Outside the overlapping academic fields of artists’ moving image and essay film, the Father-land project contributes to wider discourses around, and understanding of, the independent, post-colonial Cypriot culture currently being established on the island.
Parker and I have given three joint presentations about Father-land in Cyprus. The first, during the NiMAC residency period in November 2016, was to introduce our project as ‘work-in progress’ to documentary photography undergraduate students and their lecturer at the Communications Department, University of Nicosia. These students invited us to join them at the inter-communal demonstration that evening inside the UN controlled Buffer Zone near the Ledra Palace Hotel. Thousands of participants gathered from the TRNC in the north and the Republic in the south. United by Hope, United for Peace called for the unification of the island. People were empowered to photograph and film this event, facilitated by the United Nations, in contrast to the ‘normal’ everyday ban on recording in the vicinity of the Buffer Zone.
The second presentation in October 2018 was to undergraduate and masters photography and media students and staff at Frederick University, Nicosia, that is itself situated a few hundred metres from the Buffer Zone. Here we projected the completed film, Father-land. This event generated a great interest in exploring the zone by the students, inspiring them to pursue their own projects in this ‘forbidden place’.
The final presentation was at the International Conference of Photography and Theory (ICPT) held in Nicosia in 2018, which included the Layers of Visibility exhibition.
The film was seen widely by Cypriot audiences over a 3-month period while it was exhibited at NiMAC, a prominent artistic venue. The following review raises interesting points concerning the creative processes at play during the making of the film, and its interpretation by Cypriots, for whom the filmed landscape was both familiar and strange:
Whilst in Cyprus we usually talk about the mother country, Stuart Moore and Kayla Parker created the film called ‘Father-land’ since their fathers had served in Cyprus as members of Royal Air Force RAF in British Bases. One of the artists lived in Limassol as a child. Returning now as adults they form links between their childhood experiences as children of English officers and their impressions of the Dead Zone. They narrate their relationships with their fathers, their constant moving from one country to another, and they refer to the consequences that the presence of a military force, set in a different state from its base, may have. The ability of a pigeon to fly across these metal barriers, a crane used to build outposts at the Green Line on the other side have all been used to symbolise things which for us have become very ordinary. However, when looking at these aspects in a film, they spark new thoughts in our minds which help us awaken to see the reality which we so blindly had become accustomed to and disregarded. (ΦΙΛGOOD, 2018, p.17)
The outsider’s perspective can be a double-edged sword, possibly bringing the clarity of a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ observing a familiar landscape, but it risks an uniformed reading of a complex and highly charged political situation.
Notes
TNRC – the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus is the part of the island occupied by Turkey since the 1974 invasion. TRNC is only recognised as a country by Turkey.
Details of the 2018 International Conference of Photography and Theory are available here: https://www.photographyandtheory.com/conferences/icpt-2018
Layers of Visibility exhibition review, translated from the original Greek.