‘Did you ever notice this dot in the Mediterranean?’ Colonial Cyprus in the post-war British documentary

Abstract

This article examines British documentary films about Cyprus during the British colonial era, primarily the post-war period. Produced against a background of political upheaval, these documentaries reflect a highly fluid relationship between colony and metropolis. An initial sequence of travelogues was followed by several documentaries which promoted the apparent success of British development projects on the island, positioning it as a showcase for the benefits of enlightened imperial power. The subsequent militarisation of Cyprus in the mid-1950s led to films which endorsed Cyprus as a strategic outpost of the British Empire but also acknowledged the emergence of local resistance to British rule. Tracing the production and reception of these films, this article considers the ways in which documentary representations of Cyprus shaped perceptions of the island and its relationship to Britain. More generally, the article addresses the diffusion of documentary practices in the British Empire and the perceived educational value of documentary films among both colonial and British domestic audiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the archivists at the British Film Institute, the Imperial War Museum, the Cyprus Press and Information Office and the Cyprus State Archives for providing access to the films and other materials consulted for this article.

Notes

1. In chronological order, these films are Cyprus (British Instructional Films; UK, 1929), Almost Arcady (British Instructional Films; UK, 1930), A Mediterranean Island (British Instructional Films, 1932), Cyprus is an Island (dir. Ralph Keene, Greenpark Productions, 1946), Farmer and Goatherd (Greenpark Productions, 1949), The Land of Cyprus (Anglo-Scottish Films, 1950), Travels in Cyprus (Exploration Films, 1953), United We Stand (Cyprus Film Training School, 1953), Report on Cyprus (Leander Films, 1955), This Land of Cyprus (Gardner Films, 1955), Island Fortress (Warwick Films, 1956) and Image of Cyprus (Troubador Films, 1958). Where no director is listed, none is credited.

2. Jennifer Lynn Peterson, Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 6–7.

3. Eitan Bar-Yosef, The Holy Land in English Culture, 1799–1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008), 8.

4. Tom Rice, ‘Distant Voices of Malaya, Still Colonial Lives’, Journal of British Cinema and Television 10, no. 3 (2013): 432.

5. Ronald Storrs, the governor of Cyprus during this period, was particularly keen on developing the island for tourism. See Tabitha Morgan, Sweet and Bitter Island: A History of the British in Cyprus (London: IB Tauris, 2010), 116.

6. Tom Rice, ‘Exhibiting Africa: British Instructional Films and the Empire Series (1925–28)’, in Empire and Film, ed. Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (London: BFI/Palgrave, 2011), 115.

7. The Times, May 16, 1929, 14.

8. In fact, the only viewable copy of Cyprus (held by the Press and Information Office in Nicosia) is the version from which this footage was removed in the 1930s. Based on their catalogue data, the print held by the British Film Institute (currently not in viewable condition) would appear to be similarly mutilated.

9. E.g. Song of Ceylon (1934) was refashioned into four additional films (Rice, ‘Distant Voices of Malaya’, 440).

10. Dundee Courier, February 10, 1931, 4; Monthly Film Bulletin, January 1942, 9.

11. Richard Osborne, ‘Cyprus Goes to War’, Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire, 2010, www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/5462 (accessed April 2, 2014).

12. The four rolls of unedited material have been archived by the Imperial War Museum in London under the assigned title ‘Cyprus Goes to War’.

13. Patrick Russell and James Piers Taylor, Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-war Britain (London: Palgrave/BFI, 2010), 44.

14. Laurie Lee and Ralph Keene, We Made a Film in Cyprus (London: Longmans, Green, 1947), 1.

15. Ibid., 40.

16. The assistants were Polis Constantinides and Achmed Jemal. Michael Cacoyannis, who later had a significant career as a feature film director in Europe and America, is also listed as an assistant director in the film’s opening credits. However, he is entirely absent from Lee and Keene’s extensive account of the production and the nature of his involvement is unclear. According to Panicos Chrysanthou, who interviewed Cacoyannis on this topic, Cacoyannis was not involved in the film at all and had no idea why his name appeared in its credits (author’s interview, May 30, 2014).

17. Lee and Keene, 72.

18. Morgan, 107–10. See also Sarah Elizabeth Harris, ‘Colonial Forestry and Environmental History: British Policies in Cyprus, 1878–1960’ (PhD diss., University of Austin at Texas, 2007).

19. News Chronicle, March 9, 1946.

20. Reynolds News, March 10, 1946.

21. New Statesman, March 16, 1946; Monthly Film Bulletin, March 31, 1946, 29.

22. Documentary News Letter, 6/52, 1946, 30.

23. Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1947, 165.

24. Ministry of Information 6/687, National Archives, London (hereafter INF, NA); Letter from Frank Thrower to C.L. Paine, December 5, 1947.

25. ‘Geographical Association Annual Report, 1949’, Geography 35, no. 1 (1950): 57. In addition, Cyprus is an Island was broadcast on BBC television in 1948.

26. Cyprus Mail, June 9, 1946.

27. Prem Chowdhry, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image Ideology and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 7.

28. Cyprus Mail, February 26, 1947.

29. INF 6/79, NA; letter from H.M.K. Howson to Gordon Smith, January 30, 1950. The film was also broadcast on BBC television in 1954.

30. Rosaleen Smyth, ‘Grierson, the British Documentary Movement, and Colonial Cinema in British Colonial Africa’, Film History 25, no. 4 (2013): 85.

31. ‘The Land of Cyprus’, March 7, 1951. INF 6/79, NA.

32. Frank Henlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945–1963 (London: Routledge, 2002), 27; George Hill, A History of Cyprus, Volume Four (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 484.

33. R.W. Harris and G. Evans, ‘The Cyprus Film Training School’, Colonial Cinema 9, no. 4 (1951): 87–90, www.cinemastandrews.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/SampleColonialCinema.pdf (accessed April 2, 2014).

34. State Archives 1 2053/1950/1, Republic of Cyprus State Archives, Nicosia (hereafter SA1); ‘The Past Work and Future Plans of the Colonial Film Unit’.

35. SA1 2053/1950/1; Colonial Secretary, memo, July 1, 1951.

36. SA1 2053/1950/1; Letter from Horace White to Colonial Secretary, December 5, 1950.

37. Ibid.

38. SA1 2053/1950/1; Letter from White to Colonial Secretary, December 16, 1950.

39. Harris and Evans, 90.

40. Ibid.; SA1/1172/1952; Colonial Secretary, memo, June 28, 1951.

41. SA1/1172/1952; ‘First draft of final treatment for proposed film on Cooperative Marketing in Cyprus’, February 1952.

42. United We Stand is not available for viewing, so my comments are based on the draft treatment cited above. This treatment was approved by the governor of Cyprus and the Department of Co-operative Development, so it is reasonable to assume that it closely reflects the completed film (SA1/1172/1952; Letter from the Colonial Secretary to the Colonial Film Unit, February 27, 1951.).

43. UNESCO, Manual for Travelling Library of Visual Aids for Fundamental Education (1955), http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0017/001,795/179507eb.pdf (accessed April 2, 2014).

44. INF 6/816, NA; letter from A.E. Pring to Leander Films, April 29, 1955.

45. INF 6/816, NA; letter from A.E. Pring to Frank Gardner, March 16, 1955.

46. This film is unavailable for viewing, so my comments are based on a shot list and a transcript of the film’s commentary held by the National Archives (INF 6/816).

47. Kinematograph Weekly, November 24, 1955, 24.

48. INF 6/816, NA; ‘Central Office of Information Overseas Film Guidance Notes, Report on Cyprus’, September 1955. INF 6/816, NA.

49. Sue Harper and Vincent Porter, British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 6.

50. This Land of Cyprus was directed by Frank Gardner, who was hired by the COI the same year to shoot the footage for Report on Cyprus. It seems reasonable to assume that photography for the two films occurred concurrently.

51. Today’s Cinema, September 21, 1955, 10; Kinematograph Weekly, September 29, 1955, 20.

52. Robert Holland, Blue Water Empire: The British in the in Mediterranean Since 1800 (London: Penguin, 2013), 317–18.

53. Kinematograph Weekly, January 3, 1957, 16.

54. Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1957, 22.

55. Robert Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus 1945–1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 242–3.

56. For historical data on population size, see Mete Hatay, Is the Turkish Cypriot Population Shrinking? An Overview of the Ethno-Demography of Cyprus (Oslo: International Peace Research Institute, 2007), 22.

57. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 14.

58. Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire 1939–1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 7.

59. Michel Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984 Vol. 3, ed. James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley et al. (London: Penguin, 2002), 201–22.

60. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 22.