Towards a transnational turn(?): success stories, transgressive politics, and artistic initiative in recent Greek Cypriot cinema

ABSTRACT

Film reviewer Theo Panayides has enthusiastically declared the year 2018 as the most ‘prestigious’ in the history of Cypriot cinema, making particular reference to Tonia Mishiali’s Pause and Marios Piperides’ Smuggling Hendrix. The starting point of this study is the unprecedented (considering Cyprus’ micro-state status) attention enjoyed by the two films mainly due to the symbolic value they accumulated through prestigious entries into the film festival circuit. Initially, the article focuses on those elements that film reviews/news have deemed successful and are associated with the exposure of the films to transnational exchanges. While aspects of both films evidently point back to a desire to speak to an international audience, and film reviews underline the achievement of Mishiali and Piperides in doing so, I argue that the success of the films also lies in the way they foreground local matters through the very act of refusing to comply with dominant canons in the history of Cypriot cinema. Finally, the study focuses on recent cinematic activity in Cyprus to illustrate that Mishiali and Piperides’ initiatives have helped energize developments which point towards a systematic transnational turn. To further support this view, I draw from Hjort’s illuminating work on small cinemas.

KEYWORDS:

• Cypriot cinema
• small cinemas
• transnational cinema
• film festivals
• film journalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Possibly the only journalist/film critic in Cyprus who writes regularly about festival cinema and theatrical releases. According to his personal website Theo’s Century of Movies (http://theoscentury.com/), he began writing film reviews for the Cyprus Mail in 1997 under the pseudonym Preston Wilder. Cyprus Mail is an English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus since 1945.

2. Constandinides and Papadakis discuss developments specific to Cypriot Cinema focusing on transnational challenges and opportunities (2020).

3. According to its official website, https://www.filmneweurope.com/, the FNE Association ‘is the networking platform for film professionals in the CEE/SEE/Baltics region’ and it is co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union.

4. Produced (with Piperides) by AMP Filmworks’ Janine Teerling, who also holds writing credit, and directed by Petros Charalambous.

5. Hendrix won the Best Cypriot Film and Audience awards at the 2019 edition of Cyprus Film Days International Festival (CFD), the major local film festival in Cyprus dedicated to feature films, funded by MoECSY. It was also voted best Greek film of 2019 by the Greek Film Critics Association (Panellinia Enosi Kritikon Kinimatografou/PEKK) and won the Hellenic Film Academy Iris award for best screenplay.

6. Pause appeared fifth on PEKK’s list for the best Greek film of 2019 and won the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation and FIPSESCI awards at Thessaloniki International Film Festival. It was also nominated for the Hellenic Film Academy Iris Award for Best Debutant Director.

7. Smuggling Hendrix, Pause, Sunrise in Kimmeria (Simon Farmakas, Cyprus, 2018), Chinatown – The Three Shelters (Aliki Danezi-Knutsen, Cyprus, 2018), Small White Envelopes (Sotiris Christou, Cyprus, 2018).

8. Greek Film Critics Association award (PEKK), the International Federation of Film Critics award (FIPRESCI), the Hellenic Broadcasting award (ERT) and the Fisher award.

9. Journalistic commentary on Cypriot films, especially on an international level, has been infrequent. Cypriot fiction films (directed by both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot Directors) that were previously reviewed by established media brands specializing in film news are Akamas (Panikkos Hrysanthou, 2006), Shadows and Faces (Dervis Zaim, 2010) and Impressions of a Drowned Man (Kyros Papavassiliou, 2015).

10. International-oriented reports on Pause and Hendrix firstly appeared online during their development and production stages between 2016–2018;

11. Specifically, the websites of the weekly film/entertainment print magazines The Hollywood Reporter (THR) and Variety; Screen Daily, which is the website of the monthly print magazine Screen International and Cineuropa which operates exclusively online and is supported by the MEDIA Programme Plus of the European Union.

12. They discuss this alongside the concept of ‘affinitive transnationalism’ (Hjort, 2010) that describes the co-production model between Cyprus and Greece.

13. Mishiali participated as a jury member in KVIFF’s East of the West competition section, thus, symbolically reaffirming the role that the festival played as the starting point of her film’s successful journey. In addition, both Pause and Hendrix participated in sections dedicated to Cypriot cinema hosted by the 2021 editions of Raindance Film Festival in the UK, and Cinema South Film Festival in Israel.

14. The Detached House is an adaptation of Dimitris Mitsotakis book of the same name, who is also credited as co-scriptwriter. The film is currently in post-production and is financially supported by the MoECSY

15. The MoECSY’s terms state that the same producer cannot get funding for more than 8 projects (4 features, 3 Shorts, and 1 Minor Co-production both newly applied and ongoing).

16. In September 2017, the Council of Ministers of the RoC approved an incentives program dubbed ‘Olivewood’, which is managed by the Cyprus Investment Promotion Agency (CIPA) with the aim to boost the local audio-visual industry by establishing Cyprus as an attractive film-servicing destination for international film producers.

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Notes on contributors

Costas Constandinides

Dr Costas Constandinides is a Lecturer in Audiovisual Media in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cyprus. He was previously a faculty member in the Department of Communications at the University of Nicosia. He is the author of From Film Adaptation to Post-celluloid Adaptation (2010) and Co-editor of Cypriot Cinemas: Memory, Conflict and Identity in the Margins of Europe (2015).