, directed by Panicos Chrysanthou) … [AKAMAS is] A film about reconciliation between people who had been enemies and fought wars against each other.5

Akamas, directed by Greek Cypriot Panicos Chrysanthou, has been the most controversial film in Cyprus. The film follows in the footsteps of other collaborative works by Chrysanthou with Turkish Cypriots, beginning with the documentary Our Wall (1993), where he collaborated with Niyazi Kizilyurek, a Turkish-Cypriot political scientist. This documentary was groundbreaking in attempting to present the recent history from the perspective of both sides, focusing on how both suffered: “… Greek and Turkish Cypriots, living separate in a divided Cyprus, but united in the same pain … both of them are victims of war and nationalism …”6 Its bold critique of both sides’ official policies of only presenting the pain of their own community and silencing the others rendered it too controversial to be screened on any Greek-Cypriot or Turkish-Cypriot (public or private) television channel.7 The synopsis from the film’s website is illuminating regarding what Akamas strives toward:



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OMERIS, a Turkish-Cypriot boy, grows up with Greek Cypriots during the innocent years of his homeland. He has been taught that human beings have no differences, thought [sic] they call themselves Greek or Turk, Muslim or Christian. When he falls in love with a Greek-Cypriot girl [Rodou], he realizes that the world around is not as he expected. Love’s game has some surprises for him. Destiny leads him to fight in order to stay with his beloved woman, when people around him are moving in the opposite direction and heading toward separation and partition. He is forced to confront absurd fanaticism [ethnikismos (nationalism) in the original Greek text] that invades his personal life and tries to crush it.8

The film carries us through the major historical events from the 1950s to the 1970s. The booklet by Chrysanthou (2011) accompanying the DVD presents the director’s thoughts and explanations about the film. The basic premise is an age of innocence and coexistence, whereby “this more or less ‘clean’ and ‘innocent’ space, unites two children (also clean and innocent) …” (Chrysanthou 2011: 50). This is disturbed by outside interferences (the British colonial power, later the Greek coup, and the Turkish military offensive), and, as importantly, by the forces of nationalism that create conflict and animosity resulting in the division of Cyprus: “… while the others went down the crazy path of nationalism and lost their homeland, they resisted and managed to stay together at the place they wanted to be. Even if they are paying a dear price.” (Chrysanthou 2011: 50). This is where Chrysanthou radically differs from the official narrative that places all blame on outsiders: his critique of Greek-Cypriot (and TurkishCypriot) Right-wing nationalists, his willingness to apportion blame on both sides, as well as to empathize with the pain of both. The film is also peppered with symbolic references to an ancient Hellenic heritage. Rodou, for example, is linked to Aphrodite, and initially falls in love with EOKA fighter AdonisEvagoras.9 While the film shares to a significant extent the official Greek-Cypriot premise of past peaceful coexistence, Chrysanthou vividly presents conflicts between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots in the 1960s, which most other Greek-Cypriot filmmakers avoid. The main source of the public controversy was Chrysanthou’s presentation of EOKA, the Greek-Cypriot, anti-colonial fighters’ organization. The controversy engulfed the film during the shooting period, well before it was screened. The most controversial scene was when a Greek-Cypriot EOKA fighter, AdonisEvagoras, executes—in public view, inside the church—a man regarded as a traitor, after first asking him to open his mouth in order to shoot him through

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Figure 4.4  Naturalizing love across ethnic boundaries in Chrysanthou’s Akamas

the mouth. Another character who cooperates with EOKA is Kayias, who is also a traitor, “and despite liking to appear as being a man of principles and a great patriot, the only principle that he really has is his own profit, even if he has to walk over dead bodies” (Chrysanthou 2011: 54). In the Turkish-Cypriot community, Murat is presented in the role of the Right-wing nationalist, as “the equivalent of Kayias, an opportunist and without a trace of humaneness on him” (Chrysanthou 2011: 62). The best friend of Omeris is Turkish Cypriot Naim, who “having been raised through the trade union struggles … manages to reach compromises which at times might be ‘painful’ but also realistic, as they are based on logic …” (Chrysanthou 2011: 72).10 In other words, Chrysanthou sets up an opposition, not based on ethnic lines but on political affiliation: Left stands for good—those who worked together, identified with Cyprus, and tried to keep Cyprus together and Right for evil—those who fought against the other community in support of either union with Greece or partition, and identified with the respective “motherland.” As he underlines at the start of the film, with a statement that could not be clearer, Akamas is “A Cypriot film.” Many newspaper articles were written about the standoff between Chrysanthou and the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus. The latter insisted that Chrysanthou failed to fulfill various contractual obligations and included a scene (the killing by EOKA of the traitor inside the Church) that had not been agreed upon, while Chrysanthou accused the Ministry of creating obstacles for political reasons and of censorship. Most of the articles focused on the representation of EOKA.11 It should be noted that Greek-Cypriot official historiography, both in history schoolbooks and in



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official publications, has been silent on the issue of killings by EOKA of Greek Cypriots who were regarded as traitors. It is mostly Left-wing historians who have explored this, arguing that it was mostly Leftists who were branded as traitors and killed or tortured due to their political views (Droussiotis 1998a; Graikos 1982; Poumpouris 1993). In our view, it has by now been documented well enough that such killings took place, while Chrysanthou stated that the scene in question was based on a true story.12 Chrysanthou thus broke one of the historical taboos of the Greek-Cypriot community, even if such views have been widespread among Leftists. We wish to approach this scene—as well as the ensuing controversy—from a different viewpoint as it illustrates most clearly our main points. It shows an emphasis on the reading of the political, the literal-historical (in terms of its historical facticity), and the allegorical with individual characters representing sociopolitical collectivities. Most importantly, we argue that this scene was redundant in terms of plot development as it was not necessary in the development of the romance between Omeris and Rodou. Yet, the director clearly wished to make his political point, despite the controversy and the problems he encountered. This powerful intrusion of politics is precisely what we mean by the excess of the political. This point is further illustrated by the narrator, emerging at various points in the film in the form of a blind folk-poet representing wisdom, the authentic voice of the “common people,” direct hence “objective” witnessing of historical events (in order to provide the historical context), and, more importantly in our view, to present the director’s reading of political history. His blindness is a reference to mythic prophets in Homer’s epics and therefore this choice acquires the function of a didactic allegory. The use of the romance in the film to suggest love between ordinary people, irrespective of ethnic origin, and to present ethnic boundaries as somehow unnatural or unacceptable, if they prevent the protagonists from following their hearts’ dictates (Akamas, The Road to Ithaca) raises a number of issues. While it suggests the presence of a political problem, the “solution” is transposed to a libidinal, emotional level, a gesture which hinders rather than enables critical political thought. In addition, it presents the audience with an emotional blackmail: who, with their heart in the right place, would not wish them to be together? Finally, as we explain in the following paragraph, it ultimately fails, as it cannot please both sides of a politically-involved audience. Even if Chrysanthou clearly regards this as a film about reconciliation that could potentially speak to all Cypriots, this does not appear likely. The negative

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reaction of certain Right-wing Greek Cypriots has already been discussed. We suggest that the film could prove infuriating to Turkish Cypriots, due to the Turkish-Cypriot character appearing almost as a Greek Cypriot: he is performed by a Greek-Cypriot actor, he speaks the Greek-Cypriot dialect fluently, grows up with a Greek-Cypriot family, and loves a Greek-Cypriot woman to the point where he is even prepared to cooperate with EOKA in the cause of union with Greece! There can be little doubt that were Greek Cypriots faced with an analogous Greek-Cypriot character in a Turkish-Cypriot film (who speaks Turkish fluently, cooperates with TMT etc.), they would strongly dislike him rather than identify with him. After all, the bottom line is that Omeris has chosen to live in the Greek-Cypriot side (even if in the social isolation of Akamas), and not follow Turkish Cypriots to the north. From a Turkish-Cypriot perspective, he may be seen as someone who has betrayed his people: one whose politics were determined, at the end of the day, by the whimsical passions of the heart. Mud (2003), the film by Turkish-Cypriot director Derviş Zaim (co-produced with Chrysanthou), we regard as the film that more than any other in Cyprus challenged and critiqued the filmmaker’s own community’s official version of history. At the same time, we also regard this as the most confusing film of all under discussion. Strutton (2003) wrote in his review for Variety: Students of recent Cypriot history will probably find the complex allusions and references in the film easy enough to decipher, but the uninitiated may well be baffled. Zaim’s inability to bring clarity to these tragic undercurrents ultimately undermines his film.

The problem is that even “students of recent Cypriot history” like us still found it baffling. We suggest that these are interlinked: the confusing experience of watching the film, results, in our view, from Zaim’s bold political move to radically challenge the Turkish-Cypriot official view and the resulting political difficulties this gave rise to. Notably, this is the only film out of all those discussed in this chapter that did not receive official support. The film is about Ali, a forty-something mute Turkish-Cypriot man, and his friends, all in their forties (see also Chapter 3). They have all been subjected to, but also perpetrated, acts of (literally) unspeakable violence during the 1974 war. Why Ali is unable to speak is not clearly explained but it is suggested that this is due to the traumas from 1974. His good friend Temel obsessively records himself



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on his camcorder confessing to atrocities he committed against (unarmed and underage) Greek Cypriots and then ritually destroys the video cassettes: “On 18 August 1974 I killed many people, Greek Cypriots, for vengeance. I killed them because they are Greek. Their graves are in the mudflats. Nobody knows except only those who did it know: me Temel, Husnu, Halil.” (Halil is engaged to Ayşe, a doctor and Ali’s sister.) To redeem himself, Temel is involved in what appears to be a well-meaning but ludicrous “artsy” bi-communal project whereby displaced people in the two sides are paid by a (naïve) foreign statesponsor to exchange sculptures of themselves. The statues are placed in their former homes where a person from the other community now lives, in an effort to promote understanding between the two estranged sides. Yet, this reconciliation project does not work, as many statues are eventually thrown in the sea. Ali, about to finish his army service in north Cyprus, is posted at the aforementioned mudflats where people come to collect mud, due to its healing properties. There lie buried the Greek Cypriots whom Temel and Halil had killed, while Ali begins to discover ancient statues in a well. Halil is quick to exploit this “buried heritage” by trying to sell them for exorbitant prices to the antiquities smuggling mafia. Eventually, they are all killed by the mafia at the mudflats. Here Zaim activates a cinematic space which accommodates both the libidinal and the collective and invites an allegorical reading of the use of mud in the film. This invented space does not refer to a polluted national vision, as in the case of The Rape of Aphrodite. Zaim rather uses the well as a metaphor to poetically present what seems to be the political position of the film: that the healing of war trauma should have as a departure point the unearthing of each community’s crimes. In other words, confession and acknowledgment should

Figure 4.5  Muddled symbolism in Zaim’s Mud

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begin to take place, instead of other processes, such as art-oriented peacebuilding projects or a return to “myths” of the past. “I wanted to show how both societies have been affected by the conflict, how there is a kind of trauma for the people,” Zaim explained.13 The film is clearly an effort to exorcize this trauma using a mixture of allegorical, surrealist, and symbolic devices. The trauma is related to the 1974 war: what the characters and, by extension, Turkish Cypriots suffered, but crucially the film centers upon the violence Turkish Cypriots inflicted on Greek Cypriots that they cannot openly discuss and thus haunts them. Hence, the mudflats are the site of an atrocity but also carry with them the potential of healing. The acknowledgment of violence inflicted by Turkish Cypriots on Greek Cypriots is a radically critical and political move on the part of the director, given the lack of official acknowledgment by Turkish Cypriots. Zaim is suggesting here that both sides committed literally unspeakable acts of violence against each other. There are also other significant critiques of Turkish-Cypriot post-1974 society that could be read in the film: a militaristic society plagued by propaganda with constant radio announcements about killings on the Buffer Zone; a society driven by greed and illegal activities like the smuggling of antiquities. Zaim, in an almost sacrilegious move, also illustrates the sad plight of those that have been officially designated as martyrs. “I’m only remembered because of my injuries. Otherwise I’d be nothing,” sadly muses a Turkish-Cypriot man who lost his leg during the war. The film presents the Turkish-Cypriot side in a dystopian vision of oppressive heat, with most action taking place in the sun-dried, salty mudflats, where cripples gather to collect the healing mud. As Zaim said of his main character, Ali: “Not being able to speak is the state of not being able to express yourself and explain your problem.”14 We suggest that this could also describe the plight of the director himself, resulting in this ultimately confusing film. He, too, has difficulty in clearly speaking and explaining what he would like to say in his film, due to his politically sacrilegious move and the multiple political constraints that Zaim faced: the excess of the political. “Zaim denies that he used the complex metaphors as a way of avoiding conflict with the authorities; rather, he wanted to avoid being trapped by history and its narrative,” notes an article on Mud in the British Vertigo magazine (Alsanjak 2004).15 Zaim further commented that: “I’m not a political filmmaker, and if I was one it would be a dangerous thing. But because of my history—I was born and live in Cyprus—it’s something I feel I have to make films about”(Alsanjak 2004).



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In our view, the first quote above may provide a clue to the difficulty Mud has in working well as a film. After all, this is a film addressed to a broad Turkish audience as Zaim said (to justify his choice of using standard Turkish instead of the Turkish-Cypriot dialect), it is one co-produced with a Greek Cypriot (presumably hoping to also “speak” to Greek Cypriots), it employs an exclusively Turkish-Cypriot perspective (in terms of the protagonist and main characters), it begins from the Turkish-Cypriot official position (a past of conflict), yet also radically subverts it. Even if this is a film about reconciliation, there may not have been any way to reconcile all the constraints mentioned above, and this could explain its indecipherability. The film was made when the Right was in power on the Turkish-Cypriot side, a time when (Leftist) dissenting views were not well tolerated. Zaim’s statement (“I am not a political filmmaker …”) appears as an implausible denial. The collaboration with a Greek-Cypriot co-producer, as well as the film itself, are stark and powerful political gestures, and their denial not only sounds unconvincing but could be an indication of yet another level of contradiction faced by the director. It is ironic (and unclear if the irony is intended) that Zaim casts such an ironic glance on art-based, bi-communal reconciliation projects, as exemplified by Temel, in a reconciliation-oriented, art-house film whose production is bi-communal. Another possible explanation is that Zaim is a director who likes to experiment in each film, as attested by the different genres, styles, techniques, and narrative structures he has employed, and experimenting entails risks regarding the outcome.

Turkish-Cypriot fears: Warnings from 1963 Zaim’s second film on Cyprus, Shadows and Faces (2010) begins with a statement providing the historical context: … In 1963, the Greek Cypriots proposed a series of constitutional changes claiming the state could not function. Turkish Cypriots rejected the proposals. Tension among Greek and Turkish Cypriots escalated into armed conflict. Being better armed, the Greek Cypriots drove many Turks out of their settlements during the clashes over the push for union with Greece.

The film recounts the story of (Turkish Cypriot) Salih, a Karagoz-puppet shadow player and his (Turkish Cypriot) daughter Ruhşar, who, driven out of their village by the Greek-Cypriot police, seek refuge in a nearby mixed village

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with their relative Veli (see also chapter 3). On their way to yet another village where Salih can receive care for his diabetes, Ruhşar is separated from Salih (after they flee a Greek-Cypriot patrol), and returns to her uncle Veli fearing that her father may have been killed. The storyline mostly focuses on Veli and his Greek-Cypriot neighbor Anna, both of whom try to prevent violence from erupting in the village, each striving to control the hot-headed youth of their own community. Fear and suspicion create an atmosphere of paranoia, where people suddenly begin to “watch their shadows,” i.e. their erstwhile friends and neighbors who, having suddenly lost their individual human face, could be conspirators working for the “enemy” ethnic group. In the ensuing confrontations, the very people who were trying to prevent violence from flaring up, like Anna and Veli, end up shooting others and being killed. Eventually, Ruhşar is reunited with her father in a Turkish-Cypriot refugee camp. Unlike Mud, Shadows and Faces received official support from the TurkishCypriot authorities and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey, and it was not co-produced with a Greek-Cypriot. Also, unlike Mud, this film is mostly realistic and the messages of the film come across more clearly. There are a few magical–realist moments of dreams or scenes involving shadows and the Karagoz puppets, and interesting editing transitions, where the previous interior scene location sometimes transforms into a still photograph, which frames the space as a lifeless empty room. This motif, which disrupts the continuity of the narrative, may function as flash-forwards or “warnings” of the consequences of the growing hostility between the two communities. If Mud criticized Turkish Cypriots for not acknowledging their acts of violence against Greek Cypriots, Shadows and Faces focuses on the emblematic period of Turkish-Cypriot suffering starting from 1963. The film is focalized through Ruhşar, the young Turkish-Cypriot woman who loses her father to be finally reunited as refugees, and thus employs a strong Turkish-Cypriot viewpoint based on the official Turkish-Cypriot historical premise of conflict. However, it presents a complex story from coexistence to conflict. In our view, it bears a political message suggesting division rather than reunification. The core of the film is about the common struggle of (Greek Cypriot) Anna and her Turkish-Cypriot friend and neighbor Veli to prevent violence from flaring up. The mixed village is shown as a community where people frequent other’s coffee shops, have good, personal, and neighborly relationships, often cooperate, and speak in each other’s language. The central issue of the film is about the gradual transformation of the village, as interethnic clashes that



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Figure 4.6  Turkish Cypriots fleeing Greek-Cypriot violence in Zaim’s Shadows and Faces.

take place elsewhere make co-villagers, especially the hot-headed youth, suspicious of each other’s motives and actions. Suspicion inexorably leads to people arming and discussions of pre-emptive strikes before “they attack us.” Anna, the major Greek-Cypriot character, is presented in a highly sympathetic light (as is Veli). When killings initially begin to take place, those involved may also show remorse or a sense of shock at their own violent actions. Christos, for example, the son of Anna, is shown to be shocked, if not regretful, when he witnesses the killing of a Turkish Cypriot, which he tried to prevent; Ruhşar, in revenge, hits an elderly Greek Cypriot with a stone on the head who is then shot by her Turkish-Cypriot friend, both subsequently appearing shocked, while Ruhşar throws up at the realization of what they did. Thus, the film is not black and white in its portrayal of the major (ethnic) characters, even if overall it is the Greek-Cypriot side that appears as the one committing (more) evil. There are, in our view, many excessive scenes that present evil Greek Cypriots (especially policemen) more than necessary for the plot line, as if the director wanted to make clear to the audience which side, at the end of the day, was the evil side; perhaps as if, given the critical thrust of his previous film on Cyprus, he now wanted to indicate beyond doubt that he acknowledged Turkish-Cypriot victimization by Greek Cypriots. Moreover, the main story of the film is the story of Veli and Anna, and the film could have worked without the story of Ruhşar and Salih. Employing the latter story focalizes the film through Ruhşar, leading to identification with Turkish-Cypriot pain and fears. These we regard as examples of the excess of the political.

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The film aims toward shifting attention from the characters to the political context. Despite their best intentions, their struggles, even the sad deaths of Anna and Veli, suspicion and mistrust eventually prevail leading to catastrophe for the Turkish Cypriots who were the weaker side. As Zaim commented: “So why did people start attacking each other, and why did the [1960] Constitution not work to prevent this? As I see it, people were not ready for these changes.”16 In our view, the film is arguing that, despite the best intentions of a few noble people, catastrophe is likely under conditions of suspicion where two communities have not been adequately prepared to live together. This only begs the question: Are people in Cyprus today ready for political changes that will bring them together? If not, then better stay separate so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past, is one possible interpretation of the film. The political context in which the film was made could be significant. Mud (2003) was made in an atmosphere of hope for a possible solution, with Turkish Cypriots voting positively in 2004 for reunification as proposed by the jointly negotiated, UN-finalized Annan Plan. Shadows and Faces (2010) was made in a period of intense disillusionment for any solution or any prospect of reunification, after the Greek-Cypriot rejection of the Annan Plan and the continuing political impasse. Codename Venus (2012), shot in English by Turkish-Cypriot director Tamer Garip, focuses on the period from 1955–74, including the period 1963–7, which was especially traumatic for Turkish Cypriots, going to great lengths to establish the historical objectivity of the events it presents. In the beginning it points out that the film was “inspired by true events” and the film ends with “all the characters in the film are inspired by real people” while on the website where the film can be watched whole the director claims that “neither Turkish Cypriots nor Greek Cypriots will be able to spot anything in the film to which they can raise objection.”17 Using a lot of documentary material and ending with short descriptions of what subsequently happened to the main characters, the film appears as an attempt to explain to viewers what really happened through the blurring of factual and fictional narratives. The film begins in the period of the 1955–60 (Greek-Cypriot) EOKA campaign with Jasmine, a British woman who used to live in Cyprus, now returning in order to discover what happened to her two archaeologist parents who went missing decades ago. She is blackmailed by an MI5 agent into spying for the British (under codename Venus, the Latin name for Aphrodite) against her former childhood friend in Cyprus, Greek Cypriot Adamos, now an EOKA fighter, in exchange for



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information about her missing parents. In Cyprus, she meets another childhood friend, Turkish Cypriot Kemal, who soon joins the Turkish-Cypriot resistance organization TMT, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries. While Codename Venus shows the discomfort of the older generations with the violent and separatist policies imposed by the hot-headed youth of both TMT and EOKA, thus alluding to a period of coexistence, and despite the director’s stated intentions, it is a film shot from a strong Turkish-Cypriot perspective, shifting blame onto Greek Cypriots and ending with a long newsreel official statement by Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktaş justifying the 1974 Turkish military offensive on Cyprus. Adamos, and his EOKA boss Savvas, are presented as ruthless killers, murdering not only innocent civilians but even their own EOKA collaborators whom they suspect of treason in scenes of graphic violence. In one scene, Adamos sadistically forces himself sexually on Jasmine who manages to ward him off, while they are watching with binoculars a British couple driving a car; they are about to kill the couple, having placed a bomb in the road. In another scene Jasmine is raped by Savvas. By contrast, Jasmine’s true love Kemal, the second major male character of the film, is presented positively: he almost gets killed while trying to protect a TurkishCypriot child from Greek Cypriots.

Conclusion Despite what are—in our view—their weaknesses, co-produced films like Akamas and Mud stand out in trying to break historical taboos and present more rounded, multi-perspectival versions of history. We have argued that some of the specific problems that we identified could be accounted for by their efforts to take a more critical stance toward their own community and its historical orthodoxies, and empathize with the other. It is useful, however, to be reminded of Shohat’s observation that, despite the best intentions of progressive Israeli cinematographers striving to include the Palestinian viewpoints in their films, they remained caught up in their own (Zionist) political assumptions, and that this has often “gone unrecognised by the filmmakers themselves” (Shohat 2010: 218). This, we argue, could apply even to films like Mud and Akamas. The specific sociohistorical context of Cyprus with two communities in conflict (along with the conflicts, violence, and divisions within each community) suggests that it may not be possible

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to adequately represent its history through the use of a single-protagonist narrative, if one wishes to present the two perspectives with equal seriousness and empathy. Even though reconciliation films try to include at least two important characters sharing an equally apprehensive gaze which may express a more rounded understanding of the problem (e.g. Akamas and Shadows and Faces), other factors, such as the directors’ wish to realize an auteurist-oriented treatment of the story, inevitably privilege a single point of view, informed or influenced by sociopolitical constraints. The dominant cinematic western form that all aforementioned filmmakers employed, namely the single-protagonist story, inevitably leads, if not to a single, at least to a dominant (i.e. ethnocentric) point of view. A fuller telling of the story of the Cyprus Problem on screen then would necessitate a different, polyphonic, filmic structure: at least two equally important characters and points of view, through the interweaving of parallel stories, aiming to undermine a fixed point of historical reference. Akamas and Shadows and Faces are films that seem to exemplify a merging of popular and official memory; Khatib cites Harper in her attempt to evaluate Lebanese cinema and concludes that “Lebanese cinema is an example of popular memory; however […] [it] does not always contest notions of official memory and public myths” (2008: 155). Harper argues that “it is important not to canonize the popular, or to present it as the hero in the battle against the forces of darkness” (cited in Khatib 2008: 155). Zaim and Chrysanthou’s collaborations, more so than other films, are an illustration of the above comments, but unlike Lebanese cinema they do not absolve Cypriots (irrespective of their ethnic background) of “responsibility for the war and its atrocities” (2008: 155), in contrast to films like The Rape of Aphrodite, Tomorrow’s Warrior, and The Last Homecoming. All the films we discuss clearly attempt to make political points. Thus they attempt to moralize, and draw distinctions about good and evil, with happy or tragic endings. As Hayden White (1987) has noted, the classic narrative form (with one protagonist acting as the story’s moral center from whose perspective events are evaluated, with a clear beginning and end, etc.) is a form that inevitably moralizes as the emergent story has an unequivocal meaning (e.g., tragic or happy depending on the circumstances of the protagonist). Challenging this form, e.g. by employing two strong points of view, means that the film would lose its moral force and be unable to deliver the personal, political message of the director. This is why all the films we discuss here cannot avoid a strong didactic tone. In this respect too, i.e. on the level of (narrative) form, we note an



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excess of the political. Hence, we suggest that the choice of the standard singleprotagonist narrative storytelling is itself another political choice, possibly an implicit one “unrecognized by the filmmakers themselves.” In arguing this, we extend Shohat’s key critical insight regarding well-meaning, “empathetic,” auteurist films of Israeli Jewish filmmakers to another level, which she did not discuss. The main problem then of Greek-Cypriot films with a major Turkish-Cypriot character (The Last Homecoming, Akamas, The Road to Ithaca) is that, through a form that privileges a single point of view, there is no (structural) possibility but for the Turkish-Cypriot character to be subsumed within the Greek-Cypriot viewpoint. And when the Turkish Cypriot is the protagonist, then inevitably s/he has to behave like a Greek Cypriot, or according to the Greek-Cypriot fantasy of a “good Turkish Cypriot.” Shohat criticizes the “Palestinian Wave” films (which include sympathetic portrayals of Palestinians) by Israeli Jewish filmmakers as films in which “to use Bakhtinian terminology, social heteroglossia is flattened into a kind of ventriloqual monologism” (2011: 231). In Cyprus too, it is through “ventriloqual monologism” that Greek-Cypriot filmmakers make Turkish-Cypriot characters speak and behave as Greek Cypriots would have liked them to. The best example of a double-vision form with two equivalent points of view has first emerged not in fiction film but in documentary, as exemplified by Our Wall. The two main characters/script-writers/filmmakers, Chrysanthou and Kizilyurek, collaborated in all essential respects, appeared in an equal footing (see Figure 4.7), and an equal weight was given to the pain, experiences, and viewpoints of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. There is no doubt that this was a political documentary coming from the (Greek-Cypriot and TurkishCypriot) Left, aiming toward reconciliation. It has been the documentary that established the still continuing wave of “reconciliation documentaries” precisely by showing both sides’ experiences, viewpoints, fears, and sufferings. We believe that this, rather than any fiction film, has managed to convey the story of Cyprus’ recent history in the most balanced and rounded manner (without necessarily claiming that it told the whole story). While it is a highly emotional documentary, it does not resort to the emotionally blackmailing and politically numbing love-story format, which a documentary maker could employ, say by finding a “mixed” couple to focus upon. It was not funded by any state authorities in Cyprus, which meant that the filmmakers were not operating under the kinds of constraints that even critical films like Akamas and Shadows and Faces

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faced. Joint decision-making in all important aspects, yet at the same time not being averse to including points of disagreement between the two filmmakers’ views, is, in our view, what has lessened the possibilities for political assumptions to “have gone unrecognized by the filmmakers themselves,” even if both directors came from the Left. For example, the Right of their own community would rejoice that their own suffering was portrayed with such force, yet they would find it entirely discomforting, treacherous even, were it suggested that they too inflicted significant violence against the other community. The documentary Our Wall (even by its very title) is an illustration of the creative potential of liminal “third spaces” that can allow otherwise isolated perspectives to interact, as described by Bhabha (1994). Similarly, the comparatively powerful urge to explore issues of reconciliation distinguishes the cinemas of Cyprus from those of Turkey and Greece, two states that have also shared a past of conflict and that have been implicated in the Cyprus Problem. Returning to Jameson’s (1986) influential article, we note that it could be read as a plea—a lament even—for more (explicitly) political fiction in the West, rather than one where politics are suppressed, yet still present as a “political unconscious” (Jameson 1981). At the same time, it suggests that Western readers should not lightly dismiss “Third World” literature as overtly political. Jameson clearly regards the retreat of politics in the realm of popular culture to the “unconscious”

Figure 4.7  Kizilyurek and Chrysanthou exploring Cyprus’ painful pasts in Our Wall



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as a contemporary Western problem. In terms of films, we suggested that an overtly political cinema, like that of Cyprus, faces its own kinds of problems, as manifested by the various excesses of the political. This is not to undervalue by any means politically-informed cinema, but rather to highlight the redundancies and other problems that an all-too-powerful political impulse has given rise to in Cypriot films. The relevant comparison, following Jameson, would be with popular western Hollywood-style films, as discussed by King (2000), for example, in his book focusing on the compelling narrative drive of spectacular Hollywood blockbusters. The escapist nature of these narratives magically erases the hardships of the characters (Scott 2009) in contrast to the films discussed above that stress an ongoing disorientation, trauma, and conflict through political hyperbole. To risk a Jameson-type generalization, it can be argued that many films from places such as Cyprus could be said to suffer from an excess of politics often to the detriment of a compelling narrative dramaturgy (e.g., unnecessary scenes and secondary plot lines, intrusions by narrators to explain the director’s political position, confusing narratives or symbolism). By contrast, many popular Western films could be said to suffer from an (overt) lack of politics and an overemphasis on a compelling narrative-driven yet, ultimately, sociopolitically vacuous and numbing dramaturgy.

Works cited Ahmad, Aijaz. 1986. “Jameson’s rhetoric of otherness and the national allegory.” Social Text 17: 3–25. Alsanjak, Metin. 2004. “Film sans Frontières.” Vertigo 2, 6. www.closeupfilmcentre. com/vertigo_magazine/volume-2-issue-6/film-sans-frontieres/ (accessed June 26, 2013). Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Chrysanthou, Panicos. 2011. Akamas (Booklet accompanying the DVD). Nicosia: Artimages. Droussiotis, Makarios. 1998a. EOKA: I Skoteini Opsi (EOKA: The Dark Side). Athens: Stachi. —1998b. “I Epitropi Kinimatografou einai Diavromeni apo Neokyprious” (“The Cinema Advisory Committee is Corrupted by Neo-Cypriots”): Interview of Andreas Pantzis to Makarios Droussiotis. Phileleftheros, July 12. Jameson, Frederick. 1981. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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—1986. “Third world literature in the era of multinational capitalism.” Social Text 15: 65–88. Graikos Costas. 1982. Kypriaki Istoria (History of Cyprus, 2nd Volume). Nicosia: n.p. Khatib, Lina 2008. Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond. London: I. B. Tauris. King, Geoff. 2000. Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Papadakis, Yiannis. 1993. “The politics of memory and forgetting in Cyprus.” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 3, 1: 139–54. —1994. “The national struggle museums of a divided city, Nicosia.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17, 3: 400–19. —1998. “Walking in the Hora: ‘place’ and ‘non-place’ in divided Nicosia.” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 8, 2: 302–27. —2000. “Memories of Walls, Walls of Memories.” In Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean, edited by Yiannis Ioannou and Jean Davy, 231–9. Lyon: Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient. —2003. “Nation, narrative and commemoration: political ritual in divided Cyprus.” History and Anthropology 14, 3: 253–70. —2005. Echoes from the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. —2008. “History Education in Divided Cyprus: A Comparison of Greek Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot Schoolbooks on the ‘History of Cyprus.’” PRIO Cyprus Center Report 2/2008. Poumpouris, Michalis.1993. Meres Dokimasias (Days of Trials). Nicosia: n.p. Press Release. 2010. “To Kypriako Sinema sti Megali Othoni: 2o Festival Tainion Kyprion Skinotheton” (“Cypriot Cinema on the Big Screen: 2nd Cypriot Filmmakers Film Festival”). Politis, December, 13. Scott, Anthony Oliver. 2009. “Neo-Neo Realism.” The New York Times. March, 17. www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/magazine/22neorealism-t.html (accessed April 8, 2012). Shohat, Ella. 2010. Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. London: I. B. Tauris. Stratton, David. 2003. “Mud” (Film Review). Variety. www.variety.com/review/ VE1117921631?refcatid=31 (accessed March 30, 2012). Suner, Asuman. 2010. New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory. London: I. B. Tauris. White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Williams, Alan. (ed.) 2002. Film and Nationalism. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press. Yakinthou, Chrystalla. 2008. “Quiet deflation of Den Xehno? Changes in the



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Greek-Cypriot communal narrative on the missing persons in Cyprus.” The Cyprus Review 20, 1:15–33. Zetter, Roger, 1994. “The Greek-Cypriot refugees: perceptions of return under conditions of protracted exile.” International Migration Review 28, 2: 307–22.

Notes   1 See press release (2010).   2 See press release. http://falies.com/2009/12/11/εναντια-στη-μισαλλοδοξια-και-τοφανατ/ (accessed March 30, 2012).   3 See press release. www.mahallas.com/2010/01/green-line-festival.html (accessed March 30, 2012).   4 See Pantzis’ interview with Droussiotis (1998b).  5 See Akamas official website. www.akamas-film.com/en_news_20061122.shtml (accessed March 30, 2012).   6 From the DVD cover of documentary Our Wall (1993).   7 This documentary is discussed at length by Papadakis (2000).  8 See Akamas official website. www.akamas-film.com/index.shtml (accessed March 30, 2012).   9 It should be noted that the references to ancient Greece problematize the explicit Cyprio-centric point of departure since they limit the film’s representational space to popular notions that are employed to confirm the island’s Greek heritage. 10 Chrysanthou stresses that “Naim is a variation of Donis-Evagoras. He too is an idealist to the extent that he could sacrifice himself for his principles …” (Chrysanthou 2011, 72). Yet this is not our reading of the character from the film, where Naim appears as a highly sympathetic (Left-wing) character, while (Right-wing) Donis-Evagoras is shown as prepared to kill a man in the church in cold blood, and is willing to cooperate with a Turkish Cypriot only because he could be useful to the EOKA cause. 11 A great deal of the articles from both sides of the debate can be read on the official website of Akamas. www.akamas-film.com/index.shtml (accessed March 30, 2012). 12 Personal interview with Panicos Chrysanthou (November 7, 2012). 13 See Zaim’s interview in an anonymous post titled “The Mud Hits the Fan in Acclaimed Turkish Film Çamur.” http://news.pseka.net/index. php?module=article&id=4153 (accessed March 30, 2012). 14 www.northcyprus.net/hoteliersassociation.php?subpage=kitobnewsmag&NewsPag eID=626&ID=56&pTitle=ZAIM%20PUT%20OUR%20SPOT%20ON%20THE%20 WORLD%20MAP (accessed March 30, 2012).

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15 www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/volume-2-issue-6/film-sansfrontieres/ (accessed March 30, 2012). 16 See his interview in Zaman newspaper (October 10, 2010). www.todayszaman. com/news-227493-derviş-zaim-says-conscience-lies-at-the-core-of-his-recentfilms.html (accessed March 30, 2012). 17 www.neu.edu.tr/en/node/2372 (accessed March 15, 2014).

5

Transnational Views from the Margins of Europe: Globalization, Migration, and Post-1974 Cypriot Cinemas. Costas Constandinides As a teenager I frequently visited the neighborhood video store to rent the latest import of martial arts or action films. It was housed on the second floor of a supermarket and a film poster placed on the wall at the end of the stairway leading to the video collection area always caught my attention; when other customers were present I pretended not to notice it and I averted my eyes as long as possible. The poster (which was basically a video cassette cover) highlighted two adult-themed stills that seemed to be “inappropriate” in more ways than one. The first still framed a man positioned behind a half-dressed woman (both in traditional Cyprus costumes), and he aggressively gropes her bare breasts; the second still framed two men sandwiching the fully naked body of a woman. Both stills struck me as odd because the faces that everyone associated with “proper” vernacular entertainment or the Theatre Organization of Cyprus (THOC) productions in the 1980s were here featured in a film that promoted adult themes. The film proudly presented by the video store was no other than the notorious Ta Hassanpoulia: Oi Ekdikites tis Kyprou (Hassanpoulia: The Avengers of Cyprus). The film was produced and completed in 1974, released in local commercial movie theaters in 1975 (with great success) and directed by Costas Demetriou, who graduated from the London School of Film Technique in 1971 (currently known as London Film School). The film is loosely based on the real life story of Turkish-Cypriot outlaw Hassanpoulis and the infamous gang formed later by his brothers, known as the Hassanpoulia. Their criminal activities, which subsequently scholars also discussed under the rubric of “social banditry” (e.g. Sant Cassia 2006), took place in the late nineteenth century when the island of Cyprus was then a young British colony, going through a major change in its administration framework. Aside from the titillating stills featured on the poster, the other images that

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caught my attention the very first time I saw the poster of Hassanpoulia were the young faces of well-known Greek-Cypriot actors. Stelios Kafkarides and Andreas Mousouliotis, among other members of Hassanpoulia’s cast, had been cast in leading roles in children’s plays produced by the Children’s Stage of THOC during the early 1980s; or they appeared in ethological CyBC drama productions dubbed “Cypriot Sketch” that portrayed “traditional” life in the rural areas of Cyprus. The next time I came across Hassanpoulia was in a video store, now DVD club, in Nicosia after the completion of my postgraduate studies. I was going through a stack of contemporary Greek films released on DVD, and I found a copy of the film. I immediately rented the copy and thoroughly enjoyed, for the first time, what may well be the only film directed by a Cypriot filmmaker and located in Cyprus (a number of scenes were subsequently filmed in Greece) that emulated the global cinematic language that was dominant during the mid-1970s: sex and violence. Other similar and even more daring attempts followed by producer and movie theater owner Diogenis Herotodou in the 1980s, but the key artistic and technical personnel of his “Black Emanuelle” rip-offs mostly consisted of non-Cypriots. I should admit that the only form of Cypriot cinema I was aware of before the Hassanpoulia experience was the cinema of the Cyprus Problem. My interest in Cypriot film production grew when I was asked to present a paper on Cypriot cinema at a conference; my research led me to other post-1974 Cypriot films that move away from the dominant theme of the Cyprus Problem. Such key Greek-Cypriot films are I Sfagi tou Kokora (The Slaughter of the Cock 1996), Andreas Pantzis’ second installment of his “Evagoras and Aphrodite” film tetralogy, Kalabush (Adonis Florides and Theodoros Nicolaides 2003) and Kokkini Pempti (Red Thursday, Christos Shiopachas 2003). These three films along with a fourth, recently released, film titled Fish n’ Chips (Elias Demetriou 2011) form an ambitious body of work that reflects an art-house treatment of (sub)themes relevant to the terms present in the title of this chapter. Therefore, my key aim is to discuss these two groups of films in connection to a broader frame of discursive practices relevant to the field of film studies; namely the growing scholarly interest in previously deemed “unworthy” (e.g. exploitation, sexploitation) films and the theorization of transnational cinema. At first glance, the above films appear quite distinct from each other and have not been yet listed under a wider category (generic, thematic, historical, or conceptual) specific to Cypriot or world cinema typologies; however, the



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stories they narrate introduce a potentially transgressive, but at the same time undefined, sense of cultural fluidity. Unlike the films dealing with the Cyprus Problem, which communicate the spatial and ethnic vulnerabilities of the two major communities in Cyprus, this group of films communicates liminalities and indeterminacies that emerge through the framing of characters that exist in the margins of society. The films certainly explore production modes and cinematic style in a manner that weakens an inward-looking or ethnocentric point of view specific to the Cyprus Problem-focused “excess of the political” film tradition (see Chapter 4). Elias Demetriou, the director of Fish n’ Chips, humorously stated in an interview he gave to Leda Galanou of Flix,1 an online film magazine, that a group of “little bastards” came together to make the film, making reference to the often dual or pluralistic ethnic origins and/or societal experiences that key cast and crew members shared and how this is reflected in the issues that emerge from the story, especially related to the mobility of the characters in the film. Elias Demetriou’s comment also implicitly criticizes the locally employed taunting acronym (BBC) for British-Born Cypriots, that some explain as meaning British Bastard Cypriots. Apart from the extra-textual heterogeneity that informs the film, Elias Demetriou’s comment is political and may point to the impossibility of one, fixed identity.

The global, the local, and the trashy: Hassanpoulia, Diogenis Herodotou, and their unclaimed legacy Hassanpoulia’s creator did not originally intend to make an erotic film, yet the final product includes sexual content that unmistakably emulates soft-core “sexual numbers” (Williams 1999); such numbers took different forms in the 1970s and early 1980s. The excess of violence and nudity emphasized during the above period in many countries (mainly Western as well as in the cinema of neighboring countries e.g. Greece2 and Turkey) was imbued with paradoxes since it was both politically provocative and sensationalist. Nudity and soft-core eroticism also expanded from existentialist psychosexual dramas like Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci 1972) to the avant-garde films of Dušan Makavejev or Alejandro Jodorowsky. Such, sometimes pretentiously “refined,” treatments of sexuality are according to Tanya Krzywinska moments that point to the marriage of “the psychological and the physical to construct

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narratives that place sex within the artfully existentialist context of identity formation and the meaning (or its lack) of being” (2005: 225). This reading, as well as Krzywinska’s understanding that sex in art-house films is a reaction to “bourgeois affectations” (225) that inhibit sexuality, helps to separate a number of films exploring eroticism from hard-core pornography. The nude body in Hassanpoulia is to a significant extent a “porn body”: it does not signify the “reason, cleanliness and order” of the high-art nude body; quite the opposite, it “connotes passion, dirtiness and disorder” (Attwood 2002: 96). The bulk of commercial films released during the aforementioned period belong to a category “often referred to as ‘exploitation’, designating a series of texts that do not belong to the recognised repertoire, mostly because they are not deemed worthy enough” (Mathijs and Mendik 2004: 3). However, Mathijs and Mendik interestingly use the word “alternative” as opposed to “accepted European cinema” to define this cycle or category of films (2004: 3). The two authors identify “resistance, rebellion and liberation” (2004: 4) as a recurrent thread, hence “Alternative European” cinema as understood by the two authors “sets itself not just against a mainstream culture, but also against a range of ways of thinking” (4). Costas Demetriou’s decision to return to a pre-nationalist past—where relations between the inhabitants of the island were not defined by ethnic origin, but there is a sense of struggle against a common imperial oppressor—may be read as an act of self-censorship that masks the political dialectics of the time. The political position of cast and crew was informed by anti-Greek junta feelings and the members of the Greek crew were also experiencing the “erotic turn” of Greek cinema, which was also read as a form of resistance to Greek dictatorship. Therefore, the sex scenes in Hassanpoulia may carry a somewhat unintended political commentary (a way to challenge tradition through sex), which echoes Vrasidas Karalis’ description of Greek erotic films of that period as “a rebellion” against the political power structure, the religion, the tradition (the Greek dictatorship attempted to normalize social behavior according to the slogan “Greece of Greek Christians” [Ellas Ellinon Christianon])—as well as against individual sexual and political repression (2012: 168). Diogenis Herodotou is probably one of the few (if not the only) Cypriot entrepreneurs that sought business-oriented film “authorship.” Even though Herodotou’s later co-productions such as Emanuelle’s Daughter: Queen of Sados (Elias Mylonakos 1980) have not been listed as independent Cypriot co-productions by Alexis Kleanthous (2005), mainly because they were international



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co-productions and directed by non-Cypriot directors, they are up to a certain extent a continuation of Hassanpoulia’s attempt to import foreign cinematic practices. Emanuelle’s Daughter was almost exclusively filmed in Cyprus and the favorable images of Cyprus’ “exotic” and historic locations clearly aim to induce the viewers of the film to travel to Cyprus.3 The exotic Laura Gemser repeats a loose version of her role as the tempting Black Emanuelle, in Emanuelle’s Daughter; however, the teen sexual awakening subplot dressed with Aphroditerelated4 scenery evokes the celebration of Cyprus as the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. According to Papadakis “the myth of Aphrodite emerging from the sunny blue Mediterranean Sea along the coast of Paphos, as used by Greek Cypriots, evokes the three ‘S’s that have become the mantra of tourism marketing: Sun, Sand and Sea” (2006: 244) and he further suggests that Aphrodite’s “seductive qualities” as the Goddess of Love add a touch of romance, as it teases northern European fantasies of the Mediterranean as the land of “Latin Lovers”, and of holidays as opportunities for sex or romance […]. After all, as everyone knows, the secret fourth “S” in tourism marketing is Sex. (2006, 244)

Thus, apart from Herodotou’s status as a financially-motivated film producer, his projects demonstrate a recurring mode of representation, which functions as an invitation to experience the island’s summer-sun tourist product as well as an invitation to physically re-live (or at least try to) the sexual fantasies unfolding on the big screen. Hassanpoulia and Herodotou’s film production activities may be extensions of European (s)exploitation cinema, but their carnivalesque qualities also set themselves against a process that steered Cypriot cinema to a single, very different, political direction for the most part of its short history “formulated” in 1984 with the establishment of the Cyprus Film Production Council (see Introduction). The shooting of Hassanpoulia was interrupted by the Greek junta-instigated coup against Makarios’ government; hence the remaining 20 minutes of the film had to be filmed in Greece during THOC’s tour in the fall of 1974. The majority of the Greek-Cypriot cast were members or collaborators of THOC’s central stage at the time, while the Children’s Stage opened in 1976. Costas Demetriou explained5 that Greek colleagues advised him to incorporate extra scenes of an explicit sexual nature in the film, a choice that he seems to regret since he refers to an original directorial vision, which he describes as artistic.6 The participation of actors from THOC,7 who were then starting their acting

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career, partly supports Costas Demetriou’s statement that he originally intended to make a “European” film; then again “European Cinema” was a rather fluid term back then and did not always connote the “European-model Art Cinema” (Crofts 2002). According to Eric Schaefer the term adult film “encompasses early exploitation movies (nudist films, sex hygiene pictures, and so on) designed to be shown for ‘adults only’, as well as soft-core exploitation, foreign films with some sexual content that played in art houses and grindhouses, as well as hard core stags, shorts, and features” (2005: 81–2). Another interesting label used by Schaefer to communicate the present condition of long-forgotten adult films is “orphan films” (2005: 80). Hassanpoulia and Emanuelle’s Daughter are orphan films in the sense that there has not been any local “official” interest in taking these films seriously, even though there are studies on the historical Hassanpoulia (see; Bozkurt 2001; Sant Cassia, 2006; Seal 2009) which, nevertheless, do not discuss the film or seem to be unaware of it. The infrequency of domestic film production has led to a limited (or fragmented) perception of Cypriot cinema(s) (both Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot) as a historical thread and thus any criticism that appears in local media about Cypriot cinema(s) fails to connect, compare, and classify Cypriot films as films. Cypriot films are usually introduced in the context of politics especially if the film is about the Cyprus Problem. Films like Hassanpoulia and Order to Kill Makarios were independently made8 and a lot of the films of early Cypriot cinema are not easily accessible or available in good image quality.9 Schaefer stresses “the evolution that has taken place in film studies over the past several decades, paying particular attention to the growth in interest in adult films” (2005: 80). Interestingly, this growth is in many ways symptomatic of the expansion of fan activities across the internet—these activities have facilitated the “unofficial” online storage of trash films because of the desire of cult cinema fans to “own a copy”; the access to the films I discuss here along with two other (s)exploitation films co-produced by Herodotou, titled Love Camp (a.k.a. Divine Emanuelle, Christian Anders 1981) and The Dirty Seven (Bruno Fontana 1983),10 was possible because of the above paracinematic activities. Information shared on IMDB.com and in reviews of the DVD copy distributed by Media Blasters/Exploitation Digital explain how Emanuelle’s Daughter deviates from Joe D’Amato’s Italian-lensed “Black Emanuelle” series. Emanuelle’s Daughter is described as a “Greek-lensed” (Scott, undated) film, but one cannot ignore the remnants from the popular language of the Italian genre



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film that emerged after the Second World War. Eleftheriotis offers a summary of the strengths of Italian cinema in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and writes that the expansion of Italian cinema relied on “marketing improvisation, low risk investment strategies” and on a playful “process of re-naming the creative personnel” (2002: 108) in order to pass internationally as American productions. According to Eleftheriotis the above were facilitated by the involvement of American companies in the production and distribution of Italian genre films and the “success of the neorealist films of the late 1940s and 1950s, which opened a number of foreign markets to Italian distributors” (2002, 104). The links between the expansion of Italian cinema and Emanuelle’s Daughter are manifested through the casting of actors such as Gordon Mitchell, and Gabriele Tinti; however, this relationship is complicated by other traditions as well, which were symptomatic to the demise of moviegoing in the late 1970s. This decline forced European film industries, including Greece, to turn to sensationalist cinema and sex comedies in order to compete with the growing market of affordable home entertainment (television and video cassette recorders). The attempt of Costas Demetriou and Herodotou to cross their geographical borders in the mid-1970s and early 1980s was caught up in this transitional period, where film industries were testing the limits of accepted representations of violence and sex in order to survive.

Hassanpoulia as an “alternative” form of transnational cinema The literature on transnational cinema mainly focuses on the journeying of marginal characters in the “cinemas at the periphery” or the journeying of film directors, a practice which is usually labeled as “exilic” or “accented.” It could be argued that a film like Hassanpoulia is an example of an “alternative”—from Mathijs and Mendik’s standpoint (2004) and when viewed in relation to the above conceptual paradigm—transnationalism that reveals cultural exchanges specific to the south eastern Mediterranean region with strong influences from Italian and Greek practices. In the 1960s and 1970s Europe was Americanizing or trashing its cinema (e.g. vampiric bodies, undead bodies, vigilantes, and vendettas were imported from US cinema) in order to project national repressions and lingering fears in disguise. “Alternative European” cinema was also marked by the journeying of artistic and technical personnel as well as the

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formation of counter-narratives, which may not be as politically powerful as the ones produced within the context of “Third Cinema” or the “European-model Art Cinema,” but they form “alternative aesthetics” in their own playful way. Hassanpoulia’s Americanization (Costas Demetriou cited Leone and Peckinpah as sources of inspiration11) is not only evident through the violence as “spectacle” perspective, but through two sets of antagonisms that on the one hand imitate Vendetta films and on the other hand make reference to Italian and American Westerns: (1) Hassanpoulis vs. Haireddin (the antagonist); and (2) Hassanpoulia (an externally informed fusion of Mexican and Native American unruly bodies) vs. the Colonial cavalry (which aimed to master the disorderliness of Cyprus as wild and uncivilized space). According to Jan van Leeuwen, the filmmakers of Eurowesterns employed a “grotesque perspective in order to subvert the often utopian and mostly nostalgic ideological point view [sic] of the classic American westerns” (2008, online). Costas Demetriou reinvents late nineteenth-century Cyprus as a grotesque and “wild” space that can also be seen as a response to Fili’s utopian picture of rural Cyprus (see Chapter 2). The links between the local and the American/Italian Western in Hassanpoulia have been wittily noted in an online post describing the film as a “halloumi-western” (halloumi being a local traditional cheese).12 Hassanpoulia’s “wild” disposition is overstated in the beginning of the film: the bandits are introduced as unshaved, unclean, and uncontrolled roisterers

Figure 5.1  Kavounis “devours” his “trophy” in Hassanpoulia



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Figure 5.2  Kavounis’ brother, Kaimakam, devours a piece of meat in Hassanpoulia

devouring both the flesh of their hunting trophies and the flesh of their female captive, whom they successively rape. These moments of radiating machismo are edited discontinuously together, thus forming a montage sequence that establishes the “unschooled” nature of the bandits (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). The histrionic acting of the cast throughout the film, including the Peckinpah-like stylization of Hassanpoulis’ death scene, is rather amusing, but Stelios Kafkarides as Hassanpoulis adopts a wooden performance in most of the film which is similar to Clint Eastwood’s emotionally empty performance in Leone’s Dollar trilogy. Another comparable element between Hassanpoulia and Eurowesterns is the costume design. Jan van Leeuwen writes that Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name character “is only recognisable from his multi-cultural external identity” (who is a fusion of the “heroic cowboy” and the “Mexican or Indian outlaw”) (2008: online). For example, Kavounis’ (one of Hassanpoulis’ brothers) costume is a hybrid of analogous filmic stereotypes: an early twentieth-century Mexican rebel with a touch of Burt Lancaster’s Apache warrior performance (in the film Apache, Robert Aldrich 1954), and local stylized elements: a militarized design of a vraka (traditional baggy trousers worn by Cypriot men) which alludes to the way American native warriors wore cavalry troops’ trousers either as a battle trophy or as way to communicate a sort of alliance with the enemy troops. In his introduction to The Criminal Activities of the Hassanpoulia colonial record published in 1938, Kareklas (local Commandant of Police, Paphos) writes that the dominant forces governing villages in Paphos in the late nineteenth century were the activities of criminals. However, Kareklas desribes Hassanpoulis

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Figure 5.3  Hassanpoulis is determined to avenge those who unjustly put him in prison

as an honest fugitive, who was only driven by revenge against Haireddin, “a known criminal” (1938: 7), who made indecent advances to Hassanpoulis’ lover, Emette. According to Kareklas, Hassanpoulis “never annoyed anybody, but especially he protected women” (1938: 8), unlike his brother Kavounis who was labeled as “the well-known monster amongst monsters” (1938: 23). Demetriou’s cinematic portrait of Hassanpoulis equally emphasizes Hassanpoulis’ pursuit of justice. The past that Demetriou reinvents emulates some of the key characteristics of the popular Greek film genre Mountain Film and its two subgenres the Mountain Adventure and the Dramatic Idyll. Kymionis notes that mountain films, also known as foustanéla films, borrow stories from the folk and theatrical traditions of Greece: They are set in villages, and present the villagers in traditional folk attire […] In dramatic idylls, plots unravel along love affairs whose happy endings are thwarted by local customs. In mountain adventures, on the other hand, love affairs are the pretext used to foreground the social problems that plague village life. (Kymionis 2000: 53)

Kymionis explains that Greek mountain adventure films are usually adaptations of bandit literature and “expose the existence of social problems and internal disputes, emphasizing the oppression of the poor by the rich” (2000: 56). The power structure of the village is challenged by the protagonist, who is an “atypical member of the community” (2000: 56).



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The main difference between Hassanpoulia and key mountain adventure films discussed in Kymionis’ work is that the ideological parameters of the former case are less discernible. According to Kymionis, Greek mountain adventure films “foreground a specific aspect of Greekness: the protagonists are classified with those Greeks of the past who have stood in both history and popular tradition as heroic figures fighting for freedom, equality, and justice” (2000: 60). Hassanpoulia on the other hand does not foreground a Cypriotness or does not invent a past to highlight those common characteristics that call for a celebration of a state’s “national” pedigree; however, it could be argued that the film’s structure and aesthetics may undermine such forms of “national cinema.” Sant Cassia argues that: Bandits in Greece, such as klephts, were incorporated into nationalist rhetoric […] by contrast, banditry in Cyprus never assumed nationalist overtones. Although the Hassanpoulia subsequently enjoyed brief recurrent periods of popular revival, they never became incorporated into nationalist rhetoric. (Sant Cassia 2006: 225–6)

The difficulty in assimilating Hassanpoulis and his brothers into a (GreekCypriot) nationalist narrative is understandable, given that they were subsequently considered as “Turkish Cypriots.” Hassanpoulis is indeed created by Costas Demetriou as an “atypical” protagonist (he is introduced in the film wearing handcuffs and being pursued by police authorities) who escapes captivity to restore his honor; later in the film Demetriou adds moments that reveal Hassanpoulis’ generosity and sense of morality in ways that suggest that the hero does not only fight to resolve his personal vendetta. Such moments create a sense of openness as to what Hassanpoulis might represent and how a Greek-Cypriot audience may read his actions since they are not informed by a rigid national specificity.13 Costas Demetriou set his story in a period described by Sant Cassia as an “aggressive form of illegality and of adventurist capital accumulation” (2006: 260). Such a “nationally” indefinable point in Cyprus history was naturally excluded from the official political rhetoric; therefore the choice of a past that does not foreground—implicitly or explicitly—a formulaic “excess of the political” did not only serve as the prefect neutral playground to explore the global cinematic language of vendetta and sexploitation films, but also served as space where certain social concerns could surface regardless of their ambivalent nature (see Chapter 6).

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Journeying “within” and “around” Cyprus: Unattainable and in-between filmic spaces This section examines how (Greek) Cypriot filmmakers negotiate issues closer to a conceptual reading of “journeying” and border-crossing instead of more concrete transnational forms (see Chapter 7), which Tom O’Regan aptly describes as the “messiness of national cinemas” (2002: 126). The Slaughter of the Cock, Kalabush, Red Thursday, and Fish n’ Chips can be classified as transnational films since “their thematic foci and complicated production contexts, cannot be linked exclusively to a single national” (Marciniak, Imre, and O’Healy 2007, 9) framework. However, the application of theoretical models such as “accented cinema” or “transnational cinema” can also be problematic as their interdisciplinary approaches may lead to imprecise definitions that simply repeat existing discursive paradigms. Michelle Royer suggests that transnational cinema can be viewed as a negotiation “between centers and margins” (2011: 140). The word “negotiation” instead of “resistance” fits more appropriately with a broader understanding of the “transnational” because it implies a form of distinction between films that can also be measured in terms of the “internalization” of wider international processes involved in the production and circulation of “national” festival cinemas.

Journeying as moral decline or moral significance The Slaughter of the Cock tells the story of Evagoras (portrayed by the internationally acclaimed actor and close collaborator of Pantzis, George Chorafas), a young Greek-Cypriot craftsman, who embarked on a journey to an unspecified Arab country in the mid-1970s in search of better job prospects. Evagoras’ former boss, Achilles (Seymour Cassel), claims a big share from the cabaret (i.e., brothel) business Evagoras and his partner Onisilos set up in the 1980s and blackmails them by threatening to expose a film from his private collection showing Evagoras and Onisilos participating in “submissive” homoerotic sexual acts to satisfy Achilles’ (and his wife’s) “perverse” appetites. The other main narrative thread of the film is Evagoras’ fascination with Valeria Golino’s portrayal of an enchanting young woman, who is deaf. This leads to a passionate illicit relationship between Evagoras and Golino’s character, not approved by her older brother. The film is notable for its tragic end, where Evagoras symbolically



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attempts to unite himself with Golino’s character before his conscious meeting with death. One of the main recurring practices in Pantzis’ “Evagoras and Aphrodite” films (The Rape of Aphrodite, The Slaughter of the Cock, and Evagoras’ Vow [To Tama], 2001)14 is the symbolic treatment of the main female character(s), whose qualities refer back to ethnocentric or wider local readings of the mythological goddess Aphrodite. Pantzis in general relies on aesthetic practices specific to the artistic nature of the cinematic medium to tell his stories. Therefore, his films include “anti-narrative” or “anti-linguistic” moments, which sometimes function independently from the storyline. In The Slaughter of the Cock the deaf woman’s body (Golino) can be read as a vessel that guides the main male character, Evagoras, to a ritualistic process of purification. Evagoras’ seedy business, his journeying to accumulate capital, and his submission to his boss’ homoerotic and “perverse” requests are framed in the narrative as a form of contamination that does not meet the call for resistance communicated in The Rape of Aphrodite (see Chapter 4). Therefore, the above may form a politically relevant aesthetic response that emphasizes a sense of disillusionment and social decomposition. The ritualistic sacrifice of the cock (a custom performed to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone of a house) in the beginning of the film pre-echoes the main character’s fate. Evagoras slaughters the cock and sets himself apart from the celebration, burdened by the past. In the end Evagoras has to sacrifice himself in order to restore symbolically his esoteric unstable foundations. Golino’s character is introduced in the film as a fairy-tale-like creature that visits Evagoras’ carpentry workshop, a place where he created wooden religious artifacts before his departure from Cyprus. She curiously touches one of the artifacts (epitafios), a symbol of Christ’s bier during the Orthodox Good Friday liturgy, which later in the film Evagoras associates with his childhood memories; it may be argued that each film in the tetralogy symbolizes a ritualistic process toward spiritual—and in the case of Rape of Aphrodite spiritually ethnic— wholeness. However, Evagoras is forced to sell this artifact to meet the needs of his family before his journey to an unspecified Arab country. In framing Golino’s character this way, Pantzis creates a sense of childlike innocence and discovery that Evagoras needs to resort to in order to reclaim the “healthy” past that he sold. The vendetta between Evagoras and the deaf woman’s brother, and the parasitical presence of the American boss, hints at a post-1974 society in crisis

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plagued by rampant capitalism. Pantzis provides an indirect commentary on the Cyprus Problem in the guise of “Third Cinema” politics. The arrival of the American boss from California activates a series of actions and reactions, which are fuelled by issues of power. During the drive from the airport sequence the director creates a collage of conflicting images and sounds: images and songs that celebrate carnival day on the one hand, and a protest organized by the relatives of the missing persons on the other. This conflict between festivities and protest may wish to foreground a trauma that is not shared collectively. The master and slave relationship between the American boss and Evagoras is portrayed as a form of neo-colonial arrangement, which may imply that neither Evagoras’ migration nor his re-grounding is emancipatory regardless of his financial capacity. In forming a character who is associated with narratives and sites of control, Pantzis, inevitably, forms a third space (associated with the deaf woman’s ethereal nature) where the protagonist can attain a sense of freedom. The neo-colonial arrangement between Evagoras and Achilles can be read as a second violation of Greek-Cypriot identity by the global expansion of capitalism. The current economic crisis in Cyprus due to capitalist practices and the harsh measures imposed by the EU adds force to Pantzis’ concerns. Pantzis meets the profile of the accented (Naficy 2001) filmmaker in more ways than one. He is internally displaced (a refugee), he has established “outside” collaborations to make films set in his homeland, and his films exude a sense of negotiation between a historical space and a third space informed by “external” influences. The Slaughter of the Cock does reflect aspects of “accented” cinema as outlined by Naficy, mainly because the main character’s travels and actions are “journeys of identity” (2001, 4), not necessarily associated with ethnic identity, but with a departure from and a longing to return to “healthy” social formations, which seem impossible in the post-1974 social portrait of Cyprus that Pantzis draws. Pantzis can be seen as an “exilic” subject (an internally displaced refugee); therefore, in his films the accent is not immediately visible, but like other forms of accented cinema it is personal and springs from “the displacement of the filmmakers and their artisanal production modes […] accented filmmakers are not just textual structures or fictions within their films; they also are empirical subjects” (Naficy 2001: 4). Evagoras is a body in between a hapless reality and a magical realist realm of the senses. The presence of a horse painted green15 suggests that there is a parallel space that Evagoras does not have access to. There is a scene in the first part of the film, where Evagoras watches In the Realm of the Senses



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Figure 5.4  The deaf woman’s “unattainable” realm (The Slaughter of the Cock)

Figure 5.5  Pantzis’ vision of post-1974 Cyprus as a wasteland (The Slaughter of the Cock)

(Nagisa Oshima 1976) while one Asian girl, a sex worker, grooms his nails; the escalation of Evagoras’ fascination with Golino’s character to the point where he severs his tongue may be on a metacinematic level, a reference to the intense affair between Ishida and Abe in Oshima’s film, which culminates in the reversal of traditional gender roles. Similarly, Evagoras’ emblematic extreme reaction to make himself (physically) equal to the deaf woman marks a departure from the roles (traditional or oppressive) imposed on him by his American boss, his profession, and his wife. Evagoras’ wife refuses to sell part of her dowry to support the family during Evagoras’ search for a better job in the Arab countries and forces him to make ends meet as the provider of the family. Red Thursday is Christos Shiopachas’ third feature-length fiction film and the first of the three where the story is set predominantly in Cyprus. Shiopachas’

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promising directorial talent was established with his Greek Civil War drama I Kathodos ton Ennia (The Descent of the Nine 1984), which made an impact at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival (winner of the Best First Film Award) and impressed the Jury at the 14th Moscow International Film Festival (winner of the Grand Prix, which he shared with Elem Klimov’s Come and See, 1985 and Norman Jewison’s A Soldier’s Story, 1984). According to the official synopsis of Red Thursday, the title refers to a day that “does not exist in the calendar” and therefore it is treated by the filmmaker as a symbol that suggests that Red Thursday is a space that exists outside a linear time–space configuration; all dreams may come true on Red Thursday, but they never do as it is unreachable. The symbolism here is analogous to Pantzis’ decision to place a green horse in the space associated with Golino’s character; however, unlike Pantzis, Shiopachas does not create a “third” space as visual translation of feelings or desires. The main character of the film is Angelos (portrayed by Paschalis Tsarouchas, who was a sought-after Greek actor in the late 1990s and early 2000s), however the film may be characterized as polyphonic since most of the key characters in the film share confessional moments, which externalize their desires in a way that shapes them as naïve dreamers or Dostoyevskian “idiots.” The “goodness” that describes the confessional moments of the film collides with the “negative” actions that the characters perform in their everyday dealings. Angelos belongs to a family of shepherds living in an unspecified village (close to the no-man’s land territory) located in the Ammochostos district on the Greek-Cypriot side. Angelos earns extra money through illegal trading with Turkish Cypriots, who live on the other side of the line of division. His dream, which he eventually fulfills, is to buy a new coach (bus); however, his adventurous life and bad choices render “Red Thursday” a remote possibility. Angelos goes in and out of prison, cheats on his British wife with the priest’s wife, and teams up with the equally adventurous Alexei, a Russian offender, who is later wanted and eventually executed by Russian hitmen. Toward the end of the film, Angelos commits what seems to be a needless crime: he murders his two Turkish-Cypriot connections, who are not portrayed as villains, thus, his action is not heroic. This violent act may be read as an explosion of Angelos’ repressed anger toward his younger brother, who slept with the former’s neglected wife, or it could also be read as a “primitive” act that ritualistically re-establishes his manhood hurt by his not so manly brother. The “dialogic form” of the narrative (presence of many voices) and the fluid morality of the space that the characters inhabit do not invite a conventional



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character–audience identification process; yet Shiopachas, in an attempt to renegotiate the above arrangement, closes the film with a positive moral turning point, where Angelos goes on a pilgrimage-like journey to Russia to inform Alexei’s mother and sister about his death. Even though it has not been explicitly stated, Pantzis’ and Shiopachas’ films do share elements that confirm the influences they carry with them as VGIK (Vsesoyuzny Gosudarstvenny Institut Kinematografii: the All-Union State Cinema Institute based in Moscow) graduates. Their preoccupation with the poetic potential of the medium, their inclination to explore the psychology of their characters in order to test their moral compass, and the eventual reinstatement of a positive course of action through a ceremonial-like catharsis allude to Tarkovskian and in effect Dostoyevskian influences. These influences are also evident in Pantzis’ Evagoras’ Vow. Even though it clearly honors the Homeric tradition, the meek “goodness” of the main character (another Evagoras portrayed by Chorafas) and his religious pilgrimage—to worship Saint Andreas whom Evagoras prayed to for a son—are elements that appear to refer back to the traditions Pantzis experienced as a VGIK student. Pantzis’ Evagoras’ Vow does not function as a purely political allegory like The Rape of Aphrodite, which on another level is an exercise that appropriates a Tarkovskian search for “lost time” (Tarkovsky 1996) into a search for a “lost ethnic vision,” but it rather explores morality and faith. The ending of Evagoras’ Vow appears to celebrate a “healthy” marriage between Orthodox Christian religion and mystical spirituality.

Figure 5.6  Aphrodite and the saint’s waltz as a symbolic “mystical” union (Evagora’s Vow)

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Aphrodite (again portrayed by Valeria Golino), who initially appears as a Circe-like temptress that pollutes Evagoras’ “goodness,” ends her own journey as a Virgin Mary-like figure. Evagoras’ sinful action—he betrays his wife with another woman—offers Aphrodite the “blessed gift” of motherhood; her arranged marriage with a 65-year-old merchant deprived her of this joy. According to Gillespie, Tarkovsky “attempts to reconcile seemingly disparate strands, to seek a metaphysical unity of idea and action” (2003: 184). In Evagoras’ Vow Pantzis attempts to do something similar by challenging the usually concrete perception of concepts like “sin” and “goodness” (e.g. adultery not as a sinful weakness, but as a necessity, or even a beautiful spiritual gesture). Moments before the closing of the film and her reappearance as a fellow pilgrim, Aphrodite, dressed in a nymph-like costume, waltzes with an incarnation of Saint Andreas; this metaphysical union is part of a euphoric vision, which Evagoras experiences in the monastery of Saint Andreas (Figure 5.6). Evagoras’ Vow combines different time configurations; this choice can be read as an attempt to symbolically connect the moral narrative of Evagoras’ journey to a historical-time, which exists outside Evagoras’ personal timespace, yet the two are interconnected along with a third magical realist space. The significance of this historical-time is not entirely clear, but one explanation is that Pantzis, perhaps, invests in an implicit autobiographical exercise that communicates the narratives that have shaped his worldview. The work of both, Pantzis and Shiopachas, is built around a school of thought that refuses to negotiate with the commercial aspects of filmmaking and therefore they communicate ideas through highly complex and structurally challenging, even to some extent archaic, narratives that can nevertheless be valued as examples of artistic integrity.

Problematizing themes of homecoming and migration Fish n’ Chips frames the story of Andy (Marios Ioannou), a British-born (Greek) Cypriot and the manager of a fish and chip shop—owned by Turkish Cypriot Jimmy/Hassan—in London. Andy’s mother emigrated to London after she fled from her village in 1974. Andy visits Cyprus, along with his German girlfriend and her daughter, to fulfill his mother’s wish to die in her homeland. He attempts to rebuild his life in southern Cyprus, but his plan to open a fish and chip shop fails as he realizes that he is indeed more of a foreigner in Cyprus and that his “home,” ambivalent as it is, could be back in



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London. Toward the end of the film Andy comes to terms with the fact that Jimmy, and not an imaginary 1974 Greek-Cypriot war victim, is his biological father. The characters of Andy and his mother in Demetriou’s Fish n’ Chips are accented bodies who are associated with narratives of mobility and liminality in their host country. Andy’s mother suffers from dementia; however, the first time she is introduced in the film she is found in a park in London after she escaped from Andy’s care, imagining the picking of a variety of leaf vegetables— chicories—which grow in Cyprus. The mother’s implied nostalgic yearning for the homeland’s countryside, Andy’s thankless devotion to run the fish and chip shop, and the undecided status of his relationship with Karin (all of them crowded in a small house in a not-so-glamorous corner of London) trigger the travel or homecoming narrative of the film. Andy and his multi-ethnic “family” stay with his brother (Anestis), who left London years ago because he could not come to terms with the fact that his biological father is the TurkishCypriot owner of the fish and chip shop, Hassan. Andy gradually realizes that the lifestyle of his brother, Anestis, and his beautiful wife, Maria (big villa with a pool, the car rental business, their fashionable clothes, and the sushi lunch to welcome the family back home), is just a façade and the couple has unresolved issues that cannot simply escape from through their lavish living. The source of the couple’s problems is, of course, the ethnicity of Anestis and Andy’s biological father, which is privately dealt with by the couple until a moment toward the end of the film where Maria explodes (off-screen) as she is getting ready to leave the house, unable to cope with the presence of Anestis’ family. Maria reveals to the viewers that Andy and his brother are “bastards.” The quarrel takes place as we see Andy lying down in the guest room’s bed in his underwear. The camera is positioned sideways on the bed and it frames Andy in a way that makes him seem suspended in air (Figure 5.7). The aesthetic result communicates that this unconventional framing is used to externalize the character’s confusion, which in turn works as a mechanism to alert the viewers about the importance of the scene since at the end of it Maria shouts the word “bastards.” The road trip element is strong in the film as key characters move back and forth across the island in rental cars either to realize their dreams (the opening of a fish and chip shop in Cyprus) or to complete almost ritualistically the full cycle of their journeying, as Andy’s mother dies moments after her visitation to the house she was forced to abandon in 1974. Even though on a basic level

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Figure 5.7  An emotionally confused Andy overhears Anestis’ and Maria’s argument (Fish n’ Chips)

this “back and forth” movement is part of the logical flow of narrative information, on another level it suggests a sense of impermanence that reinforces the themes that the film invokes. Andy’s crossing to northern Cyprus, as well as the way Elias Demetriou treats the moment of the mother’s death, is rather minimalistic as it is not loaded with overt sentimentality and does not reveal a didactic arrangement of the re-grounding narrative or the act of crossing, which is associated with negative implications. The crossing to the north is seen by many Greek Cypriots as a politically problematic act that legalizes the existence of the internationally unrecognized TRNC. On the contrary, the final part of the film attempts to deflate the imaginary of re-grounding as it is finally revealed to the viewers that Hassan is the father of the boys. The film ends with Andy’s return to London, where he learns the news that his partner is pregnant; he then sits with his father and speaks Turkish for the first time in the film. Andy thanks his father in the latter’s language to possibly connote respect and acceptance of his father’s ethnicity. Andy’s behavior exerts a sense of coziness, which is enhanced by the way Demetriou revisits cinematically the fish and chip shop. The place Andy secures to open his fish and chip shop in Cyprus is located by the sea, a dreamy location, which is gradually transformed into a nightmarish experience. The location of the shop in London and its representation at the beginning of the film is not of course a structure or experience that someone can describe as delightful. However, in the end, the same London shop that Andy left at the start of the film is reintroduced in a rather homely manner in order to offer an abstract rather than concrete sense



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of homecoming, which the journeying to the “homeland” failed to provide. Andy’s character-transformation can be read as Elias Demetriou’s attempt to demythologize notions of national descent and purity (see Bryant 2002). This is of course a rather exaggerated aspect of Andy’s story; thus, it may be argued that Andy’s interethnic status may point to a pattern identified earlier in the book as the “excess of the political;” the subplot regarding Andy’s interethnic identity is added to an already busy script. Kalabush and Fish n’ Chips share the same actor as their central character, Marios Ioannou, whose seemingly naïve gaze functions as an acute commentary on contemporary lifestyle and identity. Broadly speaking, both films echo one of the key themes underscored in the literature on the theory of transnational cinema, which is migration. Kalabush tells the story of a Syrian undocumented immigrant, Mustafa (Marios Ioannou), who sets sail for Napoli and ends up in Limassol. Mustafa tries to survive in a foreign land with no support and concludes, semi-jokingly and with disappointment, that Cyprus is “no good” because there are no camels. This comment can of course be read as an indirect directorial sarcasm that wishes to undermine the westward orientation and ways of the island since camels were used in the past in local trading as a means of transport. Camels still exist in Cyprus, but are exhibited in theme parks as a spectacle that communicates exoticism and a primitive form of mobility. Kalabush is possibly the only example of a feature-length Greek-Cypriot film that is closer to the shared language expressed through many films that focus on how the “West” treats undocumented immigrant workers or asylum seekers fleeing from all sorts of political unrest, persecution or poverty in the “East”; the action is wisely placed in the city of Limassol, a choice which eliminates the political tensions that Nicosia’s division may carry. Kalabush frames the island itself as an interstitial space between Europe and the Middle East. The creators of the film empty the narrative from any nationally specific imaginary and invite viewers to interrogate other human behaviors through a witty lens. The filmmakers playfully place their characters in master and slave situations, where the latter group is contesting the authority of the former through dealings that, in the end, transform the attempt of the Greek-Cypriot bosses (mastroi) to reclaim respect into slapstick performances. Florides and Nicolaides frame Cyprus as an unwelcoming space within which a variety of accented or abject bodies (Eastern-European immigrants, sex workers, activists, and marginal indigenous bodies) parade. It is no coincidence that Mustafa arrives in Limassol on carnival day, where locals dressed in

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exotic costumes are still threatened by the otherness of Mustafa, even though themselves are celebrating and dancing as Others. This setting invokes a sense of irony as the otherwise heterogeneous character of a carnival celebration still treats Mustafa as a marginal body: he is scared off by a police officer, who is alerted by the screams of a woman dressed as a mermaid. Mustafa hides until he is found by a ragged garbage collector (Uncle Nicolas) and spends the night in the garbage collector’s place: a passenger bus converted into a colorful and unpretentious home. Uncle Nicolas’ home is located on a piece of land which is part of the new sewerage system plan that the Municipality of Limassol is developing with the support of EU funds. The authorities try throughout the film to move Uncle Nicolas but he resists with the help of a group of young anarchist activists. The story is set during the pre-EU accession period and parallel to Mustafa’s arrival the film introduces in its first part the imminent visit of an EU representative. The EU representative, who is black, visits the Mayor of Limassol to discuss the plans and progress of the city’s sewerage infrastructure. The color of the representative’s skin surprises the Mayor and his confidants, who were not expecting to welcome a black person. The surprise of the Mayor points to the black subject’s presumed incompatibility with the European. The Mayor reluctantly shakes hands with the EU representative, initially being unable to comprehend his political position as well as the political agency of his guest. The filmmakers satirize a society in the process of obsessively establishing a new form of cultural identification (with Europe). The conflict between the local vulgar or slapstick bodies and the accented bodies implies a failure to embrace the self-image of Europe as “civilized, prosperous, tolerant and culturally diverse” (Mike Wayne 2002: 93). The humanity and ordinariness of the characters that fall under the second category prevail in the film’s bittersweet final part; the film does celebrate the bonding between Mustafa and Miro (the Bulgarian immigrant, who helps Mustafa escape the maltreatment of his first mastros), but it also makes borders and power issues visible regardless of the meanings attached to the EU enlargement project. The deportation of Mustafa from Cyprus and the closing shot of his symbolic replacement by an anonymous immigrant who plans to spend the night on a public bench offer a social critique that contests Cyprus’ commitment to Europe’s cultural diversity project, as well as possibly a critique of the notion of “fortress Europe.” Florides and Nicolaides add a magical realist dimension halfway through the film: Uncle Nicolas suffers a stroke and returns as a “supernatural” ghostly



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entity. Parkinson Zamora and Faris write that, within the domain of magical realism, “the supernatural is not a simple or obvious matter, but it is an ordinary matter, an everyday occurrence—admitted, accepted, and integrated into the rationality and materiality of […] realism” (1995: 3). Uncle Nicolas’ presence does not change the tone or style of the film; his body occupies the space as a living body that initially observes the life of other characters. He rather enjoys his new state of being as he excitedly walks the streets of Limassol freed from the limits of reality. Later in the film Uncle Nicolas finds Kalia, a member of the local activist group, to let her know that he needs help to stop the authorities from destroying his home. The element of magical realism is strengthened here as Uncle Nicolas, who is supposedly “dead,” holds Kalia’s hands and he is able to communicate with her. The magical is integrated into the real as an act of resistance, which is transformed into carnival-like celebration. The difference between Uncle Nicolas’ carnivalesque party and the “official” carnival festivities in the introduction of the film is that the former becomes truly diverse. According to Parkinson Zamora and Faris the fundamental difference between realism and magical realism is that the first model “intends its version of the world as a singular version” (1995: 3), an objective depiction of social realities; in other words “realism functions ideologically and hegemonically. Magical realism also functions ideologically but […] less hegemonically, for its program is not centralizing but eccentric: it creates space for interactions of diversity” (1995: 3). The “ideology of the eccentric” takes place on two levels in Kalabush. The first level is Uncles Nicolas’ resistance against the municipality’s plans to transform what the filmmakers may see as the last “stronghold” that suggests a sense of freedom into another “shithole.” The second level is the spaces Florides and Nicolaides create in the story for the positive “interactions” between marginal characters. These moments are not magical, but the elements of romance and the desire to find a better place add a certain kind of ephemeral magic that is possible even within the limits of the real. A clever motif that the filmmakers use as a link between the magical and the real is the passing of an ice cream van, playing a nostalgic tune that announces its approach. The ice cream van is also a nice metaphor for the ephemerality of such “magical” experiences: welcoming tunes and colors, wonderful tastes, but it cannot stay in the neighborhood forever. The above filmic narratives do not treat identity as “a fixed essence, but a process of becoming, even a performance of identity” (Naficy 2001: 6). They clearly share the following carousel of elements:

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Figure 5.8  Mustafa waits for a mastros (boss) to pick him up for work and the ice cream van drives by (Kalabush) Another aspect of the accent is the style characterizing these films, whose components, discussed in various chapters and at various points throughout are open-form and closed-form visual style; fragmented, multilingual, epistolary, self-reflexive, and critically juxtaposed narrative structure; amphibolic, doubled, crossed, and lost characters; subject matters and themes that involve journeying, historicity, identity, and displacement; dysphoric, euphoric, nostalgic, synaesthetic, liminal, and politicized structures of feeling; interstitial and collective modes of production; and inscription of the biographical, social, and cinematic (dis)location of the filmmakers. (Naficy 2001: 4)

Transnationalist configurations in Cypriot cinema reflect, on the one hand Naficy’s suggestion that the back and forth movement of characters “may be thought of as a performance of its author’s identity” (2001: 6); and on the other hand, refer back to the journeying of actors, crew, filmic equipment, and ideas that shape a more concrete understanding of transnationalism in Cypriot cinema (see Chapter 7). The above case studies are to a certain extent consciously structured as transnational or hybrid narratives aiming to capitalize on the possibilities, or to meet the demands, of international co-production practices. Still, they tell powerful stories of characters whose journeying communicates a search for a topos or a time that combines those (sometimes unattainable) elements that determine a humanist-driven course of action, and a place that they could call home.



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Conclusion Higbee proposes the term “cinema of transvergence” (2007) as a possible discursive alternative to the “transnational.” Higbee observes that the “transnational”—in its attempt to weaken the “national” as a film culture that exists in isolation—“has thrown up as many problems as it has answers” (2007: 80) as there is always a risk it could lead to an inadequate understanding of the historical and social context that informs national cinemas. The films discussed in the previous sections are examined against a reading of their “transnationalisms” as a universal counter-Hollywood “genre”: films concerned with “the relationship between globalization and diaspora” (Higbee 2007: 84) or migration. Higbee’s proposal is a combination of Novak’s understanding of “transvergence” (2002), Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) “rhizome” and the “postcolonial.” Therefore, the application of transvergence in the context of national/transnational cinemas is viewed by Higbee as a paradigm that can reveal the inherent differences and complexities present “within” film cultures. This approach also facilitates the (re)reading of “fixed” representations from different positions; in other words a cinema of transvergence can “negotiate a position that is both center and margin” (Higbee 2007: 86). A possible viewing of Cypriot cinemas as a cinema of transvergence also echoes the position of the editors of this volume, which is a counter-political reading of Cypriot cinemas (see Introduction). The textual and contextual positionings of the above examples can be both communicated and read as forms of a cinema of transvergence that moves toward a center (e.g. international festival cinema “network”) and at the same time shapes a critique of fixed and hegemonic narratives. However, these films should not be readily perceived as “open” because they simply deviate from a cinema that is closer to a “nationally” specific narrative, like the cinema of the Cyprus Problem. On the contrary, a closer reading of the cinema of the Cyprus Problem does offer a better understanding of how various “types” of Cypriot cinemas “negotiate their position” and how the cinema of the Cyprus Problem itself also becomes part of this process—as a theme that is framed or revisited from multiple viewpoints. Films like Kalabush, and even cult films like Hassanpoulia, position themselves within a framework that is both different from and interconnected with the “local.” One could offer a simplistic reading of the above films as bad, good,

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elitist, or non-ethnocentric; however, it is a process of rethinking these films within and outside restrictive categorical boundaries that creates an understanding of how they can be grouped together as Cypriot films or how their thematic foci may challenge the boundaries of Cypriot cinemas as a category.

Works cited Attwood, Feona. 2002. “Reading porn: the paradigm shift in pornography research” Sexualities 5, 1: 91–105. Azgın, Bekir. 2000. “Nationalism and the Interest in the ‘Other Side’s’ Literature.” In Step-mothertongue: From Nationalism to Multiculturalism: Literatures of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, edited by Mehmet, Yashin, 147–58. London: Middlesex University Press. Bozkurt, Ismail. 2001. “Ethnic perspective in epics: the case of Hasan Bulliler.” Folklore 16: 97–104. Bryant, Rebecca. 2002. “The purity of spirit and the power of blood: a comparative perspective on nation, gender and kinship in Cyprus.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 83: 509–30. Crofts, Stephen. 2002. “Reconceptualizing National Cinema/s.” In Film and Nationalism, edited by Alan Williams, 25–61. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Originally published in 1993, Quarterly Review of Film & Video 14, 3: 49–67. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 2004. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi. New York: Continuum. Eleftheriotis, Dimitris. 2002. Popular Cinemas of Europe: Studies of Texts, Contexts and Frameworks. New York: Continuum. Gillespie, David. 2003. Russian Cinema. Harlow: Pearson Education. Higbee, Will. 2007. “Beyond the (trans)national: towards a cinema of transvergence in postcolonial and diasporic Francophone cinema(s).” Studies in French Cinema 7, 2: 79–91. Jan van Leeuwen, Evert. 2008. “Gothic eurowesterns: a grotesque perspective on a Hollywood myth.” Bright Lights Film Journal 60. http://brightlightsfilm. com/60/60gothic.php (accessed June 22, 2013). Karalis, Vrasidas. 2012. History of Greek Cinema. New York: Continuum, 2012. Kareklas, M. Ch. 1937. “Report on the Activities of the Hassanpoulia.” Nicosia: Government Printing Office. Kleanthous, Alexis. 2005. O Kypriakos Kinimatografos (1962-2005). (Cypriot Cinema). Athens: Egokeros Krzywinska, Tanya. 2005. “The Enigma of the Real: The Qualifications for Real Sex in Contemporary Art Cinema.” In Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to ‘Reality’ TV and Beyond, edited by Geoff King, 223–34. Bristol: Intellect.



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Kymionis, Stelios. 2000. “The genre of mountain film: the ideological parameters of its subgenres.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 18, 1: 53–66. Marciniak, Katarzyna, Anikó Imre, and Áine O’Healy. 2007. “Mapping Transnational Feminist Media Studies” In Transnational Feminism in Film and Media, edited by Katarzyna Marciniak, Anikó Imre, and Áine O’Healy, 1–18. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mathijs, Ernest and Xavier Mendik. 2004. “Making Sense of Extreme Confusion: European Exploitation and Underground Cinema.” In Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945, edited by Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik, 1–18. London: Wallflower Press. Naficy, Hamid. 2001. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Needham, Gary. 2011. “Greek Cinema Without Greece: Investigating Alternative Formations.” In Greek Cinema: Texts, Histories, Identities, edited by Lydia Papadimitriou and Yannis Tzioumakis, 203–18. Bristol: Intellect. Novak, Marcos. 2002. “Speciation, transvergence, allogenesis: notes on the production of the alien.” Architectural Design 72, 3: 64–71. O’ Regan, Tom. 2002. “Australian Cinema as a National Cinema.” In Film and Nationalism, edited by Alan Williams, 89–136. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Rutgers University Press. Papadakis, Yiannis. 2006. “Aphrodite Delights.” Postcolonial Studies 9, 3: 237–50. Parkinson Zamora, Lois and Wendy B. Faris. 1995. “Introduction: Daiquiri Birds and Flaubertian Parrot(ie)s.” In Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, edited by Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, 1–14. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Royer, Michelle. 2011. “National cinemas and transcultural mappings: the case of France.” Literature & Aesthetics 20, 1: 139–48. Sant Cassia, Paul. 2006. “‘Better Occasional Murders than Frequent Adulteries’: Discourses on Banditry, Violence, and Sacrifice in the Mediterranean.” In States of Violence, edited by Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski, 219–68. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Schaefer, Eric. 2005. “Dirty little secrets: scholars, archivists, and dirty movies.” The Moving Image 5, 2: 79–105. Scott, Casey. Undated. “Review of Emanuelle’s Daughter: Queen of Sados DVD.” www.dvddrive-in.com/reviews/e-h/emanuellesdaughter.htm (accessed June 22, 2013). Seal, Graham. 2009 “The Robin Hood principle: folklore, history, and the social bandit.” Journal of Folklore Research 46, 1: 67–89. Tarkovsky, Andrey. 1996. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

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Wayne, Mike. 2002. Politics of Contemporary European Cinema. Bristol: Intellect Limited. Williams, Linda. 1999 Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible.” Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

Notes   1 Galanou, Leda. 2012. “Fish n’ Chips: O Elias Demetriou mas Anigi tin Oreksi” (“Fish n’ Chips: Elias Demetriou Stimulates our Appetite”) Flix. http://flix.gr/ articles/fish-n-chips-o-hlias-dhmhtrioy-mas-anoigei-thn-ore.html (accessed June 20, 2013).   2 See Needham (2011).   3 This is also evident in Herodotou’s early productions; these, however, were extensions of Greek mainstream cinema and one key example is the film Vacation in our Cyprus (see Chapter 2).   4 See discussion on “Rock of the Romios” by Papadakis (2006).   5 Interview with director (April 30, 2013).   6 The sex scene—which is according to Costas Demetriou the one added during the completion of the film in Greece—follows Hassanpoulia’s Robin Hood-like visitation to a usurer’s (portrayed by Costas Demetriou himself) house to inhibit him from claiming an old man’s property; one of the Hassanpoulia brothers enters the chamber of the usurer’s daughter, Esme, who invites the bandit into her bed. The bikini marks on her naked body is an undeniable confirmation of the lack of any “serious study” of, or preparation for, the scene.   7 THOC was founded in 1970 and during its early years was committed to producing classic and modern classic plays.   8 Costas Demetriou privately funded the production of his early films with the financial support of local movie theater owners; this was the case almost exclusively until the formation of the Cyprus Film Production Council.   9 Even though Hassanpoulia can still be found in local DVD clubs or can be viewed online, the treatment of such films as dirty or trashy cinema still threatens their survival and therefore, those interested in these films, including myself, will go almost anywhere to access a copy (e.g. I viewed Emanuelle’s Daughter on xvideos.com, which is a free hosting service for hardcore pornography). 10 Both starring Laura Gemser and Gabriel Tinti, and released by the German distribution and sales company Atlas Film International. 11 Personal interview with director (April 30, 2013).



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12 Anonymous post on an online forum named retromaniax. www.retromaniax.gr/ vb/showthread.php?20521-%D4%E1- (accessed June 20, 2013). 13 For example, Seal (2009) discusses the activities of the historical Hassanpoulia within the framework of the “Social Bandit;” a similar reading of Hassanpoulis’ Robin Hood-like character as a form of proto-socialist agency is possible. 14 In his latest film titled I Hara kai i Thlipsi tou Somatos (Joy and Sorrow of the Body 2013) Pantzis revisits the “Evagoras and Aphrodite” naming of his leading characters and attempts to create a narrative closer to the crime thriller genre without abandoning the recurrent subthemes of his previous work. In this film Pantzis tells the story of a 35-year-old Evagoras who, after serving a five year sentence in prison, tries to locate his old partner in crime Milen, now an Interpolwanted Bulgarian mafia boss, who managed to escape Cyprus when Evagoras was arrested for counterfeiting US dollars. Evagoras did not name Milen as his accomplice when he was arrested five years ago and the former considers this a selfless act of friendship. Evagoras naïvely longs for Milen’s friendship, but he realizes in the end that Milen has changed and does not share the same feelings of “brotherly” love, since he is now a ruthless criminal. In the meantime Evagoras meets Dita (short for Aphrodita in Bulgarian) during his visit to Bulgaria to find Milen. Dita quickly falls in love with Evagoras, and their platonic relationship seems to be the ideal escape from his growing obsession with Milen’s indifference. However, Evagoras does not let himself get sidetracked from his mission to find Milen, a choice which inevitably leads to destructive results for him and Dita, who is forced to have sex with a shady Interpol agent. The film did not receive good reviews in Cyprus and in Greece, and most of the negative comments focused on the weaknesses of Pantzis’ leading actor (Charis Amprazis) and the director’s failure to negotiate effectively between the allegorical approach of his previous work (which is also evident in this film) and the demands of a more conventional three-act film narrative, which aspires to be a crime thriller. In addition, Pantzis includes moments in the film that are straightforward examples of the excess of the political (the main character is a refugee and his father is a missing person). These, apparently personal, expressions, which are specific to the Cyprus Problem, are not entirely relevant to the film’s plot or the main character’s outer motivation. 15 Prasina Aloga (Green Horses) is an expression used in Greece and Cyprus (possibly in other regional countries such as Italy) that refers to something that is impossible or does not exist. Certain commentators believe that the phrase comes from the ancient Greek expression prassein aloga (to act without reason).

6

Women and Gender in Cypriot Films: (Re)claiming Agency amidst the Discourses of its Negation Nayia Kamenou

Introduction In the sociopolitical space of divided Cyprus the political problem dominates, leaving little space for discussions about the exclusions it produces. The accentuation of existing patriarchal structures and essentialist gender role binarisms by masculinist and heteronormative nationalist discourses is a prevalent phenomenon in Cyprus, as it is in other locales that face analogous ethnonational problems. However, a preliminary glance at filmic spaces suggests that in Cypriot films women assume diverse and significant roles, which both intensify and emasculate predominant discourses. This chapter evaluates gender issues in Cypriot films from the 1960s to the 2010s and examines the possible significance of filmic spaces as areas where alternative constructions of female subjectivity and agency could be negotiated. It examines films based on three categories of female subjectivities and women’s agency—or lack thereof: (a) women as victims of predominant discourses; (b) women as (co) perpetrators of predominant discourses; and (c) women as agents.

Theoretical and methodological approach Before embarking on the analysis, two caveats are in order. The first relates to my approach. I treat films as “text,” with the concept stretched beyond its conventional meaning, while my engagement with “representation” does not revolve around historical accuracy or around the films or their directors’ “balanced”

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or “biased” view of the world (Rowley 2010: 314)—though numerous Cypriot directors made brave efforts to castigate gender stereotypes that were predominant at the time of their work’s creation or during the time their work reflects. Truly, the textual filmic analysis approach I espouse—and films themselves— cannot be completely dissociated from its specific sociocultural and political context. Therefore, the current analysis does not ignore or disavow the temporality of text and discourse. Rather, by treating films as texts and representations not as mere “collections of images or stereotypes,” but as “complex structures of linguistic and visual codes organised to produce specific meanings” (Thornham 1999: 12), it moves beyond the search of “reality” and of the directors’—most of the time, benevolent—intentions and focuses on the ways through which “reality,” political processes, and meaning are produced. Such an approach avoids the problems of presentism and of reducing the importance of artistic production to its creators’ goals, which can only be speculated. The second caveat relates to the employment of the concepts of “subjectivity” and “agency.” Instead of seeing subject formation as inexorably embedded in discursive matrices of power that render the exercise of agency by subjects impossible, I approach subjectivity formation as a process in which subjects partake. The fact that subjects are positioned in discourse does not necessarily render their role passive, since subjects are not only products of power but are also producers of themselves (Kendall and Wickham [1999] 2003: 54). The idea that subject formation precludes subject agency has its roots in anti-humanist, non-feminist, or “a-feminist” (film, literary, cultural, political, critical, psychoanalytic, etc.) theory, which has informed a number of feminist (film) theoretical approaches (Knight 1995). As a result, such approaches have often resulted in universalizing or totalizing and, therefore, exclusionary interpretations that ignore historical and cultural differences between social subjects, while they render the spectator as normatively male (Pribram 1999: 150–1). Namely, due to the anti-humanist tradition of ideas and theoretical strands that have infiltrated some feminist (film) theory, “woman as social and political agent” has been displaced by “female subjectivity” and “women” by “Woman,” while “woman” is cast as “sign” and “signifier,” as a non-intentional subject discursively produced (de Lauretis 1987: 31–50; Knight 1995). The problems with such approaches to film (e.g. Silverman 1983; Mulvey 1975) are almost self-explanatory: in such ideological positionings, which are underpinned by “heterosexedness” and hierarchical binary oppositions such as “masculinity-femininity” and “activity-passivity,” women are rendered as



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silent, absent, and marginal (as the object of the gaze) and are defined by a male-centered understanding of voyeurism (as spectators). According to Teresa de Lauretis (1987, 1990) and Christine Gledhill (1988), differences between women need to be recognized so as to shift from the problematic concept of the psychoanalytic “Woman” to women as diversified individuals located within specific contexts. Therefore, this analysis approaches “subjectivity” and “agency” not as ontological entities but as conceptual categories that reflect—do not transcend nor are being defined by—context and social subjects’ interaction. While the aim of the directors was not necessarily to create feminist films, gender and female subjectivity and agency are of utmost significance in the films discussed in this analysis. Consequently, I read films through a feminist lens that follows the work of de Lauretis (1987, 1990) and Knight (1995), while my approach aims to highlight the limits of imagination with regard to the construction and representation of gender and female subjectivity and agency, as these are reflected in Cypriot films. Admittedly, to an extent, the interpretation of art introduces an element of subjective evaluation so, like all spectators, this author cannot but see herself, the filmic text, and the world(s) it represents through specific systems of meaning (Pribram 1999: 146). To limit this peril, the idea of reflexivity guided my project throughout. Namely, I have been constantly reflecting on how my value commitments insert themselves into the current analysis and with what consequences (Lather 1988) and attempted to remain constantly aware of my own biases and of my social relation to the topic of my study (Wacquant 1992). My reading of the films does not aim to offer any final “truth” about their directors’ aims or impose this spectator/author’s interpretive perspective as one that resides outside discursive power. What my approach and interpretation of the films aim to do is to challenge the internal logic of hegemonic androcentric and heterocentric discourses and to contribute to the expansion of the limits of the imaginable with regard to gender and female subjectivity and agency, something that some of the films under examination in this analysis actually achieve. For, according to Foucault ([1985] 1992), the objective is “to learn to what extent the effort to think one’s own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and so enable it to think differently” ([1985] 1992: 9).

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Women as victims The constitutive link between conceptions of nationhood and national identity on the one hand, with androcentrism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity on the other, has been extensively documented in the literature (e.g. Blom, Hagemann, and Hall 2000; Mosse 1985; Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989). This literature has convincingly made the argument that women are being objectified and victimized by such discursive constructions and their products—e.g. war and conflict, marriage, and the nuclear family (Cusack 2000; Mayer 2002; Walby 2000). To some degree, all of the films examined here reflect this understanding of the relationship between dominant discourses and women-as-victims. As the title of the film denotes, in Pantzis’ The Rape of Aphrodite (O Viasmos tis Afrodites 1985) the protagonist’s personal story becomes a vehicle for exposing Turkish violence against “the island of Aphrodite” and, specifically, Turkish sexual violence against Greek-Cypriot women. It is no coincidence that all of the women who were raped and are presented or mentioned in the film are symbolically named “Aphrodite.” Nonetheless, the film does not identify foreign sexual aggression as the sole cause for Greek-Cypriot women’s victimization. It moves from a criticism of the violence of the “other” to a criticism of the violence of national men against national women. Having been raped by Turkish soldiers and, for that reason, denounced by her Greek-Cypriot husband, Evagoras’ cousin Aphrodite was forced to leave her young son and go to Athens where, out of lack of options that stemmed from her social stigmatization and physical and psychological scarring, she worked as a prostitute. The story of the young prostitute—whom Evagoras meets in a brothel toward the final act of the film—is similar, yet more illustrative of the victimization of national women by sexist, patriarchal, and phallocentric national narratives. As she confesses to the protagonist, she was forced to work as a prostitute because she had been raped by a co-villager, well before the 1974 Turkish invasion. She explains that she resorted to prostitution since she was denounced by her father and brother who could not bear the “shame” that she had brought upon them. However, by presenting sexual violence against women as the main reason for which their lives have been destroyed, the film carries the peril of reiterating and reinforcing a very problematic coupling of agency and marginalization with sexual inviolability and violability. It reiterates and reinforces the nationalist



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rhetoric about women’s purity and defilement, even while it attempts to castigate it, while it traps women into a discourse where sexual violence is a form of dishonor that amounts to social death (George 2007: 142–4). Therefore, in such filmic representations—similar to other films such as Panicos Chrysanthou’s Akamas (2006), Costas Demetriou’s The Road to Ithaca (O Dromos gia tin Ithaki 1999), and Adonis Florides and Theodoros Nicolaides’ Kalabush (2003)— women’s sexuality and their bodies are (re) affirmed as sites of contested national imaginaries of Cypriotness or Greek Cypriotness. Costas Demetriou’s film Hassanpoulia: The Avengers of Cyprus (Ta Hassanpoulia: Oi Ekdikites tis Kyprou 1975) is particularly interesting since, as opposed to other Cypriot films of its time, it portrays the ethnic “other” in a more positive light, even though it also reproduces various negative ethnic stereotypes. The film is based on the end-of-nineteenth-century real story of three Turkish-Cypriot brothers, known as the Hassanpoulia, whose criminal activities that primarily targeted rich elites who would take advantage of the poor, won them a Robin Hood-like reputation. In the film, the eldest brother and head of the gang, Hassanpoulis, is portrayed as a thief who observes and tries to impose upon his naïve siblings a code of conduct that may be illegal, but it is moral. For example, he beats his brothers for abducting and raping women, he kills one of his foes for trying to rape his mistress, and he sends out his brothers to take back the property titles of an old man that were unjustly taken from him by an usurer, Suleyman Bey. Moreover, in contrast to his brothers, he welcomes a Greek-Cypriot youth and an old man—Markos and Kosmas—into the group. The film is also interesting because it attempts to both criticize the sexual abuse of women and to celebrate female sexual agency. Hassanpoulis’ rage at women’s raping is juxtaposed to the film’s female characters’ overt sexuality. Hassanpoulis’ mistress, Emete, Markos mistress, Marina, and Suleyman Bey’s daughter, Esme, do not hesitate to initiate sexual intercourse outside wedlock. It could be argued that such a representation of women constitutes an attempt to render them with an agency that defies the rules of patriarchy. Nonetheless, the equation of female agency with female sexual emancipation reinforces androcentric and phallocentric discourses that understand female sexuality as impulsive and exploitable and thus as the legitimate object of control, policing, and regulation. Though necessary, sexual emancipation is not a sufficient condition for women’s emancipation. In my view, by narrowly understanding female agency as sexual agency, the film imprisons itself in the very ideology it

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seems to be attempting to fight: it challenges the patriarchal control of women’s sexuality, as if such control does not also involve the production and amplification of a specific female (hetero) sexuality, just to produce a vision of female agency as sexual agency. Even Emete, who is portrayed not only as the object of male gaze—in a scene toward the end of the film she belly dances for the male gang—but also as a fearless woman who is skilled in shooting guns, does not manage to escape the boundaries of a male-defined female agency, as all of her actions revolve around meeting the needs of her male lover and protector. Ultimately, Emete is reduced to her oriental dancing body and sexuality—a sexuality oriented toward male needs—while her agency is confined within the boundaries of androcentric and patriarchal prescriptions of female conduct. The idea that the recovery of female agency necessitates the relinquishing or the mutilation of the feminine, sexually-attractive female body (del Río 2008: 126; Krishnaraj 2009: 45) is communicated in a number of Cypriot films. In The Rape of Aphrodite the young prostitute is enabled to narrate herself to Evagoras and to the viewers and thus assume agency only after she exposes her mutilated naked body—one of her breasts had been cut off by the Turkish soldier who raped her (see Figure 6.1). Her emancipation as a political actor who is able to narrate her and the nation’s history ensues from the annihilation of her femininity. Although, to some degree, such a filmic discourse emancipates woman-as-agent from her physical/sexual bonds, it engages in another type of naturalization of the female subject-as-agent: Aphrodite cannot be feminine and act.

Figure 6.1  Evagoras resting his head on Aphrodite’s mutilated breast



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Discourses that are premised on gender binarisms tend to associate action with masculinity and lack of femininity, and passivity with femininity and lack of masculinity. The pervasiveness of such discourses stems from the understanding of the notion of gender as sexual difference. If “this mutual containment of gender and sexual difference(s)” is to be deconstructed, gender needs to be understood as the product of various social technologies rather than as “a property of bodies or something originally existent in human beings” (de Lauretis 1987: 1–3). In sum, even if The Rape of Aphrodite seems to offer a space for the negotiation of alternative constructions of female subjectivity and agency, it essentially employs women’s drama, trauma, and demise so as to serve men’s desire to become national heroes in the display of their grief (del Río 2008: 118). The idea that femininity and the exercise of agency are incompatible is also expressed in more recent Cypriot films, some of which make serious attempts to challenge stereotypical understandings of femininity and of the sexually-attractive female body. For example, Daphne in Aliki Danezi-Knutsen’s Roads and Oranges (Dromoi kai Portokalia 1996), Lea in Danezi-Knutsen’s Bar (2001), Phoebe in Christos Georgiou’s Under the Stars (Kato apo ta Astra 2001), and Kalia in Kalabush, the fearless and autonomous female characters who challenge predominant oppressive discourses, are presented as lacking “natural” feminine qualities—namely, “female beauty” and femininity. Similarly, in Marinos Kartikkis’ Honey and Wine (Meli kai Krasi 2006), the vesting of the two women (Eleni and Rea) with agency actualizes in the last scene of the film, through their decision to cut short their long hair—a symbol of femininity (see Figure 6.2). Although these films succeed in challenging the reproduction of stereotypical representations of women and even in blurring the boundaries between femininity and masculinity, they do not break away from understandings of agency that are premised on gender binarisms. Namely, even though they allow the imagining of multiple femininities and masculinities, by stripping their protagonists of all physical characteristics and mannerisms that are conventionally associated with women and femininity, they strengthen the idea that such characteristics and mannerisms are not fit for the political agency the women protagonists assume. In their eagerness to break away from a patriarchal tradition that associates women and the feminine with passivity and lack of agency, they end up reinforcing the femininity-as-inaction and masculinity-asaction discursive dichotomy.

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Figure 6.2  Eleni and Rea contemplating whether and how to change their hair, that is, their self-perceptions and lives

Femininity as agency, for example, is successfully articulated in Michael Cacoyannis’ Stella (1955). Stella consciously, assertively, and successfully challenges repressive societal rules and the controlling male gaze. Her statement that she likes looking at the poster announcing her show denotes that she derives pleasure from her own projected image. In this way, she is transformed from an object of male desire to a spectator who is the subject of her own gaze (Peckham and Michelakis 2000: 73–4). Her death in the final scene of the film is intended to make spectators empathize with Stella who, in all her femininity, embodies the retaliation against bourgeois propriety (Komninos 2011: 80). As opposed to Stella, the central female characters in some Cypriot films are either punished so that the narrative can relieve the male spectators from the fear of castration (Komninos 2011: 80) or are presented as ultimately choosing to comply with the rules of heteronormative domesticity. For example, in the film Bar, Lea’s expedition ends in her realization that her acts caused her to lose her boyfriend; in Corinna Avraamidou’s The Last Homecoming (O Teleutaios Gyrismos 2008), Alexandra’s cheating on her fiancé with his brother causes the end of her happiness and the breaking up of the family, which in the film symbolizes Cyprus; and in Under the Stars, Phoebe’s coming to terms with her past and her understanding and acceptance of her (female) identity actualizes when she becomes a romantic couple with Loucas. Further criticisms are applicable to some of the Cypriot films in which female characters are represented as strong, independent women, who are capable of assuming agency and making (political) decisions. Even though the central female



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characters in The Last Homecoming, The Road to Ithaca, and Akamas —Alexandra, Yasmin, and Rodou—are presented as women who actively seek to rupture predominant nationalist and patriarchal discourses, they do not challenge the link between heterosexual sex and women’s ownership: Rodou’s political rebellion rests on the fact that she had consummated her relationship with a TurkishCypriot man and thus passed from the ownership of her father and of her national men to that of the enemy “other.” Yasmin’s political agency reaches its climax when she surrenders her virginity, the rightful property of her future husband, to the Turkish enemy, in order to save the Greek-Cypriot man she loves. In the same vein, Alexandra’s political agency is most prominently demonstrated and simultaneously annihilated by her transgression not only of the rules of kinship that prescribe ownership of women’s sexuality-as-property, but also of the rules of national kinship—a double transgression that has devastating consequences. Greek Alexandra, who in the film represents Greece, betrays her GreekCypriot fiancé, who in the film represents all Greek Cypriots, by engaging in adultery with his own brother, thus causing the siblings to fight because of her, similarly to the way Greek Cypriots were divided over the issue of union with Greece. It could be argued that the symbolic analogy that the director draws is problematic for another reason: Alexandra is presented both as actively opposing the Greek nationalist military junta and as representing Greece that “betrayed” Cyprus and the Greek Cypriots. Yet, as the relevant literature has amply demonstrated, the simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of women from the body politic and from the body of the “nation” has been common practice in nation-building processes and in national projects across the globe, especially in ethnically divided societies where the nation-state is, or it is imagined to be, facing an imminent threat (Blom, Hagemann and Hall 2000; Yuval-Davis 1993; Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989). In line with this reasoning, Alexandra’s character embodies both the rules and boundaries of national kinship and belonging that need to be observed and the threat of their transgression. Consequently, even when focusing on female characters, these films are not feminist in the sense of a declared political project to empower women, though it could also be argued that this was not the primary aim of their directors. Their abandonment of the possibility of the articulation of a truly uninhibited female agency over the reiteration of the centrality of the control of female sexuality and of the femininity-as-inaction and masculinity-as-action binarism results in the creation of a mirror-image of the patriarchal discourse and of the gender normativity the films attempt to displace.

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Women as (co)perpetrators While the victimization of women by many prominent discourses is clear, portraying all women as victims of (discursive) violence and all men as carriers of (discursive) violence reinforces the sorts of essentialist binarisms that feminist theory aims to challenge and negates one of the feminist project’s— and this analysis’—fundamental pillars: the emancipation of women through the assertion of female agency. A more nuanced look at women’s involvement in various national and nationalist projects—especially outside the “Western” context—indicates that, on numerous occasions, women have strategically employed their auxiliary, men-prescribed roles in order to gain access to the established power structure and subsequently challenge and alter it (Vickers 2006; Walby 2000). Films like Derviş Zaim’s Shadows and Faces  (Gölgeler ve Suretler 2010) and Mud (Çamur, 2003) exemplify women’s involvement in the perpetuation of discourses of ethnic animosity. For example, in Mud, the protagonist is killed by mobsters while, most importantly, his sister becomes impregnated by his semen and brings to life his children. In my view, the resolution of the story and Ayşe’s impregnation serves to accentuate the main idea of the film, namely, that the main characters are implicit in and cannot escape the destructive effects of the past, despite their attempts to reconstruct their national identities. Although portrayed as a teenager in need of her missing father, Shadows and Faces’ Ruhşar is also represented as essentially lighting the match that ignites the conflict between the villagers. Heteronormative discourses that pertained to the centrality of same-sex marriage and “proper” sexual relationships accompanied the generation of nineteenth-century European nationalisms and have historically grounded discourses of nationhood. Nationalism and sexual propriety were viewed as mutually supporting and sexual passions were redirected into the love for one’s nation. Consequently, discourses about sexuality and nationhood essentially merged and the borders of national belonging and exclusion corresponded to “normal” and “proper” sexual and gender behavior (Mosse 1985; Pryke 1998). If, by reinstating the centrality of romantic love and marriage, Akamas’ Rodou contributes to the legitimization of heteronormative discourses that accompany discourses of nationhood, Ruhşar—similarly to Alexandra in The Last Homecoming—is represented as a (co)perpetrator of nationalist discourses; as a character whose manifestation of agency is



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inextricably linked to the manifestation of nationalist discourses in their most violent and destructive form. Studies of gender—filmic and others—tend to focus on women and to ignore male subjectivities. The problematics of interpreting gender as sexual difference have already been exposed. Therefore, any serious attempt to discern the power hierarchies, exclusions, and Foucaultian technologies that are at work within the discursive concept of gender cannot exclude any of its manifestations, one of which are predominant notions of masculinity. Therefore, a focus on men, on their fears, needs, and fantasies, as well as on the technologies of manhood is pertinent, as it reveals the perplexities involved in, and the opportunities for change afforded by, doing and undoing gender (Butler [1990] 1999, 2004). Additionally, an examination of the role assigned to women in the construction of men’s fears, needs, and fantasies through the filmic text liberates gendered agency from sex dichotomies. An examination of films like Pantzis’ The Slaughter of the Cock (I Sfagi tou Kokora 1996), Kartikkis’ By Miracle (Apo Thavma 2010) and Honey and Wine, as well as Kalabush reveals that women are represented as complicit in the preservation of predominant discourses that pertain to masculinity. Within the “Western” context, hegemonic masculinity has been associated with machismo, heterosexuality, homophobia, and Eurocentrism/Westerncentrism (Connell 1987, 2005; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Donaldson 1993). During the nineteenth century, such notions about masculinity were transported to the colonies, where they were met both with resistance and compliance (Bleys 1996; Said 1978) and became a referent for the construction of local male identities. In formerly colonial locales, like Cyprus, male identities and hegemonic masculinities have been based on anti-colonialist/anti-Eurocentric/antiWesterncentric notions and on the distancing of the colonial/postcolonial subject from the colonizer and from his discursive and ideological apparatus. These male identity formation processes are depicted in some Cypriot films. For example, in Giorgos Filis’ Loves and Sorrows (Agapes tzai Kaimoi 1965) the photographer and laughing stock of the village is the only character depicted as wearing “Western” clothing and, in contrast to the other male characters who are presented as virile, he is portrayed as effeminate. Similarly, in Hassanpoulia, Hassanpoulis men do not trust Markos and Kosmas because they are dressed in “Western” attire. The Slaughter of the Cock presents the story of a macho Greek-Cypriot man, Evagoras, who along with his friend Onisilos leave their families behind and

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relocate to a non-specified Arab country to work, soon after the events of 1974. They work in the construction business of an American man, Achilles, who is married to a—by conventional standards—“sexy” American woman, Blanche. Achilles and Blanche befriend Evagoras and Onisilos, whom they invite to one of their orgies. Achilles is represented as a man who enjoys having sex with other men, while he shares Blanche’s voyeuristic fetish. During the orgy scene, Achilles is consentiently sodomized by Onisilos in the presence of Blanche and Evagoras, who are also having sex with each other. The orgy scene reaches its peak—or, rather, the filmic perspective of the two Greek-Cypriot men’s masculinities that the scene portrays is reversed—when Achilles orders a group of men to attack and rape the two protagonists, in order to satisfy Blanche’s voyeuristic fetishism (see Figure 6.3). Having made a small fortune for themselves, the two men eventually return to Cyprus, where they lead a prosperous career as the macho and brutal owners of a strip club, which they established with Achilles’ financial support. The strip club scenes are disturbing: the two men physically and psychologically abuse their own “others”—mostly Asian workers/slaves—much in the same way as they were abused as “others” by the “Western”/American couple. The plot takes a twist when Evagoras falls in love with a deaf and unable to speak girl, whom he shelters, protects, and, essentially, treats very differently from his wife and female workers. His love for her and his need to be with her is so great that he deafens himself by shooting a gun right next to his ears and mutes himself by violently cutting his tongue with a rock. There are numerous processes at work in the unfolding of this filmic text that call our attention to the construction and deconstruction, amplification

Figure 6.3  Evagoras and Onisilos being attacked and raped on the order of Achilles under the voyeuristic gaze of Blanche.



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and emasculation of hegemonic masculinity as machismo, heterosexuality, homophobia, Westerncentrism/Eurocentrism, and anti-colonialism/antiWesterncentrism/anti-Eurocentrism. Evagoras’ masculinity is premised on, and represented through, the abusive power he exerts over the “other” and especially over the other “others”—that is, over his wife and his Asian workers—and the killing of the “passive” sodomite Achilles, the American/“Western” colonizer who had disgraced him by ordering his sodomization. His demise is premised on, and represented through, the challenges to his machismo and heterosexual masculinity: his rape and his falling in love with the deaf woman. What is particularly interesting is that it is the female characters, through the exercise of their agency, who lead Evagoras to his destruction. It is Evagoras’ wife who nurtures the type of masculinity he exemplifies: she is presented as being fully aware of his business activities, which she accepts in order to enjoy the economic benefits that ensue. She even endures marital rape—she cries every time Evagoras forces himself on her—for the same reason. More importantly, it is Blanche’s scopophilic fetishism that Achilles’ order for Evagoras’ sodomization serves. As it was previously explained, psychoanalytic feminist filmic analyses tend to identify the active subject of fetishistic voyeurism as male and the passive fetishized object of scopophilia as female. However, the filmic text of The Slaughter of the Cock reverses the identification of the signifier and signified: in the rape scene, it is the “sexy” female character of Blanche that acts as the subject of the gaze, while the macho male protagonists Evagoras and Onisilos function as the objects of Blanche’s gaze. Lastly, it is Evagoras’ falling in love with, and his subsequent abandonment by, the deaf woman that deprives him entirely from his virility and hegemonic masculinity. It could be argued that Blanche’s agency and the scene of Evagoras and Onisilos’ sodomization serve as a caricature of men embedded in their own power, a form of power that is, nonetheless, volatile and rupturable (Aitken 2006: 499). Similarly, it could also be argued that the portrayal of the relationship between Evagoras and his wife accentuates the idea that femininity and women as gendered subjects can become critical sites for the castigation of notions that equate women and femininity with passivity, lack of choice, and unwilling submission to male authority. Lastly, it could be claimed that the deaf woman forces a renegotiation of hegemonic masculinity, since her agency opens up a space of mediation between creative vision and its critical reception, where the boundaries of masculinities can be shifted and manipulated (Rajan 2006: 1121).

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Such approaches, however, fail to account for the fact that, although the three women cause a rupture in conceptions and representations of hegemonic masculinity, this rupture is not meant to and does not lead to a reconceptualization of masculinity as non-macho, non-heteronormative, and non-homophobic. Namely, as it does not generate any alternatives, Blanche’s agency stops at portraying male sodomy as the ultimate blow to masculinity. The wife’s agency hardly aims at reimagining masculinity as non-abusive: she tells Evagoras that her only interest and prerogative is the upbringing of their daughter, that is, their daughter’s indoctrination into the sexual economy of patriarchal culture. Lastly, the representation-via-naturalization of the deaf woman, that is, her association with “nature” and the “natural”—she walks barefooted, eats voraciously with her hands, lacks speech/logos, and is sexually impulsive and oblivious of the rules of dress that exemplify female propriety—strengthens the binary discourse of “women as nature, men as culture,” whose boundaries Evagoras is represented as unable to cross: even after he deafens and mutes himself—a martyrdomlike act that hints at his attempt to transform himself through purification and suffering—he cannot be with her. Thus, and regardless of his attempts to transform himself, her emotional impact on him is not only unable to enable such a transformation and a re-imagination of masculinity; it also serves as a reminder of the pervasiveness of the “female/femininity—masculine/masculinity” dichotomy. Since the transgressive quality of the comic affords opportunities to challenge established structures (Kazakopoulou 2011: 62), the examination of comedies like Kalabush and Kyriakos Tofarides’ Block 12 (Oikopedo 12 2013) becomes pertinent in this analysis. However—and even though such intention by the producers is not questioned here—such filmic texts only partly challenge and, in my view, do not transgress various problematic established structures. Admittedly, the scenes of Mustafa’s illegal and dangerous transportation to Cyprus by traffickers, as well as his and other illegal immigrants’ being chased by the Greek-Cypriot police, highlight the discursive content and meaning of borders and of tactics of surveillance: those targeted by the force of white “Western”/European male supremacy are those who fall outside the paradigm of the white “Western”/European (male) citizen or tourist (Marciniak, Imre, and O’Healy 2007: 6). However, female characters are represented as being actively involved in upholding this supremacy. For example, although the Mayor’s female secretary, Ourania, is represented as a dynamic, capable woman who essentially runs his office single-handedly,



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she is also infatuated with the idea of Europeanizing/Westernizing the city via creating a sewage system. In this way, she is presented as a woman whose capabilities, needs, and priorities are defined based on masculinist understandings of what doing politics and Europeanizing a city means and thus as complicit in the corroboration of such understandings. Tatiana’s demonstration of agency has similar effects: she chooses to remain a cabaret dancer and to send away Miro on the account of him being penniless. Not only is the representation of Tatiana’s character reinforcing constructions of women as naïve and vain, it also functions as a way of negating the possibility of any negotiation of the meaning of masculinity. Miro is penniless and thus not the target of female desire; therefore he is not manly enough. It could be argued that the director’s attempt was to highlight the lack of real alternatives for women who decided to migrate to Cyprus in order to ameliorate their life conditions but, instead, became victims of trafficking and forced prostitution. Nonetheless, though harsh and pragmatic, Tatiana’s choice to prioritize the meeting of her financial needs over a chance—admittedly slim, given Miro’s naïvety about what he can achieve—to have a better future and to stop prostituting herself, makes the limited options and precarious lives of subordinated groups seem somehow inevitable rather than unconscionable (Peterson 2010: 208–9). With the exception of Uncle Nicolas and Slavi, all the male characters— foreigners and Cypriots—are crafted as emblematic of the Cypriot reality the film tries to capture: they are portrayed as effeminate (Mustafa), illusioned (the Mayor and Miro), or indulging and taking pride in a pseudo-masculinity that is premised on the abuse of the “other” (the cabaret owners). This sort of representation of the male characters succeeds at challenging Cypriot predominant conceptions of masculinity. However, it does not sufficiently do the same with regard to predominant conceptions of femininity. Kalia, the only female character who is vested with a type of agency that escapes male control and masculinist fantasies, is portrayed as androgynous; for as it was previously argued, one cannot be feminine and act. Anna’s demonstration of agency is even more instructive. Although her coming closer to and having sex with Mustafa symbolizes her retaliation against the dictates of her suppressive social context, she subsequently chooses to get married to and become the property of her abusive boyfriend. In my view, this is a manifestation of agency and not a lack thereof. Anna chooses to go back to her boyfriend, marry him, and, in this way, actively participate in the

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perpetuation of the discursive status quo. Her choosing to act in this way is important for another reason: it precludes the imagination of a different kind of masculinity since, no matter how much she is attracted to Mustafa, his poverty, race, religion, and low status within Cypriot society render him non-masculine, almost sexless, and, therefore, an illegitimate emotional and sexual partner. It could be argued that Anna’s character and choice aims at making viewers sympathize with Cypriot women who, because of social and family pressures, are often trapped in abusive relationships and marriages, or at initiating criticism against women like Anna who choose to abide by repressive social norms. Nonetheless, the resolution of this filmic narrative is ambiguous as it might lead spectators to the conclusion that subject formation and agency are unavoidably imprisoned within predominant discourses and matrices of power. By Miracle and Honey and Wine are two other films that while they, to some extent, legitimate women’s ability to succeed in the world as it is and even live independently of men, in their more or less explicit homophobia and heterocentricity do not legitimate feminist arguments for autonomous definitions of female agency and radical independence from the heterosexual social contract (de Lauretis 1990: 19). By Miracle is a story about two women who try to come to grips with the loss of loved ones and, significantly, it is the first Cypriot film to negotiate issues of non-heterosexuality. Aliki is a woman whose young daughter was run over by a car, for which she blames her husband and which she is unable to overcome. As a result of this, her marriage becomes estranged. Annoyed by her husband’s drinking problem and by what she understands as his inability to understand her, when she realizes that she is pregnant—something he wanted but for which she was not ready—she leaves him. Consequently, the couple is reunited when Andreas reaches out for his wife, who has now realized that the miracle she was looking for from the allegedly crying icon of Virgin Mary was the miracle of her new unborn child. Dimitra is a widow who lives with her “closeted” gay son, Marios, of whom she is over-protective. Although Marios meets a man he really likes and spends a night with him, he then avoids him because he does not want to hurt his mother. When she finds gay pornography in Marios’ room, Dimitra is truly upset and sad. When Marios realizes his mother’s discovery and tries to open up to her, she avoids the conversation (see Figure 6.4). Dimitra and Marios find their miracle when Dimitra finally accepts and acknowledges her son’s sexual choice and when Marios realizes that he should accept his sexuality and give Alexis a chance.



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Figure 6.4  Dimitra turning her face away from Marios, unwilling and unable to accept his sexuality

Honey and Wine is a film about the attempts of two women to deal with the pain associated with losing a child, accept themselves as childless and single, and recast their lives based on this acknowledgment. Eleni is a divorced nurse who had lost her son in an accident. Similarly to Dimitra in By Miracle, after having separated from her husband, she centered her whole life on her son. Being unable to overcome his loss, she becomes isolated. However, she is very happy when Rea, her young actress neighbor, knocks on her door after having locked herself out of her apartment. Gradually, a strong friendship grows between the two women. Rea faces her own problems. She constantly fights and eventually breaks up with her boyfriend. As she ultimately confesses to Eleni—who finds her unconscious on the floor and takes her to hospital—although doctors had told her that having a baby could kill her, she tricked her boyfriend to get pregnant. When she told him about the pregnancy he got very upset and suggested that she had an abortion. She decided to break up with him and to take the risk of continuing her pregnancy. In the last scene of the film, the two women sit in front of the mirror in Rea’s theater changing room where they contemplate making changes to their hair, that is, to their lives (see Figure 6.2). In my view, although the filmic text in the two Kartikkis films allows the women protagonists to negotiate and reconstruct their identities as mothers,

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wives, and partners, similarly to the female characters in the other films discussed in this section, the manifestation of their agency fails to transcend the discursive boundaries within which it is embedded. In By Miracle, Aliki demonstrates agency when she abandons her husband, only to subsequently accept him back. At no point does the filmic plot allow for the imagination of a womanhood/female existence devoid of heterosexual marriage and childbearing, which is presented as the ultimate miracle in a woman’s life. This inability to imagine female existence as dissociated from motherhood and wedlock is reinforced in Honey and Wine. In the end, the women’s demonstration of agency is limited to the negotiation of the possibility to change their hair (lives), but not to a significant extent. Eleni tells Rea not to change her hair color and if she is to cut her hair, to cut it just a little. This hardly constitutes agency that ruptures established discourses. The representation of Dimitra in By Miracle is even more revealing: even when she decides to initiate conversation with her son and acknowledge his sexuality, she does so strictly within the limits of a heteronormative, heterocentric, and homophobic discourse. By telling him that she is worried that he is going to be left alone, she reinforces discourses that portray non-heterosexual relations as purely sexual and thus ephemeral, in order to preserve the fantasy of heterosexual relationships and marriage as the paragon of human complementarity and emotional fulfillment. Shockingly, in the filmic text of By Miracle, even the character of Marios provides support to such heterocentric and heteronormative discourses. When his mother tells him that if they had talked about his sexuality sooner things might have been different, he responds that nothing would have changed. This statement is highly ambiguous. It could be argued that the idea attempted to be communicated to spectators through Marios’ response is that, although a choice, sexual choice is one that is constitutive of the sense of the self and therefore, not random or easily and unproblematically changed (Wintemute 2002). It could also be argued that, whatever he actually believes, this could be a strategic choice on his behalf to talk to his mother in terms she might accept or understand. However, based on the filmic text, such an argument would be far-fetched. When making the statement, Marios is still unable to accept his sexuality—he continues to reject the possibility of a relationship with Alexis. Therefore, the implication in his statement is not that he came to embrace his sexuality and defend his sexual choice; rather, the implication is that sexuality is rooted in biology, not choice.



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Such biologisms strengthen discourses that attempt to dissociate sexuality from agency and this carries the peril of pathologizing non-heterosexual sexuality, negating the importance of a politics of sexuality, and obscuring the impact of technologies of gender and sexuality on what comes to be commonly accepted as natural and predetermined. In fact, numerous non-heterosexual individuals feel that their sexuality is rooted in biology. This belief was expressed to me by some gay and bisexual Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots (Kamenou 2012). However, causal approaches to sexuality are problematic since they leave important historical and political questions unaddressed. The imperative issue is not discovering whether non-heterosexual sexuality is the result of “nature” or “nurture.” The crucial task is to bring to light its interpretations and representations within specific sociocultural contexts, to emphasize the historicity and the effects of such interpretations and representations on the way in which sexual lives are organized, and to analyze the power structures and relations that render specific interpretations and representations hegemonic (Weeks 1991).

Women as agents In comparison to the films previously discussed, films such as Bar, Roads and Oranges, Under the Stars, and Block 12 seem to afford women wider spaces for (re)claiming agency within the discourses of its negation. While often employing a light touch, Block 12 touches upon a number of serious political issues that have plagued the island for decades. I will only focus on those that relate to women’s agency. In this film, two female characters stand out as important for the purposes of the current analysis: Haniya, the Hindu housekeeper, and Greek-Cypriot Anthoula, the daughter of the family who chooses to be mute, immobile, and unresponsive to her environment. Haniya’s agentic power stems from her irresistible beauty and sexual healing skills, which she uses upon both male and female family members by initiating sexual encounters. The intimate link between the family members and Haniya activates and highlights important discourses that relate to gendered domestic labor and racialized structures of power. It raises questions about the exploitation of the female “other” by natives, who may shelter and employ the alien “other” as long as she can perform services that sustain the family (Marciniak, Imre, and O’ Healy 2007: 8). In contrast to the culture of “Western” clothing,

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the abstract clothing of ethnic dress reduces its bearer to a symbol-bearing abstraction (Baert 1994: 358). Always wearing her ethnic dress, Haniya is represented as a kind a goddess, a dea ex machina, who helps the family members overcome their troubles. This manifestation of Haniya’s agency constitutes a strong challenge to the authority of the “West.” In contrast to the mute female characters in The Last Homecoming and The Slaughter of the Cock, Anthoula’s mutism is of her own choice. It has been argued that mutism as women’s detached existence constitutes a form of resistance to patriarchal order, since chosen mutism represents women’s refusal to explain themselves to others (Suner 2007: 64–5). This argument is neatly applicable to the case of Anthoula’s character. Her agency is initially manifested through her refusal to speak, a politically important act aimed at castigating the patriarchal order that prohibited her from bearing the child of the Turkish-Cypriot man she loved. Once her father apologizes and she is reunited with her loved one, she chooses to speak again and uses her voice in order to unite her family against the colonial powers that try to have them leave their home and land. Like Roads and Oranges, the film Bar also explores the issue of missing people in Cyprus, but it does so from a completely different angle. Lea is a taxi driver working for her uncle; her brother disappeared under unspecified conditions after 1974. She last saw him in an area where a mass grave was later discovered. Therefore, all her efforts are directed toward convincing the committee that undertakes the DNA identification of persons who went missing during the events of 1974 to include her brother in their investigations. She finally succeeds by forcing Dr. Mayer, the scientist leading the investigation, to sign a relevant statement. While in Montevideo with her Uruguayan boyfriend, she sees a picture of her brother and of a tango singer—her boyfriend’s mother—on the wall of a bar. Since in the picture Lea’s brother appeared to be much older than when she last saw him, she asks her boyfriend to bring her into contact with his estranged mother, Sylvia del Rio, but he tells her that she is in Berlin. Lea’s attempts to trace her, so as to find out about her brother, result in her boyfriend abandoning her. Finally, she finds the singer in her apartment on Berlin Street in Montevideo. Sylvia del Rio tells her that there is no truth to be known, that she is late as her boyfriend Manuel has already left her, and that whatever she might tell her about her brother would not make any difference. We are then transported back to Cyprus and to the taxi office, where Lea’s uncle—who was indifferent toward her efforts throughout the development



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of the plot—turns on the television to hear the latest announcements about the DNA identification of the 1974 missing persons. Lea tells him to turn the television off as she does not know if she wants to know. In the last scene of the film, Lea is sitting at her regular bar in Montevideo talking to barman Marcelo, when his photograph appears on a television screen that is playing in the background. According to the announcement, Marcelo, a missing person, was recently identified with the DNA method. Marcelo tells Lea that now she can go wherever she wants, turns off the lights, and locks the bar. In this film, the bar functions as a mediating space between reality and imagination. Like Phoebe and Loucas in Under the Stars and Daphne in Roads and Oranges, Lea is caught between the real and the imagined: between her quest to find the truth and her fantasy of the truth that she wants to find. In and of itself, this conflict might inhibit or derail the female protagonists’ agency, but does not render it impossible. In my view, what is problematic in these filmic texts vis-à-vis the manifestation of women’s agency is that their quest is motivated by their need or, rather, by their nationally prescribed duty—since, in national discourses, women are rendered as the symbolic carriers of the nation—to find their national missing men. Furthermore, the truth they reach or choose to embrace is the one sanctioned by the male characters. In Under the Stars it is Loucas who decides when and in which way the quest will be resolved and tells Phoebe to let the dead go. In Roads and Oranges, Daphne’s quest is premised on the truths known to two men: the Turkish shepherd and the Greek journalist who covers the story. In Bar, it is

Figure 6.5  Lea sitting in her Montevideo hotel room, staring at her boyfriend’s break-up note and at herself

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Marcelo that points out to Lea the futility of her quest, while her quest is futile because she is too late; she has already lost her boyfriend (see Figure 6.5). Surely, Lea, Daphne, Anna, Phoebe, and Loucas’ border-crossings are “journeys of identity” (Naficy 2001) through which they manage to negotiate and (re) claim their positioning in relation to predominant discourses. Whether actual or imaginary, borders are, after all, sites where a variety of factors intersect whereas, before borders are crossed, journeys need to be traveled, transitions need to be made, and refashionings of the self must actualize (Moodley 2003: 68). As Judith Butler’s ([1990] 1999) work on performativity highlights, agency arises out of repetitions of different varieties of “womanhood” and “manhood,” during which the boundaries of the dichotomy are blurred and shifted. Even if certain agency stems out of necessity and out of the limits of discourse, it is still crucial toward opening a new set of discursive conditions within which femininity and masculinity, gendered subjectivities, and agency can be negotiated, reformulated, and reclaimed (Nikolaidis 2011: 502–3).

Conclusion By highlighting the fault lines of gender, (hetero) sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and race, the Cypriot films discussed in this analysis might not create a rupture in the national/nationalistic, patriarchal, androcentric, and heteronormative discursive constructions of female subjectivity and women’s agency. Nonetheless, they explore the complex dynamics between agency and passivity and inclusion and exclusion from one’s own geography, community, and history (Suner 2007: 67). To borrow from Shohat (1997): [they] do not so much reject “nation” as interrogate its repressions and limits, passing nationalist discourse through the grids of class, gender, sexuality and diasporic identities … Rather than fleeing from contradiction, they install doubt and crisis at their very core … they favor heteroglossic proliferations of difference within polygeneric narratives, seen … as energizing political and aesthetic forms of … self-construction. (1997: 208)

In particular, the films discussed in the last section of this analysis make a serious attempt to expose women’s subordination in its multiple forms and to depict the power relations within which gender hierarchies are created and contested. Yet, more is needed in order for the desire to represent women and to afford them



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agency to not become an extension of the desire to confine and control them (Atakav 2011: 143–4). Spivak (1988) is right in pointing out that the interlocutors—that is, the film creator and the film critic—need to renounce the benefits of their privileged position in order to be able to speak to—not merely listen to or speak for—the silenced subject of the subaltern (Gairola 2002: 307).

Works cited Aitken, Stuart C. 2006. “Leading men to violence and creating spaces for their emotions.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 13: 491–507. Atakav, Eylem. 2011. “‘There are ghosts in these houses!’ on new Turkish cinema: belonging, identity and memory.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 12: 139–44. Baert, Renee. 1994. “Skirting the issue.” Screen 35: 354–73. Bleys, Rudi C. 1996. The Geography of Perversion: Male-to-male Sexual Behaviour Outside the West and the Ethnographic Imagination, 1750–1918. London: Cassell. Blom, Ida, Karen Hagemann, and Catherine Hall, eds. 2000. Gender Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Berg. Butler, Judith. [1990] 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge. —2004. Undoing Gender. New York and London: Routledge. Connell, Raewyn W. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. —2005. Masculinities, 2nd edn. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Connell, Raewyn W. and James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. “Hegemonic masculinity: rethinking the concept.” Gender and Society 19: 829–59. Cusack, Tricia. 2000. “Janus and gender: women and the nation’s backward look.” Nations and Nationalism 6: 541–61. de Lauretis, Teresa. 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. —1990. “Guerrilla in the midst: women’s cinema in the 80s.” Screen 31: 6–25. del Río, Elena. 2008. Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance: Powers of Affection. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Donaldson, Mike. 1993. “What is hegemonic masculinity?” Theory and Society 22: 643–57. Foucault, Michel. [1985] 1992. The History of Sexuality Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure, translated by Robert Hurley. Reprint, London and New York: Penguin Books. Gairola, Rahul. 2002. “Burning with shame: desire and South Asian patriarchy, from

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Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ to Deepa Mehta’s ‘Fire’. ” Comparative Literature 54: 307–24. George, Rosemary Marangoly. 2007. “(Extra) ordinary violence: national literatures, diasporic aesthetics, and the politics of gender in South Asian partition fiction.” Signs 33: 135–58. Gledhill, Christine. 1988. “Pleasurable Negotiations.” In Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television, edited by Deidre Pribram, 64–89. London: Verso. Kamenou, Nayia. 2012. “‘Cyprus is the Country of Heroes, Not of Homosexuals’: Sexuality, Gender and Nationhood in Cyprus.” PhD Dissertation, King’s College London. Kazakopoulou, Tonia. 2011. “Schemes of comedy in The Cow’s Orgasm.” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 37: 61–74. Kendall, Gavin and Gary Wickham. [1999] 2003. Using Foucault’s Methods. London: Sage. Knight, Deborah. 1995. “Women, subjectivity, and the rhetoric of anti-humanism in feminist film theory.” New Literary History 26: 39–56. Komninos, Maria. 2011. “Representations of women in Greek cinema.” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 37: 75–89. Krishnaraj, Maithreyi. 2009. “Women’s citizenship and the private–public dichotomy.” Economic and Political Weekly 44: 43–5. Lather, Patti. 1988. “Feminist perspectives on empowering research methodologies.” Women’s Studies International Forum 11: 569–81. Marciniak, Katarzyna, Anikó Imre, and Áine O’ Healy, eds. 2007. Transnational Feminism in Film and Media. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mayer, Tamar. 2002. “Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage.” In Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, edited by Tamar Mayer, 1–22. London: Routledge. Moodley, Subeshini. 2003. “Postcolonial feminisms speaking through an ‘accented’ cinema: the construction of Indian women in the films of Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta.” Agenda: Empowering Woman for Gender Equity 17: 66–75. Mosse, George L. 1985. Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe. New York: Howard Fertig. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema.” Screen 16: 6–18. Naficy, Hamid. 2001. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nikolaidis, Aristotelis. 2011. “Rethinking the representation of gender and activism in film.” Feminist Media Studies 11: 501–5. Peckham, Robert Shannan and Pantelis Michelakis. 2000. “Paradise lost, paradise regained: Cacoyannis’s Stella.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 18: 67–77. Peterson, Spike V. 2010. “International/Global Political Economy.” In Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction toInternational Relations, edited by Laura J. Shepherd, 204–17. London and New York, Routledge.



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Pribram, Deidre E. 1999. “Spectatorship and Subjectivity.” In A Companion to Film Theory, edited by Toby Miller and Robert Stam, 146–64. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Pryke, Sam. 1998. “Nationalism and sexuality, what are the issues?” Nations and Nationalism 4: 529–46. Rajan, Gita. 2006. “Constructing-contesting masculinities: trends in South Asian cinema.” Signs 31: 1099–1124. Rowley, Christina. 2010. “Popular Culture and the Politics of the Visual.” In Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations, edited by Laura J. Shepherd, 309–25. London and New York, Routledge. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. [1978] 2003. London: Penguin Books. Shohat, Ella. 1997. “Post-Third-Worldish Culture: Gender, Nation and the Cinema.” In Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, edited by M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 183–209. New York and London: Routledge. Silverman, Kaja. 1983. The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford University Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Suner, Asuman. 2007. “Cinema without Frontiers: Transnational Women’s Filmmaking in Iran and Turkey.” In Transnational Feminism in Film and Media, edited by Katarzyna Marciniak, Anikó Imre, and Áine O’ Healy, 53–70. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Thornham, Sue, ed. 1999. Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Vickers, Jill. 2006. “Bringing nations in: some methodological and conceptual issues in connecting feminisms with nationhood and nationalisms.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 8: 84–109. Wacquant, Loïc J. D. 1992. “Towards a Social Praxeology: The Structure and Logic of Bourdieu’s Sociology.” In An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, edited by Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J. D. Wacquant, 1–59. Cambridge: Polity Press. Walby, Sylvia. 2000. “Gender, nations and states in a global era.” Nations and Nationalism 6: 523–40. Weeks, Jeffrey. 1991. “Invented moralities.” History Workshop Journal 32: 151–66. Wintemute, Robert. 2002. “Religion vs. sexual orientation: a clash of human rights?” Journal of Law and Equality 1: 125–54. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1993. “Gender and nation.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 16: 621–32. Yuval-Davis, Nira and Floya Anthias, eds. 1989. Woman-Nation-State. London: Macmillan.

7

Postscript: Borders of Categories and Categories of Borders in Cypriot Cinemas Costas Constandinides

In September 2012 Andreas Pantzis, published an article in the daily newspaper Phileleftheros titled “The Minister of Education and Culture [of the Republic of Cyprus] Has to Step in,” protesting against the film screening selections of Androula Michael, the curator of the “Focus on Cyprus 2012” exhibition that was hosted by the BOZAR Center of Fine Arts in Brussels.1 Michael had selected Yiannis Economides’ Knifer (Macherovgaltis 2010) and Danae Stylianou’s documentary Sharing an Island (2012), which Pantzis did not name in his discussion, to be screened as part of the “Focus on Cyprus 2012” program. A retrospective on Cypriot-born filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis was the highlight of this focus on Cypriot cinema. Pantzis launched an attack against Michael, and questioned her suitability to curate such an event, which aimed to promote domestic cultural production; according to Pantzis, Michael’s curatorial approach did not reflect a “very good knowledge” (Pantzis quoted from the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus call for the exhibition’s curatorship position) of the local cultural activities, especially Cypriot filmmaking. Even though Pantzis stated that he had never met Androula Michael, he described her treatment of Cypriot cinema as vindictive and arrogant. Since this exhibition was an example of one of those rare times where Cypriot cinema had the opportunity to be presented in a cultural space that holds “an enviable position in the arts world”,2 this explains the strong reaction of Pantzis. Pantzis wrote that the organizers of the exhibition decided on a program that honors Michael Cacoyannis, the Cypriot-born filmmaker, whose work is exclusively focused on Greece, where he lived and worked. He isolated one of Cacoyannis’ films, Attila ’74 (1975), and with a sense of irony and bitterness (without of course neglecting his contribution to cinema at large) added that

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this was the only time that Cacoyannis turned his gaze toward Cyprus. Pantzis then problematized the choice of Economides, who is also a Cypriot-born filmmaker but whose work explores through asphyxiating and stylized microcosms the darker side of modern Greek society. He concluded that the fact that the above filmmakers were born in Cyprus does not make their work Cypriot and offered as an example to support his argument the cases of John Cassavetes and Alexander Payne, whose cinema, even though they have Greek roots, is not specific to Greece. Pantzis argued that the above choices imply that Cypriot cinema does not exist and therefore he stressed the urgency to react. In his view, the absence of Cypriot-focused filmic representation implies that the funds that the Republic of Cyprus allocates to the production of films go down the drain, as if there is nothing worthy to share with our European partners apart from the work of Cypriots who work and live in Greece. The Greek-Cypriot directors that live and work in Greece have not really explored their identity as diasporic or exilic (at least in any straightforward manner). Greece is generally understood as ‘one’s own’—or as Hjort puts it in her description of “affinitive transnationalism” “people like us” (2010: 49)—by Greek Cypriots. Yiannis Economides, for example, makes Greek-focused films, where Greek actors portray coarse or vulgar Greek characters whose goal is to renegotiate their “petty” social position in an already “decadent” Greek setting. Talented Greek-Cypriot filmmakers who work in Greece benefit from the fact that they are Cypriot because their work is also financially supported by the Republic of Cyprus (e.g. Yiannis Economides). The Ministry of Education and Culture also benefits from supporting Cypriot artists who have a successful career in Greece or possibly other foreign countries, mainly because the outreach of such work through more effective lobbying practices helps to establish Cyprus as a culturally active European partner,3 even though the Ministry’s financial contribution is relatively minimal in such cases. Equally, Greek-Cypriot filmmakers, who make Cypriot-focused films, are usually supported by Greek state funds and their films are screened at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival under the category of Greek cinema. The above exchanges form a rather messy arrangement about (Greek) Cypriot cinema practices, which are further complicated by collaborations with regional states (which also sees the southeastern European region as part of a wider understanding of Balkan cinema) and supranational “regulations,” which aim to promote Europeanness. The term “national cinema” is itself a problematic concept as all states are increasingly seen as multi-ethnic, and in divided Cyprus this reality is more stark.



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Pantzis goes beyond the scope of Greek-Cypriot cinema to say that Michael’s selections weaken the EU’s understanding of cinema. He writes that three of his films were funded by EURIMAGES, and points to the logic of EURIMAGES, which is “cultural, in that it endeavors to support works which reflect the multiple facets of a European society whose common roots are evidence of a single culture.”4 Pantzis explains that the reason he secured European funds is because his films emphasize the distinctiveness of Cyprus as a territory, but at the same time communicate an affinity to European ideals. Thus, in his view, the choices of Cacoyannis and Economides do not celebrate the contribution of Cyprus to the European cinema project as understood by EURIMAGES. Pantzis specifically refers to his film The Slaughter of the Cock as an example of Cypriot cinema that deserves equal attention, informing the readers of his article that the film was nominated for an Oscar in 1997. However, the director avoids sharing the details of this nomination and moves to the final act of his protest, which demands an either/or settlement of the issue: the Minister should either terminate Michael’s contract or submit his resignation. Pantzis’ The Slaughter of the Cock was actually Greece’s submission to the pre-selection process, which determines the final group of films that compete for the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film category. The film was not short listed, but it still remains a commendable achievement. The filmmaker has every reason to include this honor in his article to illustrate that Cypriot films are worthy enough to occupy a cultural hotspot such as BOZAR, however he tactfully fails to mention the country that his film was representing in the Academy Awards pre-selection process. Pantzis himself characterizes Greece as a foreign country (he uses the word eksoteriko [abroad]) in the first part of his article. Pantzis’ response could be seen as one that criticizes Michael’s understanding of Cypriot film production in that she may possibly ignore a historically oriented development of cinema “within” Cyprus; yet, he still fails to acknowledge that the production of Cypriot cinema is based on an And model, which is not only relevant to Economides’ Knifer—the film was produced with the financial support of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus and of Greek film institutions—but almost to the entirety of Greek-Cypriot featurelength film production. His own understanding of Cypriot cinema probably refers exclusively to Greek-Cypriot cinema, and his meditation on his own films appears inconsistent. He argues that a Cypriot-born director like Economides does not necessarily produce Cypriot cinema (but, in this case, Greek), and

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suggests that his own films are Cypriot, despite the fact that they were also produced with significant Greek state funds. It should be noted here that Greek cinema histories (Karalis 2012) or commentaries (Horton 2002) place Pantzis’ films (e.g. Evagoras’ Vow and The Slaughter of the Cock) “within” Greek film production. The implications of Pantzis’ protest are certainly problematic, but they also call for a need to think of Cypriot cinema alongside cultural forces specific to film production and circulation that urge a reconceptualization of the notion of “national cinema.” Papadakis et al. (2006) offer the following description of Cyprus: [Cyprus] has been uncomfortably situated on multiple geopolitical margins, lying between Turkey and Greece, East and West, Asia and Europe, and now, in different respects, both inside and outside the EU. Cyprus has also remained uncomfortably perched between conceptual and theoretical binaries such as modernity and tradition, past and present, history and myth, history and memory, and various typologies of nationalism. (2006: 24)

This volume introduces ways of seeing Cypriot films, but these are not presented as a dogmatic exercise that wishes to dictate a filtering process of what does and does not classify as Cypriot cinema. I propose instead a reading of Cypriot cinema that reflects an And rather than an either/or model of interrogation, which is also reflected throughout this volume. Therefore, the above description of Cyprus forms the basis of the contextual framework of this approach alongside Williams’ big question mark next to the use of the term “national cinema” (2002). Williams endorses Crofts’ typology of “national cinema” (in the same volume), but he also notes that “we should be wary of letting it lead us to conclude that there is such a thing as ‘national cinema’” (2002: 5). Jung-Bong Choi’s defense of “national cinema” as a significant discursive tool, which should nevertheless be reintroduced as a non-dogmatic concept, and his skepticism toward the “transnational turn” is quite useful in mapping the thorny debates relevant to the specific subfield (2011). Choi suggests that “instead of looking for flat-out ruptures and frictions between the national and the transnational, one has to carefully investigate the complex structure of their mutual meditations” (2011: 188). His repurposing of “national cinema” becomes rather problematic, especially when seen in relation to a case study like Cyprus where it is even difficult to “carefully” decide where the “national” stops and where it begins. Therefore, a term such as “Cypriot cinemas”—instead



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of Cypriot cinema as a national cinema—is in my view more fitting to negotiate the “flat-out ruptures and frictions” between “types” of Cypriot films and, in turn, those transnational exchanges that exist “around” them. The and and either/or paradigm is borrowed from Ulrich Beck’s introduction to his book The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order (1997). Beck identifies 1989 as the year of the emergence of the And arrangement (the fall of the Berlin wall) because the either/or (West-East, Right-Left, inside-outside, local-foreigner etc.) formation of politics and power issues “collapsed”: The dancing at the Berlin Wall symbolizes the peaceful revolution of And, starting from nowhere and unexplained, unexplainable, to this day. If the borders in Europe that had fallen away are now being reconstructed, invoked and re-flagged, this still remains a reaction—a reaction to the sheer intolerability of And. (1997: 2)

According to Beck, the And led to a reinvention of politics; the “formless character” of the And, the “dis-alienation of the alien and the concomitant dis-possession of that which is one’s own, both involuntarily produced by the age of And, are experienced as a threat” (1997: 2). Pantzis’ article demonstrates a narrow definition of Cypriot cinema that is based on a personal viewpoint, which on the one hand underlines the Greek-Cypriot and the European element and on the other hand undermines Greek state support. In other words, “Greece” is here seen as a “threat,” whereas in other cases it is seen as “one’s own.” From its inception Greek-Cypriot cinema established strong links with Greece, which sometimes advocated an equally strong national affinity between the Greek-Cypriot community and Greece.5 The “national” in this marriage involves both states on many levels, which are discussed elsewhere in this volume, but in my view the “messiness”6 of the “national” cinematic affinity between the two states can be replaced by an acknowledgment of either’s involvement in Greek-Cypriot film and Greek film production in more concrete rather than historical or political terms. Pantzis’ defense of a localized GreekCypriot cinema is to an extent useful, but the fact that his structurally difficult “local” films were supported by “outside” help should not be ignored. This “outside” help is also key in forming an understanding of the present and future of Cypriot cinema as concomitant to the EU’s “fostering” of international collaborations (O’Regan 2002). The lack of sustained discussion on what constitutes Cypriot cinema creates the need to briefly discuss responses to an equally thorny set of questions

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specific to Cypriot literature: What is Cypriot literature? Does it exist? Is there more than one Cypriot literature? The debate about the identity of Cypriot literature does not of course make the task easier; on the one hand, it reveals rigid monocultural positions (Greek Cypriot-focused), and, on the other hand, offers propositions that allow more space for the understanding of Cypriot literature. The second approach is also problematic as it often suggests a too broad cross-cultural contextualization. I do not use definitions of Cypriot literature as my guide, but as a comparative method of inquiry that brings together multidisciplinary positions on recurring impasses or variations in the readings of cultural production specific to the island. This method also contributes to the development of the And model, which I propose as a theoretical paradigm that may allow more flexibility in the treatment of Cypriot cinema as an academic subfield. The use of And here does not only imply the coexistence of two cultural or regulatory structures, but it could be three or more. The existing collaborations between Cypriot filmmakers and supranational or regional film support bodies certainly define Cypriot cinema against any “nationally” rigid configurations, especially after the implementation of EU-oriented film support policies by the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus in the 2000s, which marked a turn from a relatively fierce “nationalization” of Greek-Cypriot cinema to a view of “local” cinema as a “vehicle for international integration” (O’Regan 2002: 97).

A comparative view of Cypriot literature and Cypriot cinemas The discussion on Cypriot literature focuses primarily on two texts by Kechagioglou from Greece (1992; and 2010 co-authored with Greek Cypriot Papaleontiou) and (Turkish Cypriot) Mehmet Yashin (2000). Kechagioglou and Papaleontiou published a bulky anthology on the history of Cypriot literature in 2010; one of their aims, firmly stated in their introduction, is to establish the term Cypriot literature by reconfirming its incontestable inclusion within literary developments in Greece. They do, however, clarify that their work does not discuss the literature produced by minority groups such as the Turkish Cypriot community for reasons that they do not adequately explain. The authors do summon practical reasons such as their lack of expertise as well as the language gap regarding Turkish, but they do not go beyond them to thoroughly explain why they exclude other literary formations from their history of Cypriot



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literature; nor do they explain within the context of this discussion that the official languages of the Republic of Cyprus, the bi-communal state founded in 1960, are Greek and Turkish. Kechagioglou and Papaleontiou explicitly state in their introduction that they are not intellectually inclined to replace the term Cypriot literature with Cypriot literatures, which was proposed by Matthias Kappler (2007). Not the project itself, but the assertive rhetoric of the authors reintroduces a hegemonic perception of the island’s literary production, which reinstates the either/or paradigm that Kechagioglou and Papaleontiou themselves attempt to renegotiate in relation to Cypriot literature’s connection to its ‘metropolitan center’, namely Athens. They state the following (with use of the third person to refer to themselves): “[…] because they are not prepared to give away, or to share, or to negotiate the use of a grammatological category (Cypriot literature) […]” (2010: 14, my translation). It is striking that academics can claim absolute ownership of a category, while also considering it so fixed that it lies beyond any academic discussion or negotiation, but this goes to show the style and ferocity of debates regarding Cypriot literature reflecting those on identity. Yashin’s introduction in Step-mothertongue: From Nationalism to Multiculturalism – Literatures of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey (2000) openly endorses an And approach, which is also reflected in the title of the volume since it proposes a move from a national contextualization to a cross-cultural and multicultural contextualization of Cypriot literature. Unlike Kechagioglou and Papaleontiou’s approach, Yashin locates Cypriot literature in a wider geographical frame in order to re-evaluate concepts that stem from European oriented discourse such as “multiculturalism” and “postcolonial” ( while Yashin also recognizes the limitations imposed by a First-World treatment of these terms), and to increase awareness about the “multilingual literatures” of Cyprus. Both Kechagioglou’s 1992 article and Yashin’s introduction recognize pluralities, but there is a significant difference: Kechagioglou recognizes pluralities in the ways Cypriot literature may be viewed in relation to Greek literature, whereas Yashin recognizes pluralities within “the cosmopolitan Cypriot community” (2000: 8), where “multilingual literatures are still alive” (2000: 13). An analogy between Fish n’ Chips and the above position may be useful here to demonstrate how the film itself reflects and suggests the pluralities of a multicultural Cyprus that paradoxically is more visible “outside” Cyprus. Elias Demetriou visually and linguistically relocates a non-elitist version of cosmopolitan Cyprus (a shared space that Yashin also brings to the fore through his

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understanding of early Cypriot poetry) in a fish and chip shop in London, where the main character, Andy, speaks three accented languages in order to share feelings and communicate with family members. Even though Demetriou’s closing scene may seem to exert a conventional feel-good ending that hints at a symbolic form of reconciliation (between the two major communities of the island), it nevertheless entails a small experimental narrative exercise, which communicates that, in the small shop, fixations specific to language and race are alleviated. Andy learns that his partner is pregnant and then walks toward his father to reconcile with him. This suggests that the identity of his father is no longer a source of embarrassment or a threat to Andy’s wellbeing within their community in London; on another level Andy’s polyvalent transformation as a character (e.g. imminent fatherhood, acceptance of his multicultural background) can only indicate that it is impossible to define the new member of their community (Andy’s and Karin’s baby) according to one language or one nationality (German, British, Cypriot, Greek, Turkish), but it will be necessary to celebrate its pluralities. The fact that these exchanges are performed within a culturally diverse arena such as London is also key to our understanding of the main character’s transformation. London is not of course represented as a space without racial discrimination, but the shop functions as a synecdoche of a global London, where diversity is visible; Andy’s re-evaluation of his relationship to his seemingly “host” country also allows him to embrace the fact that he is a Greek and Turkish, British-born Cypriot. Andy contrasts with Pantzis’ Evagoras in The Rape of Aphrodite (see Chapter 4); though a UK resident, Evagoras remains an “uncontaminated”

Figure 7.1  Andy’s multi-ethnic “family” (Fish n’ Chips)



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character. Andy’s “contaminated” character (his Greek-Cypriot sister-in-law calls him a bastard) is celebrated in the end of the film through a process that deflates his hopes, which are associated with the narrative of return to his fatherland—a naturalized invention of him being the son of a Greek-Cypriot 1974 war victim. The imminent birth of Andy’s baby suggests that identity formation is an ongoing process and not limited to foreclosed or concrete national boundaries. Similarly, Yashin’s proposal invites its reader to think of Cypriot literature as an unfinished process, whereas Kechagioglou and Papaleontiou insist that Cypriot literature should remain a term uncontaminated by other geographically relevant literary formations; hence they reject the term “Cypriot literatures.” The plural in “Cypriot cinemas” should also be understood as an open process that does not refer to two “entities” of cinema, namely Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot; such an And arrangement entails the risk of leading us back to complex political dialectics. Thus, I should clarify here that the plural simply means the And(s) that describe almost all Cypriot films, which are, on another level, mainly products of a plurality of cinematic transnationalisms (affinitive, epiphanic, sometimes cosmopolitan or even opportunistic, Hjort 2010). Moreover, the growing number of reconciliation films is mainly the result of the collaboration between members of the two major communities. Yashin’s discursive direction—though incomplete as his proposition requires (and calls for) a thorough study of the history of Cypriot literatures which does not foreground as strongly a sense of political resistance to existing paradigms—is certainly more academically stimulating than Kechagioglou and Papaleontiou’s exhaustive mapping of just the Greek or idiomatic (Greek-Cypriot dialect) literature of Cyprus. For the purposes of this volume, however, I aim to develop a discussion that respects the strengths and locates the weaknesses of both positions—namely Yashin’s boundless openness, which stems from a cultural studies perspective, and Kechagioglou and Papaleontiou’s rigid canonization, which stems from a more traditional-oriented philological perspective. An introductory study of Cypriot cinema should above all communicate to the reader both its sociocultural specificities and how these are interconnected with transnational forces; inevitably such a task entails the formation of a discursive paradigm that is geographically and historically specific. However, my central position is that the acceptance of a multi-ethnic and multicultural background (including recent migrants to Cyprus) should not be treated as threatening and hence be suppressed, nor should the island’s strong cultural bond with

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Greece (and with Turkey) be treated as a sub-national arrangement that in the end communicates a “submission” to a “higher” cultural entity that “nurtures” Cypriot cinema and cultural production in general. As I have already mentioned, the volume introduces the term Cypriot cinemas to point to the pluralities that characterize Cypriot film production. Here I argue that, apart from the economic related trading facilitated by supranational and regional relations, these pluralities are enriched by other, e.g. low forms of Cypriot cinema (trashy or erotic cinema), as well as articulations of a cultural rootedness and of political visions, which are not limited to a monoethnic perspective. Nevertheless, I am fully aware that the inclusion of Zaim’s (TurkishCypriot) films within this volume as Cypriot or even Turkish-Cypriot cinema is also contested within the Turkish-Cypriot community. For example, I was recently invited to discuss Cypriot cinema as part of a documentary training youth camp;7 when I introduced Zaim’s Cypriot-focused work as a powerful representation of Turkish-Cypriot cinema, a Turkish-Cypriot female filmmaker, who was one of the workshop trainers, challenged this position arguing that he belongs to Turkish cinema; she raised practical issues such as financing and the fact that Zaim lives in Turkey to support her point of view. Her response is correct in pointing out that Zaim’s two fiction films on the Cyprus Problem are categorized under Turkish cinema, but other elements should also be examined (filming locations, artistic and technical personnel, meaning etc.) to determine the films’ “identity.” The readings and descriptions of Greek-Cypriot films discussed here also reflect on the need to propose a basic categorization of Cypriot cinemas that shares the key characteristics of O’Regan’s “national cinemas category” (2002). These categorizations should nevertheless be discussed alongside contemporary debates specific to film policies. Therefore, the study on “national cinema” or “national cinemas” should become an endeavor that brings together the usually ignored aspects of filmmaking, which are maybe less relevant in forming a textual analysis of a national-oriented or state-produced film, but still useful in understanding circulation and subsidization practices as part of a film’s “internalization” of transnational or global aesthetics. A good part of Greek-Cypriot cinema has been categorized as both Greek and Cypriot. Cypriot cinemas can potentially be placed within a wider territorial configuration, such as the Balkans, since a number of post-1974 Greek-Cypriot films also credit collaborations with Bulgarian production companies, or film support institutions, and personnel. It may be useful to study the relationship



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between Cypriot cinema and Greece using terms that, as is later explained, Kechagioglou problematizes in his 1992 article on Cypriot literature, but in a world, where filmmakers, film productions, and film distributors are increasingly becoming nomadic entities a theorization of Cypriot cinema with reference to a Greek “frame” would be unfitting. It should be noted here that I have not encountered strong arguments that support the view that there is no such thing as Cypriot cinema, even though Greek-Cypriot film production is partly dependent on Greek support. A few oppositions to the term Cypriot cinema develop from a pragmatic rather than ideological standpoint (KleanthousHadjikyriakou 1995). “Peripheral cinema” is gradually emerging from the margins thanks to the growing number of film festivals, viewing platforms that target film festival professionals and distribution companies (such as Festival Scope; for example, members of this platform can view Fish n’ Chips online), and new technologies that reduce production and distribution costs. If the relationship between Greece and Cyprus reflects a culturally-speaking center-periphery binary, then Fish n’ Chips has recently occupied both spaces in a festive style. The film won the Best “First Time” Director Award and was nominated for the Best Greek Film Award presented by the Hellenic Film Academy Awards. Furthermore, the film impressed both the International Jury and the audience of the Cyprus Film Days International Film Festival 2012 (the film received the Glocal Images Award and the Audience Award). Both festival screenings of the film in Cyprus enjoyed a full house attendance in two different venues— one in Nicosia and one in Limassol, which can accommodate more than 500 hundred viewers each—large numbers given viewings in Cyprus. In addition, the film premiered on NOVA Greece/Cyprus (February 7, 2013), a leading digital satellite pay-TV platform controlled by Forthnet and Multichoice Hellas.8 Kechagioglou’s article “Contemporary Cypriot Literature and the ‘Frame’ of Modern Greek Literature: A Provincial, Local, Marginal, Peripheral, Independent, Autonomous, Self-sufficient or Self-determined Literature?” (1992) seems to be an attempt to offer a historical trajectory of Cypriot literature as a response to a singularly Hellenocentric understanding of the island’s literary production. The busy title of the article suggests that its author intends to discuss Cypriot literature (by which he actually means Greek-Cypriot literature) by deploying specific terms (which imply a category that is currently being shaped, thus their use indicates a rather tentative approach) that delicately

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form a connection to Greek literature. The author concludes his article with the following argument: “I would prefer to characterise contemporary Cypriot literature, in relation to the broader Greek framework […] as a literature appropriately local and fruitfully peripheral, maturely autonomous and happily self-determined” (1992: 254). In the second part of his article, Kechagioglou isolates each of the terms he includes in his title and discusses them in relation to a “center” he names “Helladic” (mainland Greece). Therefore, the final four (out of eight) terms that made it to the above working definition of Cypriot literature refer back to a discursive process, which is informed by Kechagioglou’s firm position that “Cypriot literature, must necessarily be examined on the basis of its unequivocal, and legitimate, historical classification within the broader Greek ‘frame’” (1992: 241). Greece’s influence on (Greek) Cypriot literature is unmistakable, but a comprehensive study on Cypriot literature should at least hint at the presence of other literary formations in a more inclusive rather than exclusive manner. Kechagioglou adds a note which explains that he is not a “specialist in Turkish or Turkish-Cypriot literature” and therefore his “article deals only with Greek-Cypriot literary phenomena” (1992: 254). Such a position denotes that Kechagioglou’s And proposition is flawed because it excludes culturally specific literary formations other than the Greek literature of Cyprus that can positively enrich his insight. Kechagioglou (1992: 243) offers a broad definition of Greekspeaking Cypriot literature, which is inevitably based on a spatio-temporal logic: The literary production written in various forms of the Greek language (standard or dialectical) in the Modern Greek period (since the 12th or 14th century) whether by Cypriot or non-Cypriot authors, who lived or were active for the greater part of their life in Cyprus, or else by Cypriot writers who, despite living or working for the greater part of their life outside Cyprus, nevertheless, locate their work, consciously or intentionally, in the context of Cypriot literary productions and life.

Yashin writes that the aim of Step-mothertongue: From Nationalism to Multiculturalism is to “create an agenda for a post-national understanding of the literatures and languages of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey” (2000: 1). He considers the cultural and linguistic contact between the above territories an open exchange that welcomes new interpretations and readings that go beyond closed literary canons or descriptions that promote a monocultural definition



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of Cypriot literature (one that imposes Greek language as the sole foundation of such a category). Yashin observes that there is a ritual of self-annihilation in Greek Cypriots’ attempts to marginalize their own “mothertongue” (Kypriaka: Greek dialect of Cyprus) in an effort to associate themselves with the “motherland” (Greece). Linguistic and literary annexation with Greece made her a “real” mother (land) in the Greek-Cypriot imaginary. (2000: 4)

In other words, Greek Cypriots themselves marginalize not only Cypriot authors who write in Turkish but also those who might choose to write in the Greek-Cypriot dialect, the idiom that is most readily spoken by Greek Cypriots, in an act of self-inflicted violence. He adds that: this identification, or association, is also one of the reasons why languages and literary traditions of Cyprus other than Greek have not been recognized. In this framework, a literary work must be written in Greek and by a Greek or Hellenized (and Orthodox) Cypriot to be accepted as “Cypriot” or “from Cyprus”. (2000: 5)

But he then argues that “the attitude of Turkish-Cypriot officials toward the multilingual and multicultural Cypriot literature is even more ‘nationalistic’ than Greek-Cypriots. They do not recognize anything before the Ottomans and apart from the Turkish language” (2000: 5). Yashin not only calls for a recognition of a Turkish literature of Cyprus, but implies that other minority literary forms (produced by other ethnic or religious groups that live on the island), should matter. Even though Yashin does not explicitly point to an Anglophone Cypriot literature, it certainly is another subcategory that should not be reductively associated with colonial or neo-colonial influences just because it linguistically operates against the established Greek literature of Cyprus canon. Besides, it should be noted here that the English language has become the lingua-franca for communication between the two major communities of the island; many Greek Cypriots who studied in the UK or the US can probably write equally well in English as in Greek; in addition, bi-communal literary or other artistic activities often produce trilingual (English, Greek, and Turkish) texts. 9 The openness of a term such as Cypriot cinemas also leaves space for other bi-cultural or minority cinemas that may emerge in Cyprus due to the island’s changing demographics in the

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last two decades. The growth of the Turkish-German cinema in Germany is an example of how migrant groups or minorities can possibly become an artistically integrated “voice” in a “host” state. The formation of Cypriot minority cinemas is a new development, notably with the recent production of two documentaries that voice the experiences of minority or migrant groups in Cyprus. The first example is The Third Motherland (Costas M. Constantinou and Giorgos Kykkou Skordis 2011), a documentary that follows the story of the Cypriot Maronite community and addresses issues of identity, displacement, memory, and belonging within and around the community as well as beyond the geographical boundaries of the island of Cyprus, namely the historical bond between the community and Lebanon. The documentary explores in an interesting and theoretically informed manner, with light touches of humor, the relationship of the Maronites with the two major communities of the island and with Lebanon, focusing on issues of integration and boundaries, as well as their peculiar predicament of “inhabiting” both sides of divided Cyprus. The second example is Evaporating Borders (2014), a Cypriot co-production directed by Iva Radivojevic who is from former Yugoslavia; her family migrated to the Republic of Cyprus to escape political unrest. Radivojevic was raised in Cyprus and describes her film as an essay-film that, drawing from her personal experiences, comments on the experiences of migration. Radivojevic’s voice-over narration in accented Greek is an interesting choice. She describes the narration as a “stream of consciousness that follows observations and emotions about what it means to be without a country” and explains that the island of Cyprus “is introduced through my own migration where the narration introduces and concludes the film leaving the body of it to be told through characters encountered along the way.”10 The in-between investigative aspects of the documentary, which include interviews with asylum seekers, political activists, and nationalist voices, may weaken Radivojevic’s more creative or essayistic inclination as they ambitiously attempt to cover multiple topics of a broader understanding of immigration. Still, the documentary is a powerful visual statement mainly because it shows images of Cyprus that deconstruct the island’s representation as an idyllic tourist destination. Moreover, it presents a scathing critique of racist, xenophobic, and nationalist aspects of Greek-Cypriot society. Stephen Crofts argues that the discussion of national cinemas should imply “the importance of a political flexibility able, in some contexts, to challenge the fictional homogenizations” (2002: 44). Crofts suggests that the power of political



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forces (in the formation of national cinema) should not be underestimated, yet he cautions against the unconditional promotion of national identities “over those of ethnicity, class, gender, religion, and the other axes of social division which contribute to those identities” (2002: 45). He further argues that to acknowledge political powers in considering national cinema is not to “buy into originary fantasies of irrecoverable cultural roots, or into the unitary, teleological and usually masculinist fantasies in which nationalisms display themselves” (2002: 45). Crofts’ useful guide to what national cinema discourse should imply or entail is deployed here as a response to Kechagioglou’s problematic definition of Cypriot literature since Crofts’ dialectic understanding of terms such as selfdefinition and autonomy emerges from both an acknowledgment of politics, economic trading and the cultural hybridity that describes a territory. Crofts suggests that factors like the “historically changing international relations” (in other words, Beck’s And paradigm), the “regional and diasporic cinema production” and the “discursive (re)constructions of national cinemas” challenge a “tendency to hypostasize […] a would-be autonomous [emphasis mine]” (2002: 43) cultural product. Crofts takes Homi Bhabha’s position against the theorization of differences between nations as his departure point to suggest that it is inappropriate to think of national cinemas as a process of self-definition that “likes to pride itself on its distinctiveness, on its standing apart from other(s)” (2002: 47). While Kechagioglou does acknowledge the assumptions that the term autonomy (as well as other terms he uses) may carry he fails to discuss them in relation to the cultural hybridity promoted by Yashin (which is close to Crofts’ proposition on how to approach a “national” cultural product). Kechagioglou understands the autonomy of Cypriot literature as the freedom to implement external (Yashin implicitly suggests that standard modern Greek is also an “external” influence) inputs, to diverge from and disobey the rules of the Greek mainland literary production, and acknowledges the capacity of Cypriot literature to “maintain a degree of undisputed autonomy within, or alongside, the broader framework of Modern Greek literature” (1992: 253) and then to conclude his paragraph he even proposes different levels of autonomy (“greater or smaller”). I am not sure whether the above description helps justify the reading of Cypriot literature by Kechagioglou as autonomous, and whether there is any need to use this term to describe the And model of cultural trading between Greece and Cyprus, but it certainly communicates a hierarchical arrangement between Greek and Cypriot literature that even Kechagioglou himself (through a contradictory use of words) seems unwilling to abandon,

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unlike Yashin’s defiant approach. In other words, Kechagioglou seems to exercise a degree of self-censorship to avoid upsetting the political implications of the terms that he uses. Crofts treats the pursuit of a national cinematic autonomy with a sense of irony as he associates this aim with historiographies of national cinemas that he describes as “nationalist” and “elitist” (2002) in their “search for the ‘best’ films, themselves often the product” of historical moments where nationalism connected “closely with genuinely populist movements,” “national-popular resurgence” (e.g. Latin American Third Cinema), “national intellectual-cultural recovery” (e.g. French New Wave) (2002: 45). For example, Greek-Cypriot directors like Pantzis do have the tendency to “hypostasize” the Greek-Cypriot cinema of the Cyprus Problem as a “national” movement and thus a marker of Cypriot cinema’s “autonomy” (a cinema that attempts to make sense of the events that led to the 1974 conflict and the post-1974 social structures). Kechagioglou’s definition of Cypriot literature, even though problematic, leaves room for some discussion. Yet, the terms he deploys cannot simply function as a mirror definition of Cypriot cinema. Cypriot cinema is not financially autonomous and strives to become international; it is happily supranational, sometimes globally circulated, and for its most part problematically, yet often bi-culturally, “local.”

The categorical ambiguities of Cypriot cinemas Tom O’Regan generalizes the “shape and outlook of national cinema as a category” (2002: 89) and discusses the case of Australian Cinema as an illustration of this category. According to O’Regan, national cinemas struggle “with Hollywood dominance,” they are “simultaneously a local and international form,” they are producers of “festival cinema,” they have a “significant relation with the nation and the state,” and they are inherently or “constitutionally” (as O’Regan puts it) “fuzzy” (2002: 89). Cypriot cinema cannot compete with Hollywood, mainly because unlike other state-subsidized cinemas/film industries (which also export films), it does not produce commercial films and therefore cannot dominate its domestic box office; the limited government funds that exist are directed toward the production of festival cinema. There are only few examples of films, such as The Last Homecoming and Kalabush, that secured a screening room in a local multiplex for their premiere



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and a week’s run. Most recently, films like Block 12 and the independentlyfinanced comedy The Bird of Cyprus (To Pouli tis Kyprou, Nicolas Koumides 2014), were highly successful with local audiences. The second film topped the box office of multiplexes island-wide and was screened for more than a month in commercial movie theaters, a record-breaking achievement for a local production. It has been described tongue-in-cheek by film reviewer Marinos Nomikos as “The Cypriot blockbuster that we deserve” (2014b: 20). While describing the plot that involves a group of three Greek Cypriot men and one from Greece who are fired from their jobs during the recent economic crisis and decide to make money by shooting a porn flick in Cyprus, Nomikos (in the extended version of the same review), squarely dismisses it as based on humorless cheap gags with sexist and racist elements. A few years back, the production team of The Last Homecoming proudly announced that the film finished fourth in the top box-office hits list of the K-Cineplex multiplex cinemas. Part of this success may be attributed to the fact that the director of the film, Corinna Avraamidou, works for CyBC, which backed the film financially and devotedly shared the film’s trailer with its TV viewers. Another factor that contributed to the local success of the film is the locally well-known cast, as well as its strong narrative drive and its attempt to achieve the look of a high production value film. Also, as demonstrated in Chapter 4, it presents a soothing fantasy of the past as Greek Cypriots would now like to perceive it, in striving toward reconciliation among Greek Cypriots as well as between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. O’Regan writes that Hollywood is not “thought to be a ‘national cinema’;” it is an “avowedly commercial enterprise” (2002: 90) and explains that the term national cinema is “reserved by critics, filmmakers, policy makers, audiences and marketers for national cinemas other than that in the United States” and “there is a higher degree of formative government assistance involved in creating and sustaining” national cinemas (2002: 90). Higson (1989) notes that international cinemas, Hollywood in particular, are more naturalized parts of national cultures than is the domestic product itself. Cypriot cinema, which is not well known as a category or experience to the majority of the island’s population, is an example that illustrates the above observation. The ethnic agitation that determined the beginnings of Cypriot cinema, the lack of any movement to establish less political filmmaking trends and the lack of any overtly ambitious political initiative to direct substantial government funds toward cinema production has forced talented Cyprus-born filmmakers

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like Yiannis Economides and Christos Georgiou among others to seek a better future in Greece. According to Kim Young-jin, “the younger generation of Korean film directors makes movies without awareness of Korean cinema past. This atmosphere of the ‘adventurous spirit of children without fathers’ is the most significant force behind the dynamic quality of modern Korean film” (2007, ix). Yiannis Economides’ powerful “child without a father” spirit did not go hand in hand with the politically and socially restrained direction of Cypriot cinema and he was forced to explore his personal style through low-budget and at the time punkish Greek cinema practices. While the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus offers a symbolic financial support to young Cypriot filmmakers working in Greece, Economides’ “feel-bad” films and Georgiou’s latest project Small Crime are examples of an emerging generation of Greek filmmakers. In my view, Economides’ work (e.g., Matchbox [Spirtokouto] 2002) is the precursor to “the weird wave” of Greek cinema, a label that was used in a Guardian article (Steve Rose 2011) to describe recent Greek festival successes such as Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos 2009) and Attenberg (Athina Rachel Tsangari 2010). The strategy to promote Cypriot cinema by supporting Cypriot directors, who are essentially producing non-Cypriot themed films (even though this support is minimum) is obviously problematic because it draws money from an already limited domestic source, but on another level it demonstrates a willingness to encourage filmmakers to break away from a fixation with films obsessed with an ethnic imaginary. Greek-Cypriot directors, who make Cypriot films, should also consider why Greek film support institutions wish to invest in their projects since they are non-Greek films. Greek-Cypriot filmmakers usually employ artistic and technical personnel from Greece and, due to the lack of technical support in Cyprus as well as post-production services, people and film cans travel back and forth to Greece; thus, the Greek film “industry” also benefits from these exchanges. I could possibly introduce a subcategory of Cypriot cinema here such as Greek-speaking Cypriot cinema (e.g. Francophone or Anglophone cinema), or resort to a more financially-oriented and non-hegemonic labeling such as “a Greek and Greek-Cypriot co-production” to settle the naming of this regional mode of negotiation; still, there are Greek-Cypriot films like Kalabush and Fish n’ Chips that are multilingual therefore they are both Greek-speaking and non-Greek speaking Cypriot films. A linguistic shift is currently evident in Greek-Cypriot fiction films: Kalabush, Akamas, The Last Homecoming, and Fish n’ Chips make use of the Greek-Cypriot



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dialect unlike earlier Greek-Cypriot feature films, which appear somewhat hesitant in using the Greek-Cypriot dialect. The production team of The Last Homecoming, for example, proudly promotes its “All-Cypriot” spirit in interviews which are part of the making of material of the DVD. They explicitly state that they favored the casting of Cypriot actors for the leading roles, which suggests different casting choices from filmmakers like Andreas Pantzis, Christos Georgiou, and Aliki Danezi-Knutsen, who in their Cypriot films hired Greek actors to perform the leading roles. The performances of Greek actors in the above directors’ films suffer from linguistic inconsistency because they either perform the Cypriot dialect with a modern Greek accent or speak the lines entirely in modern Greek, even though they perform a Greek-Cypriot character. This choice may facilitate the consumption of films in Greece (the directors may feel that the much larger audience of Greek cinephiles is their primary target rather than the comparatively tiny group of Greek-Cypriot ones), disregarding considerations on the consumption of their films by a local audience. When, for example, I screen extracts from Georgiou’s Under the Stars in my film class, Greek-Cypriot students immediately notice the incompetence of the leading characters (portrayed by two well-known and experienced Greek actors, Akis Sakellariou and Myrto Alikaki) to perform the Greek-Cypriot dialect and they find this obstructive because it interrupts a smooth viewing experience. When Yiannis Economides, known for his aggressive visual style and use of rough language, was asked in an interview whether he would be interested in doing a Cyprus-focused film, he replied that this is not easy because Cypriot society’s conservative affectations will not welcome a film that disturbs prevailing values (Savvinides 2011). The fact that a film director with a punk sensibility like Economides—who is praised in Greece as an artist who openly communicates, through the medium of cinema, the collapse of the Greek family narrative among other social issues—seems to be reluctant to do a Cypriot film, indicates that, in his view at least, Cyprus has not yet reached the point where it can tolerate other forms of cultural representation that contest an either/or arrangement which is not only limited to politics, but extends to other facets of life in Cyprus. Economides’ worry is of course validated by the treatment of films like Akamas, which regardless of the legal realities of the dispute between the filmmaker and the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus, does propose a utopian And imaginary: the coexistence of

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Cypriotness and Hellenic Heritage and the dis-alienation of and cooperation with Turkish Cypriots. An anonymous article published in Politis daily newspaper, titled “I KYP Paei Cinema stin Papho” (“The Central Intelligence Service goes to the Cinema in Paphos”)11 reports the presence of police officers (the article claims that these officers are members of the Republic’s Central Intelligence Service) at a screening of Akamas in the city of Paphos. According to the article the police officers requested the cancelation of the screening because there was information that a group of ELAM (Ethniko Laiko Metopo [The National Popular Front], a Greek-Cypriot nationalist movement) members would protest against the screening of Akamas because of its unpatriotic content. A similar commotion took place during the premier of Sharing an Island at the Rialto Theatre in Limassol (a group of young people distributed leaflets that cautioned the viewers against the misleading content of the film), but in the end both screenings went ahead as scheduled. Such reactions certainly hinder filmmakers like Economides, who enjoy a certain freedom in Greece to negotiate their art and modus operandi for the sake of making a Cypriot film. Economides’ position implicitly calls for a re-lensing of the “local” in Cypriot cinema, one that can at least mirror his audacious cinema, which goes against the “national” traditions of Greek cinema and Greek society at large, in other words, a “local” cinema that challenges a happy compromise between cultural and political life.

A working typology of Cypriot cinemas In this section I attempt to group the different subcategories of Cypriot cinemas introduced in the present chapter and elsewhere in this volume in order to offer a view of filmmaking practices that are less based on content, and which I divide into two main subsections: (1) “forms” of Cypriot cinemas; and (2) “models” of “Affinitive” or/and “Epiphanic” transnational practices.

Forms of Cypriot cinemas As has been previously demonstrated, Greek-Cypriot cinema is predominantly state-subsidized and the funds are allocated to five broad practices of film



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production: (1) high budget feature-length films; (2) low-budget feature-length films; (3) film documentary; (4) film shorts; (5) animation. Since the introduction of film support state policies in the mid-1980s, film production in Cyprus can be mainly described as “festival cinema.” Most of the films produced (including Turkish Cypriot-focused films) are a combination of a “Europeanmodel art cinema” (Crofts 2002) and political cinema, which is sometimes interlaced with Third Cinema overtones (e.g., Andreas Pantzis’ allegorical meditations against colonial and neo-colonial arrangements)—also early CyBC documentaries are an example of a collective political cinema, and extensive analyses in Chapter 4 show that a number of films are examples of a personal “partisan” cinema. Williams (2002) notes that: the ideal film festival success, to judge by recent history, is a work which goes against the grain of its “own” national cinema or national state apparatus […] The International auteur comes from a national tradition, but defines himself as much against it as within it. The films themselves will often involve “foreigners” or “foreign” locations. (18–19)

This observation is useful to problematize further the state-controlled production of Greek-Cypriot cinema in the 1980s; however, films like Kalabush and Fish n’ Chips are examples of Cypriot films that attempt to cross boundaries, each in its own way, in order to deviate from ethnic-focused themes and take a step closer to wider themes—Kalabush not only explores the point of view of a foreigner in Cyprus, but moves the action away from space markers or dialectics of the island’s division.

Figure 7.2  Mustafa swims toward the shores of the city of Limassol, a beach-side location away from the physical markers of Cyprus’ division (Kalabush)

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Greek-Cypriot films initially targeted the specialized market of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. The above limited “marketing” scope, which is the result of an unproductive, sometimes inevitably so, inclination toward Greece and the excessively political negotiation of the Cyprus Problem, has led to Greek-Cypriot cinema’s limited mobility. The 2013 film Block 12 is evidently an attempt to attract a larger local audience after the promising turnout of The Last Homecoming (Tofarides was the producer of the film). Still, the fact that the population of Cyprus is small, alongside other problems such as the sporadic domestic feature-length production and the small state-subsidy, hinder the possibility of establishing a sustainable homegrown market. Crofts outlines seven varieties of national cinemas: (1) cinemas that differ from Hollywood, but do not compete directly, by targeting a distinct, specialist market sector; (2) those that differ, do not compete directly but do directly critique Hollywood; (3) European and Third World entertainment cinemas that struggle against Hollywood with limited or no success; (4) cinemas that ignore Hollywood, an accomplishment managed by few; (5) anglophone cinemas that try to beat Hollywood at its own game; (6) cinemas that work within a wholly state-controlled and often substantially state-subsidized industry; and (7) regional or national cinemas whose culture and/or language take their distance from the nation-states which enclose them. (2002: 27)

The majority of Cypriot cinemas are not entertainment cinema, therefore they “differ” from Hollywood; however, this is not always a conscious political choice with the sole purpose of articulating a critique of Hollywood cinema, it is mainly the result of a realization that they simply cannot compete with Hollywood (no infrastructure, lack of experienced technical personnel, limited funds, no domestic market etc.). New technologies do offer new possibilities and a number of filmmakers are jumping on the do-it-yourself (DIY) bandwagon to explore less somber stories or to partially fund their next project. Block 12 is maybe the first state-subsidized Greek-Cypriot film (after the introduction of film support policies) that explores a commercially minded form of cinema. The Greek alliance office of Tanweer Group, a leading theatrical distributor in India and other Greater Middle East countries, has invested in the film and took over its worldwide distribution. Also, Block 12 features an “all-star” (locally wellknown) Cypriot and Greek cast including the Bollywood actress Neetu Chandra. This is an example of what Hjort calls “opportunistic” transnationalism (2010)



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as Tofarides invested in the success of Greece’s screenpower in Cyprus (both filmic and televisual) as well as the “internationalization” of Bollywood. DIY films are not yet a conscious collective project in Cyprus, but there are few examples (aside from the ones discussed in Chapter 1), which exhibit an understanding of this new spirit. The director of the short film project Whispers (2013), Greek Cypriot Andreas Kyriacou, has used the crowd-funding platform indiegogo to raise money for the film.12 The story of the film is about a young adult who works at a comic-book store in Cyprus whose dream is to become a superhero. The impossibility of realizing this dream and his struggle to cope with his realities lead him to the decision to end his life; however, he suddenly realizes that he possesses super powers. The film is in essence a generic hybrid as there is a blending between comic book-like animation and live action, and the ending is closer to the content of gory horror films. Kyriacou explained to his potential sponsors that genre films are not common in Cyprus “and the potential success of it could lead to young local creators to make more genre films.” Kyriacou raised only ten percent of his original budget—which is 8,000 euro through indiegogo—but this did not stop him and his crew from going ahead with the project and labelling it as the “first superhero film shot in Cyprus.” Another mini-scale DIY attempt to introduce a Cypriot-made genre film is Deserted (by Greek Cypriots Danny Iacovou and Orestes Mitas 2010).13 This “no-budget” short film is another generic hybrid that falls under the broader category of horror film. The film starts with the familiar setting of two GreekCypriot soldiers who anxiously wait for new orders while hiding from enemy sight amidst a barren landscape. It turns out that the war setting that unfolds is not relevant to the 1974 conflict, but the story hints instead at an unspecified post-chemical weapon attack, where a medic, who comes out of nowhere wearing a tear-gas mask, goes on a brutal killing spree. The South African-born Greek Cypriot Stelana Kliris (now living and working in Cyprus), also used indiegogo to raise money for her first independent feature Committed (2014), shot in English, which she described during her crowd-funding campaign as “When Harry Met Sally on the road with a twist.”14 The result is indeed a romantic comedy on the road, shot entirely in Cyprus. Committed tells the story of a young man, who is being pressured to propose to his girlfriend, but he is afraid of commitment. Unable to think clearly under pressure, he goes for a drive in the countryside and encounters a runaway bride walking on the side of the road. Committed was screened as part of the international competition section of Cyprus Film Days 2014 edition, and subsequently secured an

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island-wide theatrical release. The increasing presence and popularity of Cypriot productions in local commercial movie theaters after many years of absence is a significant development that provides an opportunity for local filmmakers to explore further the business side of cinema. Kliris notes in a commentary titled “Committed to Cypriot Cinema” (2013) that: having had easy access to government funds was a double-edged sword for filmmakers. On the one hand they could focus solely on their art and a slew of personal, art-house pictures were produced. But not having to battle for or repay those funds meant that […] it was not a priority to market their films or fill theatres.

Kliris observes that the financial crisis has forced local filmmakers to return to low-budget practices and thus become more business-conscious in order to promote their films. Kliris closes her commentary by emphasizing the need for the establishment of a local cinema culture that will not be entirely dependent on state support. Stavros Papageorgiou, a Greek-Cypriot filmmaker/producer, who mostly works on documentaries, actively explores ways to establish a more businessconscious and at the same time creative strategy to promote his projects. Papageorgiou’s documentaries mainly explore the archaeological richness of Cyprus (e.g. Entelechy 2011) when not collaborating with other documentary filmmakers such as the Australian-born, Turkish-Cypriot female director Yeliz Shukri (Murid 2010). Papageorgiou has set up an online shop, www.psefionline. com/, to promote his productions and other local as well as regional documentaries. However, the website mostly targets universities or other educational and cultural institutions, and thus the price of each DVD copy is high. GreekCypriot documentary maker Antonis (Tony) Angastiniotis (see Chapter 1) is quite possibly using very limited financial resources to produce his activist films. His first two Voice of Blood documentaries give voice to Turkish Cypriots who experienced or suffered from Greek-Cypriot aggression during the 1974 conflict, a radical politically transgressive act. Voice of Blood II credits a small technical crew (predominantly Turkish Cypriots), but despite its powerful content the style of the film (e.g. the scratch image effect during dreamlike moments or the 1980s music video-like superimposition effects) and Angastiniotis’ own voiceover narration are closer to a DIY or amateur feel, which conveys a sense of “playful discovery” of the medium.



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“Affinitive” and “epiphanic” transnationalism Cypriot cinemas can also be described according to their regional or other transnational arrangements involved in their making; most Cypriot films are co-productions, which are sometimes claimed as domestic products by either country involved. This is evident in the case of Greek-Cypriot and Greek co-productions. The online listing of films and directors on the official website of the Greek Film Center includes the names and films of most of the Greek-Cypriot directors discussed in this volume. Hjort defines affinitive transnationalism as the “collaboration across national borders with ‘people like us,’ the perception of similarity being based in many cases on ethnicity, culture, and language, although commonality may center on core attitudes, interests, concerns and problems” (2010: 49). Thus the main affinitive model in Cypriot cinemas is the Greek-Cypriot and Greek co-production. Zaim’s Cypriot films include artistic or technical Greek-Cypriot involvement and in festival listings Cyprus and Turkey are added under “production country.” Cypriot filmmakers set up their own production companies to be able to apply for state funding as domestic (the Republic of Cyprus) legal entities and thus name themselves as producers or sometimes assume the role of the producer. Zaim set up his own production company, Marathon Films, in Turkey since, to my knowledge, there is no feature-length film support policy in northern Cyprus, and the (Greek-Cypriot controlled) Republic of Cyprus quite possibly stood as an inaccessible or unfeasible alternative when Zaim started his career. Furthermore, he might wish to avoid the political implications and possible outcry in Turkey and northern Cyprus of getting funding from the Republic of Cyprus. For example, Shadows and Faces was funded mainly by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey and co-produced with the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), but it was shot in Cyprus. Hjort describes epiphanic transnationalism as the “transnational collaboration fostered by supranational entities with an interest in funding projects that aim to make manifest supranational or regional cultural identities resting on partially intersecting national cultures” (2010: 49). Examples of epiphanic transnationalisms usually include the financial contribution of EURIMAGES and the support of other European or regional initiatives like MEDIA or the Crossroads co-production forum. Other countries that have appeared next to Cyprus under country of production or co-production country are Bulgaria

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(e.g. Evagoras’ Vow), the United Kingdom (e.g. Fish n’ Chips), Germany (e.g. Our Wall), Italy (e.g. Mud), and Hungary (e.g. Akamas).

Conclusion Writing the final words of this volume may differ from other attempts to conclude a study on the cinema of a “nation” or “state” that has already been extensively discussed like the cinema of France, Spain, or Britain. Given that this is the first academic-focused publication on Cypriot cinemas comes with a conscious sense of responsibility that reflects in every possible way Choi’s suggestion that the discourse on “national” cinema and those forces “around” the national should be the result of a “careful” examination; this simply means that this volume has tried to refrain from dismissing the structures “within,” be it nationalist, normative, or “low” and does not perceive the structures “across” or “around” as threatening or exclusively omnipresent. The plural in Cypriot cinemas should not be understood as a way to settle the existence of both Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot cinema “within” a divided island whose political status is uncertain, but as an analytical tool to interrogate the pluralisms inherent in the makings and the meanings of Cypriot films. Thus, unlike Choi’s understanding of the term “national cinema” as a “paradigm for engaging the transnational and the global” (2011: 189), I propose Cypriot cinemas as a paradigm that extents to a three level engagement: (1) as a paradigm for interrogating normative and aberrant representations stemming from multiple viewpoints on the Cyprus Problem, and a multi-ethnic Cypriot society; (2) as a paradigm that wishes to depart from the normative perception of the “National” as a host and source of binaries; and (3) as a paradigm that examines the transnational “frame” as a cultural, affinitive, and/or epiphanic exchange, which extends to other interactions that are not exclusively economic. This formulation acknowledges the pluralism inherent in any social formation and that all boundaries, be they political, social, or those of identity are always contested and provisional, that is historically shifting.



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Works cited Beck, Ulrich. 1997. The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press. Choi, Jung-Bong. 2011 “National cinema: an anachronistic delirium?” Journal of Korean Studies 16, 2: 173–91. Crofts, Stephen. 2002. “Reconceptualizing National Cinema/s.” In Film and Nationalism, edited by Alan Williams, 25–61. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Rutgers University Press. Originally published in 1993, Quarterly Review of Film & Video 14, 3: 49–67. Higson, Andrew. 1989. “The concept of national cinema.” Screen 30, 4: 36–47. Hjort, Mette. 2010. “Affinitive and Milieu-building Transnationalism: the Advance Party Initiative.” In Cinema at the Periphery, edited by Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones and Belén Vidal 46–66. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Horton, Andrew. 2002. “Desperately seeking screenplays: five contemporary Greek films considered.” Film Criticism 27, 2: 31–42. Kappler, Matthias. 2007. “Prolegomena for a comparative approach to Cypriot literatures.” Hellenic Studies 15, 2: 49–54. Karalis, Vrasidas. 2012. History of Greek Cinema. New York: Continuum. Kechagioglou, George. 1992. “Contemporary Cypriot literature and the ‘frame’ of modern Greek literature: a provincial, local, marginal, peripheral, independent, autonomous, self-sufficient or self-determined literature?” Journal of Mediterranean Studies. 2, 2: 240–55. Kechagioglou, George, and Lefteris Papaleontiou. 2010. Istoria tis Neoteris Kypriakis Logotechnias (A History of Modern Cypriot Literature). Nicosia: The Cyprus Research Center. Kleanthous-Hadjikyriakou, Soula. 1995. “Kypriakos Kinimatografos: Provlimata kai Prooptikes” (“Cypriot Cinema”: Issues and Prospects). In The History of Cinema in Cyprus, edited by Nicos Shiafkalis, 163–5. Nicosia: 7th Art Friends Club. Kliris, Stelana. 2013. “Committed to Cypriot Cinema.” Film International. November 11. http://filmint.nu/?p=10011 (accessed May 6, 2014). Nomikos, Marinos. 2014a. “The Bird of Cyprus Review.” Phileleftheros web portal (www. philenews.com). www.philenews.com/el-gr/psychagogia-sinema/229/192122/ to-pouli-tis-kyprou (accessed March 6, 2014). Nomikos, Marinos. 2014b. “The Bird of Cyprus Review.” TV Mania. April Issue: 20. O’Regan, Tom. 2002. “Australian Cinema as National Cinema.” In Film and Nationalism, edited by Alan Williams, 89–136. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Rutgers University Press. Pantzis, Andreas. 2012. “O Ypourgos Paideias kai Politismou Ofili na Paremvei” (The Minister of Education and Culture has to Step in.) Phileleftheros, September 2.

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Papadakis, Yiannis, Nicos Peristianis, and Gisela Welz. 2006. “Modernity, History and Conflict in Divided Cyprus: An Overview.” In Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict, edited by Yiannis Papadakis et al., 1–29. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Rose, Steve. 2011. “Attenberg, Dogtooth and the Weird Wave of Greek Cinema.” The Guardian, August 27. www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/aug/27/attenberg-dogtoothgreece-cinema (accessed June 17, 2013). Savvinides, Giorgos. 2011. “O Dimiourgos einai I Synidisi tis Epochis tou (The Artist is the Consciousness of his Time).” Phileleftheros, March 26. Williams, Alan. 2002. “Introduction.” In Film and Nationalism, edited by Alan Williams, 1–24. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Rutgers University Press. Yashin, Mehmet. 2000. Step-mothertongue: From Nationalism to Multiculturalism: Literatures of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. London: Middlesex University Press. Young-jin, Kim. 2007. PARK Chan-wook: Korean Film Directors. Seoul: Seoul Selection.

Notes   1 The exhibition, which marked the Cyprus presidency of the Council of the European Union, took place from June 22 until December 11 2012.   2 BOZAR’s mission statement. www.bozar.be/webpage.php?pageid=301& (accessed June 17, 2013).   3 For example, Economides’ second full-length film, Soul Kicking, premiered at the 2006 Cannes International Film Festival in the Semaine de la Critique section.   4 Description of EURIMAGES’ goal on the official website of the funding program. www.coe.int/t/dg4/eurimages/About/default_en.asp (accessed June 17, 2013).   5 Ninos Fenek Mikelides, a renowned Cypriot-born film critic and book author living in Greece, is the director of the short film Cyprus, Where it was Ordained for Me (1962), which is cited in the existing literature as the first Greek-Cypriot film produced independently in Cyprus. The film is based on poetry by the Greek winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, George Seferis, published in his collection Imerologio Katastromatos C (Logbook C 1955), which was the creative response to the poet’s first visit to Cyprus.   6 O’Regan discusses the affinitive transnationalism between Australia and New Zealand to illustrate his description of national cinemas as messy (2002). He argues that “deciding where the national leaves off and another national begins is difficult in these cases because the ‘national’ involves both” (2002: 127).   7 This took place during the first week of July 2012 and was part of the American Film Showcase touring program, which is a US Department of State and a



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USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) initiative. The training was organized in association with the International Children’s Film Festival of Cyprus (ICFFCY), the Cyprus Community Media Centre (CCMC), Sugarfoot Films, and the US Embassy of Nicosia.   8 The Cyprus Telecommunication Authority has recently added NOVA to its IP TV platform.   9 For example, the Rooftop Theatre Group—a multicultural theater group based in Cyprus— usually performs its plays in English and has published the play text of one of its productions, namely Performing the Experience, in a trilingual edition. The documentary Sharing an Island is also a very good example of a trilingual production. The film’s languages are Greek, English, and Turkish and the DVD of the film was distributed in two versions, one with Greek subtitles and the other with Turkish subtitles. 10 Director’s statement. Evaporating Borders official website. www.evaporatingborders. com/director-statement (accessed May 1, 2014). 11 www.parathyro.com/?p=7221 (accessed June 17, 2013). 12 www.indiegogo.com/projects/whispers--2?c=home (accessed June 17, 2013). 13 vimeo.com/18846508 (accessed June 17, 2013). 14 www.indiegogo.com/projects/committed-a-feature-film-about-love-andmadness?c=home (accessed June 17, 2013).

List of Contributors Costas Constandinides is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Communications at the University of Nicosia. He is the author of From Film Adaptation to Post-celluloid Adaptation (London and New York: Continuum, 2010). He is a member of the European Film Academy, an honorary member of the Cinema Advisory Committee (Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus), and a member of the Artistic Committee of Cyprus Film Days IFF (since 2009). Elizabeth Anne Davis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, in association with the Program in Hellenic Studies. Her work in Greece and Cyprus addresses the psyche and the body, their implication in social conflict and in the ties that bind people to communities and states. Her first book, Bad Souls: Madness and Responsibility in Modern Greece, published in 2012 by Duke University Press, explores humanitarian psychiatric reform in the borderland between Greece and Turkey. She is currently writing a new book on secrecy, transparency, and post-conflict statecraft in Cyprus. Nayia Kamenou holds a PhD in European Studies from King’s College London. She is currently a special scientist in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cyprus and a visiting research fellow in the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London. She conducts research in the fields of queer and gender studies, women’s, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans rights, nationalism, social movements, and political extremism. Yiannis Papadakis is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cyprus. He is author of Echoes from the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide (I. B. Tauris, 2005), translated in Greek and Turkish, co-editor of Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict (Indiana University Press, 2006), and editor of a 2006 special issue of Postcolonial Studies on Cyprus. He has published on issues of nationalism, memory, ethnic conflict, museums, and history books. Nicos Philippou is the author of Coffee House Embellishments (2007) and co-editor of Re-envisioning Cyprus (2010) and Photography and Cyprus: Time,

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Place and Identity (2014). His writings on photography and Cypriot vernacular culture have been published in journals, art magazines, and collective volumes. He holds an MA in Communications and Technology from Brunel University. He is currently lecturing at the Communications Department of the University of Nicosia and is working toward his PhD in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Bristol. Laurence Raw teaches in the Department of English at Başkent University, Ankara, Turkey. His recent publications include Adaptation and Learning (with Tony Gurr, 2013), and Global Jane Austen (with Robert G. Dryden, 2013). He has written extensively on Turkish film, contributing to The Directory of World Cinema – Turkey (Intellect 2013), as well as writing a series of essays published in Exploring Turkish Cultures (2011). Forthcoming projects include Six Turkish Filmmakers (University of Wisconsin Press 2014). Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert has published on photography, museums, and tourism. She is the co-editor of Photography and Cyprus: Time, Place and Identity (2014), Re-envisioning Cyprus (2010) and the author of the photography book Tourists Who Shoot (2013). She is assistant professor at the School of Fine and Applied Arts of the Cyprus University of Technology and the coordinator of the Visual Sociology and Museum Studies Lab.

Index 5 Broken Cameras 41 accented bodies 169, 171, 172 activist films 230 Adil, Alev 54–5 adult films 151, 153–4, 155, 216, 223 term defined 156 aesthetics, politics and national identity 64–5 “affinitive transnationalism” 157–61, 208 “Against Intolerance and Fanaticism” film festival 117 Agapes tzai Kaimoi see Loves and Sorrows Akamas (Chrysanthou 2006) 15, 40, 144, 185, 232 claims of censoring of 37, 135 constraints upon 146, 225 critique 145 dispute with the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus 27, 134–5, 225–6 official interest in 226 protests over 226 and reconciliation 121, 132–5 significance of 11, 19, 143, 190–1 women in 189 AKEL (Uprising Party of the Working People) 120 Alaminos 49, 81 Alikaki, Myrto 225 Anadolu 101, 110 and and either/or paradigm 24, 211, 212, 213, 221 in context of Cyprus 215, 221–2, 225, 226 flaws in 218 Pantzis and 209 responses to 221 androcentric viewpoint 183, 184, 185, 202 boundaries of 186 Angastiniotis, Antonis (Tony) 32, 49, 230

Annan Plan 31, 33 anti-humanist traditions 182 Aphrodite changing presentations of 23 film references 3, 23, 126, 152, 155, 162, 163–4, 166 legacy of 3 legend of 23 modern references to 79–80, 81, 155, 163, 167 and modern women 79 tourism and links to Cyprus 3, 23, 75, 81, 122, 127, 155, 184 see also The Rape of Aphrodite Apo Thavma see By Miracle Apostolidis, Andreas 38, 39 Argyrou, Vassos 66 Arslan, Yetin 39 Art Studio 55 40 Artos Foundation 40, 55 Association for Historical Dialogue and Research 41, 50 Association of Turkish Cypriots Abroad (ACTA) 48 Atlilar (Aloa) 46, 48, 96 Attenberg (Athina Rachel Tsangari 2010) 224 Attila ’74 32, 34, 43–4, 46, 47, critique of 207 Audiovisual and Media Policies Department (European Commission) 19–20 Averof, Yuri 38, 39 Avraam, Popi 108 Avraamidou, Corinna 9–10, 188, 223 Avrianos Polemistis, O see Tomorrow’s Warrior Ayios Sozomenos 51–2, 53, 54 Balkan Fund initiative 19 Bar (2001) 187, 199, 200–1 issue of the missing 9

240 Index Baud-Bovy, Manuel 75 BBC (British–Born Cypriots) 153 Beck, Ulrich 24, 211, 221 Beirut Road (Via Beyrut) 92 Bhabha, Homi 221 biologisms 198–9 Bird of Cyprus, The (To Pouli tis Kyprou 2014, Nicolas Koumides 2014) 11–12, 223 Birds of a Feather 39, 49–50 Block 12 (Oikopedo 12 2013) 8, 20, 194, 199–200, 223, 228 significance of mutism 200 BOZAR Center of Fine Arts, Brussels 207, 209 Bruner, Jerome 110 Burnat, Emad 41 By Miracle (Apo Thavma 2010) 11, 191, 196, 197, 198 Cacoyannis, Michael 32, 41, 43, 188, 207–8 Çamur see Mud Cassavetes, John 208 Cassel, Seymour 162 Cenneti Beklerken see Waiting for Heaven Chandra, Neetu 228 checkpoints, opening of 21, 34, 40, 45, 92, 98 Children of the Riots 41 Children’s Stage of THOC 152, 155 Chorafas, George 162 Chrysanthou, Panicos 10, 37, 40, 51–4, 120, 121 and Ministry of Education and Culture 134–5 and Our Wall 145 and Parallel Trips 91, 93, 94–5 and visions of reconciliation 132–9 see also Akamas Cinema Advisory Committee (Symvouleutiki Epitropi Kinimatografou) of the Republic of Cyprus 4, 16, 18 cinema in Cyprus and wider context 25 accented 162, 164 cinema of transvergence 175 film and photography, interrelationship between 63

film festivals 117–18, 119 handling contested issues 121 Hollywood 228 inward-looking process of exploring 61 negotiating contested issues 121 transnational turn in film scholarship 26 Clerides, Glafkos 43 Codename Venus (Tamer Garip 2012) 121, 142–3 coffee shops 108 gender and 70 as male dominated 70, 71, 79, 80 significance of 71, 78, 85–6, 96, 141 women and 80, 85 Cold War and either/or dichotomy 24 Colonial Films 5 comedy and feminist analysis 194 Committed (2014) 229–30 Constandinides, Costas 4, 16 Constantinou, Sophia 17 Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cyprus 18 counter-political, practice of 4 Countryside Animafest Cyprus 20 Coup, Invasion, Occupation, Refugees, as markers of Hellenocentric position 119 Crewhouse 41 Criminal Activities of the Hassanpoulia The, colonial record 159–60 Crofts, Stephen 220–1, 222, 228 CTP (Republican Turkish Party) 120 Cycle, The (Devir, Zaim) (2012) 92 Cyprio–centric position 119–20 Cypriot Cinema and film 20–1, 156, 232 attitudes towards femininity and exercise of agency 184–9 categorical ambiguities of 222–6 changing emphasis 227 cinematic transnationalisms 174, 215–16 and Cypriot Cinemas 26, 215, 216, 232 Cypriot minority cinemas 220 and Cyprus Problem 228 defining 12–13, 210–11, 216–17 development of 14–15

Index development of Cypriot film 7, 223–4 DIY films 229 dominant paradigm on 122 ethnic agitation and origins of cinema 223–4 feel bad films 224 film festivals 20 forms 226–30 and Greece 207–10, 216, 221, 224, 225, 231 highlighting cultural and social fault lines 202 and Hollywood 222, 228 interethnic love stories 10, 120, 131 interrelationship with Greek cinema 207–9 lack of discussion on what constitutes Cypriot filmmaking 211–12 language interactions 219–20 literature review 12–17 nature of the local 226 and 1960s 84–5 “peripheral cinema” 217 and photographers 63, 69–70, 73, 79 political nature of 147 political–moral perspectives 144–5 readings of 216 state support for 17–21 Turkish–Cypriot 216 typology of Cypriot film 226–32 use of Greek Cypriot dialect 13, 225 writings on 12–17 see also film; specific films Cypriot filmmakers and negotiating issues 162–74, 226 settling in Greece 207–8, 209–10, 224 Cypriot literature 212–22 autonomy of 221 and cinema, compared 212–22 Cypriot literature and literatures 212–13 defined 217–18, 222 nature of 213 Cypriotness, concept of 66, 73, 85, 161 and Hellenic Heritage 225 Cyprus and Greece 124–5 Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) 12, 14–15, 44, 223

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and Cypriot film 15, 16, 227 “Cypriot Sketches” 152 digitization of collections 35–6 and historical anniversaries 35 in 1960s 63 Cyprus Community Media Centre (CCMC) 41–2, 50 Cyprus Conflict, The 92 Cyprus Film and Television Directors’ Guild 117 Cyprus Film Council 44 Cyprus Film Days audience award 20 Cyprus Film Days Festival 40–1 Cyprus Film Days 2014 229 Cyprus Film Production Council (Cinema Advisory Committee) 16, 155 Cyprus is an Island (Ralph Keene 1946) 5, 41 Cyprus Problem, The (or Cyprus Question) 3, 9, 21, 36, 100, 175 different approaches to 22–3 documentary films and 34, 51 film and 92, Chapter 4, 122, 144, 152, 153, 156, 222 Greece and Turkey and 146 as a national movement 222 as product of historical forces 98 significance of 11 Third Cinema and 164 Cyprus Tourism Organization 23, 81 Cyprus, Republic of 2–3, 208, 231 attitudes towards Cypriot history 25, 33 basis of male identities and hegemonic masculinities in 191 British rule 5, 72, 93, 118, 151 community based media 32 cultural representations of Ottoman rule 104, 106 Cypriot concepts of masculinity 195 description of 2, 210 distinction between Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot 22, 25 division 119 dynamic between tradition and modern 78–9 establishment of Republic 61, 118, and EU 7, 19–20, 121, 172

242 Index filmmaking in 6–7, 34 and Greece 6, 119–20 “haircut” deal 20 Hellenocentrism vs Cyprio-centric approach 22 history of 93–4 independence 61 interethnic conflict 5, 9–10, 11, 25, 118 interrelationship between cinema and film 63 Left and Right 22, 119, 134 masculinity in 126, 191 migration 11 multiculturalism in 215–16 nationalism in 4–5, 10–11 nature of culture 211–12 1960 Agreement 97, 105 1963 conflict 5–6, 3, 93, 118 1960s 108 pre-1974 conflicts 118, 122 1974 coup and invasion 7, 10, 32, 33, 35, 42, 61, 92, 94–5, 118–19, 138 opening of checkpoints 21, 34, 40, 45, 92, 98 opening of film archives 35 opposing historiographies 9 Ottoman rule over and legacy 72, 92, 106, 108, 118, 219 patriarchal elements in society 126–7, 181 policy towards film 19–20 political terrains 3 politically contested terrains of 3 position of women 126–7 as post-colonial society 213 relationship between Greek–Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities 94–6, 119 relationship with Greece 211 sociopolitical space of divided Cyprus 181 tourism 76, 78, 80–5 traditional Cypriot weddings 67–8 traditions 76 and Turkey 119–20 see also Greek Cypriots; Turkish Cypriots

Cyprus, Where It was Ordained for Me (Kypron, ou m’ Ethespisen) 62 Cyprus: The Other Reality 40 Danezi-Knutsen, Aliki 9, 187, 225 Davidi, Guy 41 de Lauretis, Teresa 183 dead zone, Nicosia 34, 40, 50, 54 “resuscitation” of 51 Deleuze, Gilles 17, 34 Demetriades, Takis 63, 65, 69–73, 85, 86 Demetriou, Costas 1, 6, 8, 151, 154, 162, 185 Demetriou, Elias 11, 153, 170, 171 Denktaş, Rauf 18, 43, 143 Derrida, Jacques 36 Deserted (Danny Iacovou and Orestes Mitas 2010) 229 Detail in Cyprus, A (Leptomeria stin Kypro 1987) 40, 43, 50–2, 57 Devir (The Cycle) 92 Diakopes stin Kypro Mas see Vacations in Our Cyprus Diamantis, Adamantios 52–3, 70 Directors’ Guild 119 Dirty Seven, The (Bruno Fontana 1983) 156 discourses on sexuality and agency 199 discursive constructions of female subjectivity and women’s agency 202 discursive content and meaning of borders and of tactics of surveillance 194 DISY (Democratic Rally) 119 Divided Loyalties 17 Divine Emanuelle (aka Love Camp) 156 Division of Cyprus, The 39, 49 DIY films 228, 229 documentary archives, uses of 42–55 as a resource 56–7 documentary films Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos 2009) 224 doing and undoing gender 191 Dot (Nokta, Zaim) (2008) 92 Dromos gia tin Ithaki, O see The Road to Ithaca Economides, Yiannis 207, 208, 209–10, 224, 225–6

Index “child without a father” spirit 224 and creating a Cypriot film 226 dispute with Ministry of Education and Culture 37, 134–5, 225–6 Eirini (“Peace Room”) 40 ELAM (Ethniko Laiko Metopo [The National Popular Front]) 226 Eleftheriotis, Dimitris 157 Elephants and Grass (Filler ve Çimen) 91, 92, 100, 104–5, 111 Emanuelle’s Daughter 156 Emanuelle’s Daughter: Queen of Sados (Elias Mylonakos 1980) 154, 155, 156 enclaves, Turkish Cypriot 6, 22, 33, 49, 51, 57, 62, 81, 118 Enlightenment Advisory Committee (Symvouleutiki Epitropi Diafotisis) 18 Enosis (union with Greece) 5, 107, 118, 123, and violence against Turkish Cypriots 35 Entelechy (2011) 230 EOKA (Ethniki Organosi Kyprion Agoniston, National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) 5, 8, 93, 96, 118, 123 campaigns 143 in film 11, 32, 72, 105, 108, 118, 124, 133–4, 135, 136, 143 killing of Greek Cypriots 100, 135 relationship with EOKA B 123 EOKA B 6, 8, 43, 123 action against Archbishop Makarios 44, 118–19 in film 123, 127, 131 relationship with EOKA 123 shooting in Limassol 44 Ergüçlü, Hazar 105, 107 Erol Ipekli 106 ERT 19 ethnic boundaries 134, 135–6, 138 EURIMAGES, 19, 209 “European Cinema” 156 Alternative European Cinema 157 European Union and Cyprus 7, 19–20, 36, 172 Eurowesterns 158, 159

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Evagoras’ Vow ([To Tama], 2001) 163, 167–71, 210, 231–2 Evaporating Borders (2014) 220 Evripidou, Stefanos 39, 49–50 excess of the political, concept of 22, Cypriot cinema 122, 129, 131, 135, 138, 142, 145, 147, 153, 161, 171 and Cyprus Problem 153 exploitation movies 153–4 Farmakas, Costas 69, 76, 78, 85 Faulds, Andrew 94 fault lines in society 202 female agency, male-defined and autonomous 186 dichotomy between femininity and agency 186, 187 and passivity 187 and sexual agency 185–6 subjectivity 181, 183 see also “woman” and women female existence linked to marriage and childbearing 196–8 femininity and exercise of agency 187, 188, 190 feminist film theory 182–3 analysis of comedy 194 film analysis 193 Festival of Films by Cypriot Directors 117 Festival of the Green Line 39–40, 117 Filis, Giorgos 6, 65–8, 81–2, 85, 86, 191 Filler ve Çimen see Elephants and Grass film archives in Cyprus 20, 35–6 films and filmmaking and censorship 37 considering films in context 182 conventions 45 and Cyprus Problem 21, 34–5, 36 documentary films 14, 31–57 eroticism and 153 and events of 1974 35 film festivals in Cyprus 117–18, 119 and film industry 16, 17, 19–20, 212, 224 films as records 4 and immigrants 171 and interpretation of the present 34

244 Index nature of documentaries 42–3 presentation of women 181–205 Press and Information Office of the Republic of Cyprus Enlightenment Advisory Committee’s role 18 reconciliation documentaries 145–6 showing of 38–41 social space 38–42 themes and issues 21–4 “transnational turn” in scholarship 26 ways of seeing Cypriot film 210 see also individual films “Films of Reconciliation” 120–1 Fish n’ Chips (2011) 11, 20, 152, 162, 168–9, 225, 228, 232 and plurality of Cypriot cinema 213–14 Florides, Adonis 11, 152, 171–3, 185 “Focus on Cyprus 2012” exhibition 207 folklore, Cypriot 67–9 FOTOCINE 75, 76 Fox Lorber 43 fustanella drama 69 Garip, Tamer 142 Gazi, Seren 48 Gemser, Laura 155 gender aspects within discursive topic 191 changing gender roles 82, 165, 189, 191 and the coffee house 70 in Cypriot film Chapter 6 as a destabilising aspect 23 and domestic labour 199 fault lines 202 and female subjectivity 183, 189, 193 gender politics 24, 199 gender role binarism 181, 187 gender roles and films/photography 23, 24, 70–2, 79 gender stereotypes 182 gender studies 191 gendered agency 191 gendered labour 199 gendered subjectivity 202 as an issue 11–12, 23–4 power relations 202 resistance to patriarchal order 200

and sexual differences 187 technologies of 199 wider context 190, 202, 221 see also patriarchal society; “woman” and women Georgios Pol. Georgiou 70 Georgiou, Christos 41, 128–9, 187, 224, 225 Gledhill, Christine 183 Gölgeler ve Suretler see Shadows and Faces Golfo (1915) 69 Golino, Valeria 162, 163, 167 “Greece of Greek Christians” [Ellas Ellinon Christianon] 154 Greece military junta and Cyprus 6, 154, 189 support for Cypriot films 208, 210, 211 Greek and Cypriot literature, interrelationship between 218, 222 Greek Cypriots 2, 32 attitudes towards Turkish Cypriots 33, 99–100, 219 Cyprio-centric position 119–20 and Cypriot literature 219 development of Greek-Cypriot imagery 84–5 and exclusion of other communities 66 gender issues 11 and Greece 8, 125, 126 Greek-Cypriot Left 8, 119, 120 Greek-Cypriot Right 8, 10, 71, 119. 136, 146 Hellenocentric position 119, 122 historical perspective 128 historiography 9–10 the missing 9 and 1963 events 139–40 and 1974 7, 9, 25 official Greek–Cypriot rhetoric of “past peaceful coexistence” 120 and pre-1974 conflicts 122 rise of nationalism 4 “Turkish barbarism” 127 viewpoints 122, 220 see also Enosis; EOKA Greek-Cypriot cinema and film 226–8 development of Greek–Cypriot cinema 62, 84–5

Index and Enosis 123–5 and EOKA/EOKA B 122, 124, 127, 130–1, 134 and ethnonationalism 65 Greek support for 208, 210,211 having dual identity 216–17 imagery of past peace and coexistence 133 in 1960s 64, 72 key aspects of 2 and landscape 6, 65, 73 and modernism 73, 74 negotiation of issues 162 origins of 62 presentation or absence of Turkish Cypriots 65, 81, 120, 123–5, 128–9, 130–9, 145, 166 subsidising of 226–7 and tourism 64, 76–8 use of Greek–Cypriot dialect or Greek 66, 136, 215, 218, 225 Greek-Cypriot dialect 13, 66, 215, 219, 225 and Greek 13 linguistic shift 224 Greek-Cypriot film directors and national identity 208 and Cypriot films 224 moving to Greece 208 Greek-Cypriot refugees (prosfiges) 33, 44, 56, 107, 117, 122, 123, 128, 130 and missing persons (agnooumenoi) 5, 7, 9, 54, 122, 128, 130 Greek Film Center, 12, 19, 231 Green Action Group 41 Green Line, the 5, 7, 32, 36, 118, 120 Grivas, George 96 see also EOKA HAD 31–3, 41 Hadjipavlou, Maria 31–2 “halloumi-western” 158 Hands Across the Divide (HAD) 31–3, 41 “Happy Peace Operation” 7 Hassanpoulia, legend of 6, 151, 152–61, 185 Hassanpoulia: The Avengers of Cyprus (Ta Hassanpoulia: Oi Ekdikites tis Kyprou) 6, 151, 153ff, 185, 191 as alternative form of transnational cinema 157–61

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Americanization 157 attitudes towards women 185 context 153–7, 175 feminist critique of 185–6 Hatay, Mete 94, 97 hegemonic masculinity 183, 191, 193–4 Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation [ERT] 12 Hellenocentric position 119, 122 Herodotou, Diogenis 13, 80, 152, 153ff heterocentricity 196, 198 heteronormative discourses 183, 190, 198, 202 heteronormantive discourses and homosexuality 196, 198 heteronormative domesticity 188 masculinity and 194 and nationalist discourses 181, 190 heterosexedness 182 Hi am Erica (Yiannis Ioannou 2007) 15 Hidden in the Sand (Vasia Markides 2008) 49 hierarchial binary oppositions 182 Higbee, Will 175 Hinde, John 63, 75, 82–3, 84, 85, 86 Hirsch, Marianne 56 historiographies of national cinemas 222 history, interrelationship with present 110–11 Hjort, Mette 208, 215, 228, 231 Hollywood and national cinema, interaction between 222, 223 Cypriot cinema 222, 228 Home for Cooperation (H4C) 31, 38–40, 50 homecoming and migration, themes of 168 Homeland (2010), 43, 48, 49 homosexuality as an issue 11, 196, 198, 199 Honey and Wine (Meli kai Krasi 2006) 11, 187, 191, 196, 197, 198 Hussein, Serkan 48 Iacovides, Jack 63, 75, 79–80, 85, 86 If Kare Squared (IF2) Istanbul Film Festival 40 In This Waiting (Anna Tsiarta 2011) 49 indiegogo 229

246 Index Inside the Walls (Elias Demetriou 2001) 48 Internal Displacement in Cyprus: Mapping the Consequences of Civil and Military Strife 39 International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP) 73 International Short Film Festival of Cyprus 20 interpretation of art and subjective evaluation 183 Ioannou, Yiannis 10, 168m 171 Istoria tou Kinimatografou stin Kypro, I (The History of Cinema in Cyprus) 13–14 Jameson, Frederic 23, 147 on films and literature as national allegories 22, 121, 122, Jewison, Norman 166 Jodorowsky, Alejandro 153 journeying as a concept 162–8, 169–71 “journeys of identity” 202 Junge, Daniel 41 Kafkarides, Stelios 152 159 Kalabush (Adonis Florides and Theodoros Nicolaides, 2003) 152, 171–5, 194 addressing social issues 11, 162, 171–5 and Aphrodite 3 and existing structures 191, 194 linguistic component 223, 225 women’s sexuality 185, 187, 191 Karagöz 92, 93, 105–8, 109–10, 111, 112, 140 Karayanni 79 Kareklas (local Commandant of Police, Paphos) 159–60 Kartikkis, Marinos 11, 187, 191, 197 Kassialos, Michael 70 Kathodos ton Ennia I (The Descent of the Nine 1984), 165 Katrivanou, Vassiliki 31, 39 Kayip Otobüs (Lost Bus) (Fevzi Tanpinar 2007) 49 Kechagioglou, George 212–13, 217–18 on autonomy of Cypriot literature 221–2

responses to 221 Keene, Ralph 5, 41 Kim Young-jin 224 Kittou, Thekla 40 Kizilyurek, Niyazi 10, 14, 132, 145 Kleanthous, Alexis 13, 15, 154 Kleanthous-Hadjikyriakou, Soula 14–15 Klimov, Elem 166 Kliris, Stelana 229, 230 Knifer (Macherovgaltis 2010) 207, 209 Kokkini Pempti (Red Thursday, 2003) 152, 163 Konstantinos Gavriel 106 Koumides, Nicolas 11, 12 Kourouniotis, Dionisis 80 Kucuk, Fazil 5 Kymionis 160–1 Kypriakos Kinimatografos, O (Cypriot Cinema) 13 Kypron, ou m’ Ethespisen (Cyprus, Where It was Ordained for Me) 62 Kyriacou, Andreas 229 Lambert, Theopisti Stylianou 39 Lapithi, Lia 17 Laskos, Orestis 6 Last Homecoming, The (O Teleutaios Gyrismos 2008) 15, 22, 119, 223, 228 and Greek-Cypriot historical paradigm 9–10, 11 position of women 188–9, 190–1, 200 on relationship between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots 130, 131–2, 145 use of Greek–Cypriot dialogue 225 Last Kiss, The (To Teleutaio Fili Giorgos Filis, 1970) 6, 62, 66, 67, 68 Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci 1972) 153 Leda Galanou of Flix 1 153 Leeuwen, Jan van 158 Lemesos International Documentary Festival 20, 41, 50 Leptomeria stin Kypro see A Detail in Cyprus Limassol 171, 172 film events in 41, 174, 217

Index film making in 40 rally 44 link between heterosexual sex and women’s ownership 189 Loizos, Peter 71–2 London, symbolism of 214 Lopez, Ricardo 15 Love Camp (a.k.a. Divine Emanuelle, Christian Anders 1981) 156 Loves and Sorrows (Agapes tzai Kaimoi, Giorgos Filis 1965) 6, 15, 62, 66, 85 dream sequence in 67–8, 70 photographer in 86, 191 setting 68–9, 70, 83 Ludwig, Elmar 83 magical realist dimension 172–3 Makarios, Archbishop 1, 5, 32, 43, 57 changing constitution 105 EOKA B action against 6, 118–19 Makavejev, Dušan 153 male subjectivities, identities and masculinity 191 Maronite community, Cyprus 220 masculinist and heteronormative nationalist discourses 181, 221 masculinist approaches 195 masculinist fantasies 195, 221 mass graves 46, 48, 49, 130 massacres 32, 45–6, 48 master and slave situations 164, 171 Matchbox (Spirtokouto 2002) 224 Mathijs, Ernest standpoint of 154, 157 Me tin Psihi sto Stoma (Soul Kicking) 15 media and the Cyprus Problem 100 Media Blasters/Exploitation Digital 156 MEDIA program 19 Meli kai Krasi see Honey and Wine memory and forgetting, dialectical social process of 25 Mendik, Xavier standpoint 154, 157 Merlen, Nahide 33 Michael, Androula 207, 209 Mikelides, Ninos Fenek 62 Mikro Eglima (Christos Georgiou 2008) 15 Ministerial Committee on Film (Ypourgiki Epitropi Kinimatografou) 18

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Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey 140, 231 Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus 207, 208, 209, 226 Akamas dispute 37, 134–5, 225–6 Cinema Advisory Committee 18 Cultural Services 17 Film Archive 20 film festivals 117 and film industry 16, 17, 19–20, 212, 224 policy change 19 Ministry of Information 5 Mitchell, WJT 104 Money, Mischievous (O Paras o Maskaras, Vangelis Oikonomides 1969) 62, 75–80, 86 photographer 85 and tourism 64, 75 Mother Greece, concept of 123, 124–5, 131 Mothers of the Missing 50 Mountain Film Greek genre 160 mountain films (foustanéla films) 160–1 Mousouliotis, Andreas 152 Mud (Çamur 2003) 11, 22, 91–2, 99–105, 144, 232 as critique 11, 22 and films of reconciliation 120–1, 132–9 and identity politics 91, 102–3, 136–8 political component 103 and Turkish Cypriots 11, 22, 93, 105, 110, 140 women and 190 Murataga (Maratha) 46, 48, 49, 94, 96, 97 Murid (2010) 230 mutism, significance of with women 200 Nägele, Edmund 83 nation state, notion of 24 definition of a nation 65 nature of 210 national allegories, concept of 121 national cinema, inward looking process 61 autonomy of 222 definitions 61–2

248 Index discussions of 220–1 historiographies of 222 and Hollywood 222, 223 varieties of 228 national identities and other axes of social division 221 National Struggle Museum 123, 124 nationalism and sexual propriety 190 Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot 4 nationhood, national identity androcentrism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, links between 184 Nekatomeni Aerides (Troubled Winds aka Weltering Winds 1984) 10 New Hellenic Radio, Internet and Television [NERIT] 12 Nicolaides, Theodoros 11, 152, 171–3, 185 Nicosia Film Club 15 Nicosia 36, 40, 78, 81, 124 bridging divided locality of 120 buffer zone 39, 41 dead zone in 34, 40, 50, 51, 54 divided Nicosia 5, 118, 120, 171 film in 39, 40, 45, 54 filmic presentations of 54, 78 filmmaking in 38 1974 war and aftermath 43, 49, 53, 55 Nomikos, Marinos 223 non-heterosexual sexuality, patholozing of 199 Notka (Dot) 92 Nugent, Stephen 39, 49–50 Obaid-Chinoy, Sharmeen 41 Occupy the Buffer Zone movement 40, 50–1 Oikonoimides, Vangelis 75 Oikopedo 12 see Block 12 “opportunistic” transnationalism 228–9 Order to Kill Makarios (Dolofoniste ton Makario) 1–2, 8, 9, 15, 156 O’Regan, Tom 162, 222, 223 “orphan films” 156 Osthoff, Simone 38 Othellos Cinemas and Othellos Films 80 OTHELLOS FILM 80 Ottoman heritage 92 Our Wall (To Teichos Mas/Duvarimiz 1993) 11, 14, 40, 51, 232

archival perspective 49 context 16 dual perspective 10, 145–6 and liminal third spaces 146 Palaikythro 45, 46, 94 Palma, Androulla 50 Panicos Chrysanthou, 117, 185 Pantzis, Andreas 3, 123–8, 152, 167, 184, 227 and cinema 214, 214, 222, 225 Cyprus Problem 18, 122–3, 124–5, 164 and historical context of films 8, 44–5, 117, 123–4, 131 influences on 167–8 on nature of Cypriot film 207–8, 209–10 and state funding and influences on films 18, 117, 207 use of archives 44, 45 and VGIK 167 women in films 163, 184, 191 Papadakis, Yiannis 4, 16 Papademetrakis, Lambros 40 Papageorgiou, Stavros 230 Papaleontiou, Lefteris 212–13 Papas, Michael 8, 127–8 paradigms 157, 176 cinema 9, 122, 175, 194, 215, 232 discursive 162, 215 either/or 211, 213 historical 4, 9 and paradigm and 211, 212, 221 Parallel Trips (2004) 22, 40, 43, 45–8, 91, 93–9, 105 influences 108, 109 Paras o Maskaras, O see Money, Mischievous Paschalis Tsarouchas, 166 patriarchal society Cypriot society 126–7 film and 189, 202 patriarchal discourses 189 patriarchal structures 181 resistance to 200 sexual economy of 194 and women 82, 181, 184, 185–6, 187, 189 Payne, Alexander 208

Index “Peace Operation” 120 Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO)– Cyprus Centre 39 Philippou, Pavlos 1, 8 photographs and Cyprus 79 selection/omission process 83 Pouli tis Kyprou, To, see The Bird of Cyprus power hierarchies 191 power of political forces 220 Press and Information Office (PIO) 12, 35, 52, 120 Cinema Advisory Committee 18 Enlightenment Advisory Committee 18 and film archives 15, 16, 20, 32, 35, 48, 49. 53 Public Information Office 5 radical politically transgressive act 230 Radivojevic, Iva 220 Rape of Aphrodite The (O Viasmos tis Aphrodites, 1985) 3, 8, 17, 18, 119, 122–7, 138, 144, 162 as allegory 167 and Cypriot films 214–15 feminist critique 184, 186 realism and magical realism, difference between 173 reconciliation (symfiliosi) and rapprochement (epanaprosegisi), concepts of 120, 132–9, “reconciliation” documentaries 10 Red Thursday 162 Riza, I (The Root) 62 Road to Ithaca, The (O Dromos gia tin Ithaki 1999) 10, 119, 131–2, 135, 145, 185, 189 Roads and Oranges (Dromoi kai Portokalia 1996) 11, 16, 119, 128, 130, 187, 199, 201 and the missing 9 “romantic school” of Greek-Cypriot photography 69–70 Rooftop Theatre Group 41 Root, The (I Riza) 62 Said, Edward 24–5

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Sakellariou, Akis 225 Sampson, Nicos 43, 94 Sandallar (Santallaris) 46, 48, 96 Saving Face 41 Schaefer, Eric 156 sexuality, technologies of 199 Sfagi tou Kokora, I, see The Slaughter of the Cock Shadows and Faces (Gölgeler ve Suretler, 2010), 96, 144 constraints upon 146 and experience of change 111 interethnic relations and conflict 96, 105–10, 121, 139–42 position of women 190, funding 231 and relationship between past and present 11, 22, 92, 103 symbolism in 93 Sharing an Island (2012) 38–9, 207, 226 Shiafkalis, Nicos 13–14 Shiopachas, Christos 152, 163, 165–8 Shohat, Ella 22, 120, 121, 131, 145, 202, on Israeli cinema 127, 143–4 Shukri, Yeliz 230 Sidestreets 40, 54, 117–18 silenced subject of the subaltern 203 Sisyphus syndrome 66 Slaughter of the Cock, The (I Sfagi tou Kokora 1996) 152, 162–5, 209 and events of 1974 8 fetishism 193 and Greek cinema 209. 210 orgy scene in 192 rape scene 192, 193 role of women and gender roles 191–4 Small Crime 15, 20, 224 “social banditry” 151, 152 social space of filmmaking 38–42 Socrates, Lisa, analysis of Cypriot films 16–17 SOFIA PRESS 75, 76 Somersault in a Coffin (Tavutta Rövasata) (1996) 91, 105 Soul Kicking (Me tin Psihi sto Stoma, Yiannis Economides 2006) 15 Spencer, Jonathan and concept of counter–political 4 Spirtokouto (Matchbox 2002) 224

250 Index State film support policies 18–21 Stavrinides, Zenon 92 Stella (1955) 188 Still (Alana Kakoyiannis 2009) 49 Stylianou, Danae 38–9, 207 subject formation and subject agency 182 subjectivity and agency 182–3 Tagg, John 57 Taksim (partition) 5, 108, 118 Taliadoros, Adonis 15 Tama, To see Evagoras’ Vow Tanriögen, Setta 105, 106 Tanweer Group 228 Tanya Krzywinska 153–4 Tavutta Rövasata (Somersault in a Coffin) 91, 105 Teichos Mas, To/Duvarimiz see Our Wall Teleutaios Gyrismos, O see The Last Homecoming Theatre Organization of Cyprus (THOC) 151, 155 Theatro Ena 41 Thessaloniki International Film Festival 12, 208, 228 “Third Cinema”/ “European-model Art Cinema” 158, 164, 222, 227 Third Motherland, The (Costas M. Constantinou and Giorgos Kykkou Skordis 2011) 220 third spaces, liminal 146 Third World literature 121, 147 cinema 122, 228 Western readers and 147 Thomson, John 71 TMT (Türk Mukavemet Teşkilatı, Turkish Resistance) 5, 8, 118, 143 Tofarides, Kyriakos 8, 20, 194, 228–9 Tomorrow’s Warrior (O Avrianos Polemistis 1979) 8, 15, 119, 127, 144 tourism 6–7 and development of Cypriotness 75 impact 73–5, 76, 78 tradition in Cyprus 154 costume 15, 152 and film15, 85 invented 6 and modernity 78

transnationalism 23, 157, 174, 175 “affinitive” and “epiphanic” 208, 215, 231 opportunistic 228–9 transnational cinema 162, 174 D Zaim and 91 Trimithi (1981–7) 41 Trimithi: Reconstruction with Words (Trimithi: Anaparastasi me Lexeis) 44 TRNC see Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Troubled Winds (Nekatomeni Aerides) 10 Turkey, Republic of 2, 7, 10, 38, 92 cinema 216 and Cyprus 93, 231 film 41 Ottoman heritage 92, 104, 105 and Turkish Cypriots 33 Turkish Left 33 and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 2 see also Turkish Cypriots Turkish Cypriots 2, 5–6 and Anatolia 100–1, 106 cinema 219–20 and Cypriot literature 219 and definition of Cyprus 2 displacement in 1950s 93 enclaves 62 and Enosis 107 and EOKA 96, 143 exclusion from Greek Cypriot film 43, 65, 81 filmmaking 21, 37, 62, 227 historiography 9, 11 impact of 1963 conflict 5, 62, 139–40, 142 literature 212 and 1974 events 7, 11, 25, 32, 110, 138 representation in films 22, 131, 144, 145 rise of nationalism 4 and Taksim 5 and Turkey 7–8, 100–1, 130 Turkish Cypriot Left 119, 120 Turkish Cypriot Right 8, 10, 119, 120, 139

Index Turkish-Cypriot dialect 139 Turkish-Cypriot officials and Cypriot literature 219 view of events 120 see also individual films; enclaves; Taksim; TMT; Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; Zaim, Derviş Turkish invasion of/intervention in northern Cyprus 22, 32, 33, 35, 42, 44, 61, 94, 97 official position of 120 impact 7 impact upon Turkish Cypriots 96–7 refugee crisis arising from 94 Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) 231 Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 2–3, 8, 170 absence of film policy 21 declaration of 7, 18, 119 Turkish-Cypriot film 120–1, 132–43 see also Mud; Zaim, Derviş Tutan, Defne Ersin 110 Twice a Stranger 38, 39 Tzanou, Aristea 75 Under the Stars (Kato ap’ ta Astra 2001) 11, 16, 129, 130, 187, 188, 225 and events of 1974 9, 119, 128 issues of memory and displacement 9 women in 199, 201 United Nations Committee for Missing Persons. According to Yakinthou (2008) 130 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 19 Vacations in Our Cyprus (Diakopes stin Kypro Mas 1971) 6, 62, 64, 75, 80–5, 86 Veli 106 “ventriloqual monologism” 131, 145 VGIK (Vsesoyuzny Gosudarstvenny Institut Kinematografii: All-Union State Cinema Institute, Moscow) 167 Via Beyrut (Beirut Road) 92 victimization of women 190

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visions of reconciliation 132–9 Voice of Blood (2004) 43, 48, 230 Voice of Blood 2: Searching for Selden (2005), 32, 49, 230 Volkan, Vamik D 93, 100, 101, 102 vraka drama 69, 72, 76, 85 vrakes 159, significance of 86 Vrasidas Karalis 154 Waiting for Heaven (Cenneti Beklerken) 92, 103–4, 105 wedding ceremonies 67–8 weird wave, the of Greek cinema 224 Weltering Winds (Nekatomeni Aerides) 10 Westerncentrism/Eurocentrism 193 When the World of Cyprus First Heard the Bad News (1975) 52 Whispers (2013) 229 White, Hayden 144 “With Brand New Eyes: Screenings for an Island” (film festival) 39 “Woman” and women 182, 183 in cinema 71, 79, 81–2, 181, 182–3 and Cypriotness 185 female agency and emancipation 185 impact of sexual violence 184–5 and masculine priorities 195 and patriarchal Cypriot society 126–7, 185–6,195–6 as (co) perpetrators of predominant discourse 6, 190–9 rape 127, 184 role of 70–2, 80, 81, 181 sexuality of 186, 189 as victims 184–9, 190 women, film and coffee houses 85–6 women as agents 190, 199–202 Women of Cyprus 31–3, 34, 39, 46, 49 women’s sexuality as male property 189 see also Hands Across the Divide women’s agency, manifestation of 195–6, 201 truth as sanctioned by men 201 women’s sexuality 185 World of Cyprus 1960–1974, The: Through the Lens of Takis Demetriades AFIAP (2006) 74

252 Index World of Cyprus, The (1967–72) 52, 70, 71, 72 Yashin, Mehmet 212–13, 215–16, 218–19, 221, 222 Yiannis Papadakis 16 Zaim, Derviş 11, 16–17, 39, Chapter 3, 106–7, 109–10, 111–12, 121, 231 on consequence of change 111 on events of 1974 94, 97–8 films of 11, 92, 99, 103–4 and film censorship 37, 40, 45

influences on 96 layering technique 104–5, 106 and Mud 102, 136–9, 216 Parallel Trips 93 and potential for reconciliation 132–9 Shadows and Faces 139–43 subjects of films 22 themes pursued 91, 92, 93, 98, 100 on Turkish Cypriots 93, 96, 97–8 use of symbols 93, 106, 108–9, 110 views of 111, 112 Zamora, Parkinson and Paris 173 Zena Palace cinema 20