Phemia Demosthenous MSc Filmmaking & Media Arts

  Stills from Melitopoulos' Passing Drama Stills from footage of my Yiayia sewing After Angela Melitopoulos' work was recommended to me by my tutor, I decided to watch the snippest of her film Passing Drama which I could access online. Melitopoulos' work has a similar interest in identity as my own does, as she focuses on her family's stories of war, migration, and manual labour. As seen above, her film closely captures the manual arts of textile making and gardening, both of which involve physical exertion through your hands in order to carry out repetitive movements. The ways in which Melitopoulos' compiles the footage of characters in her film create a cinematic rhythm, which is also achieved through audio manipulation of her chracter's interviews. Words and phrase are repeated, sometimes increased or decreased in volume, and overlaid on top of one another to create an experimental portayal of the tight knittedness of identity and work. In this way, Melitopou...

I read some literature on John Akomfrah’s work this week in ‘The Utopian Promise: John Akomfrah’s Poetics of the Archive’. I took some notes related to Akomfrah’s mode of non-linear documentary editing that are useful for my own practice.   ·        ‘Montage allows the possibility of re-engagement, of the return of the image with renewed purpose, a different ambition’. (J. Akomfrah)   ·        ‘The poetic is a mode of documentary… that involves the creative treatment of historical footage when – as Nichols states – manipulated rhythmically and tonally.’   ·        ‘…when tone and rhythm take precedence over “factual knowledge or acts of theoretical persuasion.” (Nichols, 2010: 162)   ·        The idea of internalization and resistance when it comes to identity and migration   ·        ‘The came...

  This is an edit I made after studying some footage and experimenting with it through Angela Melitopoulos’ form of editing, seen in her film Passing Drama . After editing and workshopping the short video with my tutor, we unpacked some of the concepts of my film in order to find deeper links between each of the themes I want to explore (which are recorded in my ‘Notes for Film Structure’). This helped me understand more what I want to convey through my film and will be useful when developing my short film excerpt and final project over the summer.

  Notes for Film Structure ·        Major changes in Cypriot way of life in the last 50 years è Grandparents spent a lot of their daily lives outside in the fields, in the sun è The field, the kitchen, the neighbourhood, the village – are all major symbols of Cypriot identity. è Stronger sense of kinship and community within villages (this still exists but is mostly retained by elderly Cypriots) è Changes in language   - certain words not used or forgotten è How different life is in Cyprus now in comparison to when my grandparents and parents were young, the vast change within a relatively short period of time   ·        No official retention of the Cypriot language è Linked to changes in Cypriot life è Speaking Cypriot dialect is a rebellious, grassroots act (even more so now) as it is purely maintained through daily conversations and has been passed on through generations (not as any...