50 Years of Cyprus: War and Peace

Ancient Computer(en)

In 1900, a storm blew a boatload of sponge divers off course and forced them to take shelter by the tiny Mediterranean island of Antikythera. Diving the next day, they discovered a 2,000 year-old Greek shipwreck. Among the ship's cargo they hauled up was an unimpressive green lump of corroded bronze. Rusted remnants of gear wheels could be seen on its surface, suggesting some kind of intricate mechanism. The first X-ray studies confirmed that idea, but how it worked and what it was for puzzled scientists for decades. Recently, hi-tech imaging has revealed the extraordinary truth: this unique clockwork machine was the world's first computer.

Kerkini: The Bird Sanctuary(fr)

Days of '36(el)

The assassin of a prominent trade unionist takes a conservative MP hostage, throwing the government into a state of disarray.

Karaoglan: Baybora's Son(tr)

In this follow-up to "Karaoğlan – Altay’dan Gelen Yiğit", Kartal Tibet reprises the role that launched his career. The film is set in Byzantine Constantinople and features Emel Turgut, Engin Inal and Reha Yurdakul.

Cefalonia(it)

Cefalonia tells the real story about what happened in September 1943 on the Greek island of Kefalonia (Cefalonia in Italian), when the 12,000 men in the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division, following Italy's surrender to the Allied, refused to put themselves under German command and also refused to surrender their weapons. The local German force, supported by Stuka dive-bombers and additional troops, attacked the Italians and after several days of combat the Italians surrendered, having lost 1,300 men. As punishment, the German High Command ordered that all surviving Italians should be executed. Some 5,000 were executed during a week of killings. A handful were rescued by locals and the Greek guerrilla, while the rest were shipped off as prisoners, whereof 3,000 drowned when their ships hit mines. The film "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" is based on a novel about the Italian occupation of Cefalonia, but the massacre was much toned down in the Hollywood version.

Agora: From Democracy to the Market(el)

As going through an economic vortex, Greece is experiencing condition in post-war history. Homeless people, unemployment, poverty, violent conflicts and the rise of the extreme-right are found all over the county. Is there any possible way to break through the crisis? This film follows development of the crisis and its impact on people’s lives, as well as rise of fascism, while seeking answers from interested parties.

When the Greeks(el)

At the turn of the twentieth century a young merchant is abducted by a group of brigands who are sheltered in a remote mountainous area of Greece aiming to extract ransom from his wealthy family. The young man develops a kind of sympathy to the arch-brigand and realizes that the underground life and moral code of his kidnappers actually represent a more genuine expression of “New Hellenism” than his bourgeois well-being.

To Your Hands(en)

To Your Hands is a short documentary that explores the unique and unifying aspects of Cypriot cultural heritage. What began way back in 2021 as a multi-media installation has evolved into this short film.

The Promise(en)

Set during the last days of the Ottoman Empire, a love triangle develops between Mikael, a brilliant medical student, the beautiful and sophisticated artist Ana, and Chris, a renowned American journalist based in Paris.

Debtocracy(el)

Debtocracy seeks the causes of the Greek debt crisis and proposes solutions sidelined by the government and the dominant media. It follows countries like Ecuador that created debt Audit Commissions and tracks this process in Greece.

Daraya: A Library Under Bombs(fr)

At the heart of the Syrian civil war, a group of activists created an underground library in the besieged outskirts of Damascus. After years of blockade, they were forced to leave their city. But they managed to save their videos illustrating a unique experiment of cultural resistance under the bombs. This film, built between the past and the present, follows the story of three friends who met during the 2011 revolution and never gave up on their cultural resistance and peaceful struggle. Despite ceaseless bombing, they not only saved books from the rubble, but created a secret library, which quickly became a safe haven for peace, freedom and democracy: a special experience that they filmed and documented meticulously. Separated by war and exile, they are striving to reunite with each other. They reminisce on the past and tell us the extraordinary story of the library, based on dozens of hours of video archives. “A Library Under Bombs” is a story of hope and survival.

Khaos: The Human Faces of the Greek Crisis(fr)

Greece: 2012. Khaos: The Human Faces of the Greek Crisis starting from numerous accounts and stories, Khaos presents without varnish the daily life of the Greek people with Panagiotis Grigoriou, historian and war economical blogger as our recurring character. This road movie is pace by jazz and rap that bring us from Trikala to Kea Island including Athens at the encounter of the Greek citizen from the fisherman to the political tagger.

Karaoğlan: He Had Different Dreams(tr)

How will history remember him? The honest politician who brought the left to power, the reliable plane tree of the state, the poet who adds elegance to politics? Or is it the stubborn, skeptical, lonely leader who hinders the unity of the left? How many people will remember the legend of Karaoğlan, which was written on the mountains and stones in the milestones of democracy? And how many of them will question the reasons for the rise from the top to the prison, from the prison to the top again, and then to be forgotten at the ballot box? How will Turkey remember a leader who left his mark in the last fifty years, a republican intellectual, the captain of the country's most critical days?

Karaoğlan: This Post Will Make You Fly(tr)

Bülent Ecevit had dreams of a modest, serene life away from competition and politics. He imagined that he would write poems throughout his life and take refuge in that serene, purified world of art, poetry and aesthetics, against the harsh and harsh reality of daily life. While escaping the hazy atmosphere of politics, he could not even guess where his decision on the day he stepped into politics would take him...

Byzance(en)

Byzance uses a text by Stefan Zweig to describe the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453. Before he turned to feature filmmaking in 1968 with Naked Childhood, Pialat worked on a series of short films, many of them financed by French television. Byzance is one of Pialat’s six Turkish shorts.

Istanbul(fr)

All of Pialat's Turkish films are uniquely interested in the country — especially Istanbul — as it was, not just as it is at the precise moment that Pialat is filming it. History informs these films in a big way, with the voiceover narration (which incorporates excerpts from various authors) introducing tension between the images of the modern-day city and the descriptions of incidents from its long and rich history. Istanbul is probably the most conventional documentary of Pialat's Turkish series, providing a general profile of the titular city, its different neighborhoods, and the different cultures and ways of living that coexist within its sprawling borders. As the other films in the series also suggest, Pialat sees Turkey, and Istanbul in particular, as a junction point between Europe and the East, between the old and the new, between history and modernity.

Maître Galip(fr)

Maître Galip is the most poetic and powerful of Pialat's Turkish Chronicles, using the poems of Nazim Hikmet to accompany a series of evocative images of ordinary working class people in Istanbul. This was the film that Pialat himself claimed was the most complete realization of what he was aiming for with his Turkish documentaries. It's not difficult to see why this was his favorite: here he abandons the historical commentary and documentary observation of the other shorts in favor of an emotional emphasis on the lives of the poor and the unemployed.

Golden Horn(fr)

La Corne d'or is mostly concerned with religious ritual, examining the mosque (and former cathedral) discussed in Byzance. As a contrast against Istanbul's status as a center of historical religious conflict, Pialat — drawing here on texts by the French poet Gérard de Nerval — also describes the city as a place of strange ethnic and religious harmony, with representatives of various cultures and religions living in close contact. He emphasizes the city's hybrid culture, its blend of Southern European and Arab influences, reflected in both its people and its very construction.

Pehlivan(en)

Pehlivan focuses on a three-day wrestling competition, an ancient tradition that dates back over a thousand years to the time of the Ottoman Empire, originating in the games the soldiers would play to entertain themselves in between battles. Maybe that's why there's more than a hint of homoeroticism in the way the wrestlers oil themselves up with grease, making sure to cover every inch of their bodies so that their opponents will be unable to get a grip. Pialat's closeups emphasize the men's muscular bodies jammed together and sliding off one another, posed in intimate, twisted arrangements, struggling desperately for a grip on each other's bodies. Arms are jammed down pants, one of the only places there's some potential for a handhold, and the whole thing is very suggestive and sensual, a form of intimate male contact that's sanctioned as a show of strength and masculinity.

Bosphore(fr)

Short doc by Maurice Pialat. The first film in the series set at Turkey, Bosphore, is also the only one that was shot in color.