Socrates, L; (2015) The Time and Space of Greek-Cypriot Cinema: A Deleuzian Reading. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This study traces the emergence of Greek-Cypriot Cinema in Cyprus since 1974, arguing that it is the product of a historical moment. 1974 marks a watershed in the island’s protracted political conflict which culminated in ethnic violence, a coup and war. Whilst the war has been the subject of wide ranging scholarly research its impact in forging a distinctive national cinema remains unexamined. This thesis attempts to re-address this absence. My approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on historiographical studies as well as Film Studies, Cultural Theory and Film Philosophy. Primary research includes extensive dialogues with filmmakers. All of the films examined deal explicitly with facets of space, time and memory in connection to the experiences of the war. In view of these prevalent themes the thesis makes the case for reading Greek-Cypriot Cinema through the cinema work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, whilst holding the films’ cultural and national contexts in view. It proposes that Cinema 1:The Movement-Image (1983) and Cinema 2:The Time-Image (1985) explore the interconnection between real spaces outside of cinema and the creative spaces inside, through the categories of time and space. Centring on the conceptual shift in these volumes from a cinema of movement to a cinema of time and memory I argue that Deleuze’s paradigm offers a conceptual engagement with the distinctiveness and complexities of Greek-Cypriot Cinema; as it negotiates the real and abstract time and spaces which are imagined, reflected and visualised on the screen. Part one conceptualises Greek-Cypriot Cinema within existing studies of cinema and nation, examining Deleuze’s descriptions of modern and political cinema. Part two examines time and recollection-images in the films of Georgiou, Florides and Nicolaides, Tofarides and Koukoumas. Part three scrutinises how the changes in the political landscape after 2003 are reflected in films which imagine a new dynamic between time and spaces, creating new cinematic images in works by Farmakas, Stylianou and Danezi-Knutsen.

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