Cypriot Cinemas - Memory, Conflict, and Identity in the Margins of Europe (Hardcover)

Cyprus, the idyllic 'island of Aphrodite' is better known as a site of conflict and division between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, rather than for its film production. Constandinides and Papadakis want to rectify this dearth of information by discussing the work of filmmakers striving to engage with the island's traumatic legacies: anti-colonial struggles, post-colonial instability, interethnic conflict and war. Beginning from the cinema of the 1960s when the island became a republic, the collection focuses on the recent decades and filmmakers currently exploring issues of conflict, memory, identity, nationalism, migration and gender, as well as the work of filmmakers who chose to cooperate across the ethnic divide. In addition, films from a younger generation of Cypriot filmmakers, like Elias Demetriou, Christos Georgiou and Dervish Zaim, are beginning to feature in top regional and international film festivals and to acquire significant audiences in Cyprus, Turkey and Greece. "Cypriot Cinemas: Memory, Conflict and Identity in the Margins of Europe" utilises a methodology which engages all necessary parameters for an illuminating critical discussion: historical, theoretical and comparative (Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot films in relation to regional film cultures/practices). While the volume develops a discussion based on the reading of the political in Cypriot films it also looks at other film cultures and debates such as (s)exploitation films and transnational cinema.