Explor­ing com­mu­ni­ty at the 2022 Queer Wave Film Festival

When it comes to cin­emago­ing, the island of Cyprus has long been dom­i­nat­ed by mul­ti­plex jug­ger­nauts and big bud­get com­mer­cial motion pic­tures. Inde­pen­dent cin­e­mas have large­ly fad­ed into the shad­ows of the past – yet anoth­er set piece in the vast sea of aban­doned, decay­ing and dilap­i­dat­ed build­ings that, along with sand­bags, bar­rels and barbed wire, make up the urban fab­ric of Nicosia’s city cen­tre – mean­ing that, art house titles sel­dom reach the island’s shores. Yet despite the capital’s trou­bled his­to­ry (a Unit­ed Nations-patrolled buffer zone has been bisect­ing Nicosia for the past 49 years, divid­ing it right at its heart), rad­i­cal pol­i­tics and artis­tic expres­sion have been thriv­ing in both parts of the old city; Nicosia’s flu­id and mul­ti­fac­eted artis­tic vital­i­ty is unquestionable.

A new, dynam­ic wave of queer com­mu­ni­ty is steadi­ly being cement­ed with­in the cap­i­tal, one that’s been spear­head­ed by the efforts of queer col­lec­tives through­out the island, and more promi­nent­ly by Queer Wave Film Fes­ti­val and Ses­sions: A Pro­gramme of Queer Hap­pen­ings. Hav­ing just wrapped its third edi­tion, Queer Wave – along with the rich, inces­sant pro­gramme of per­for­mances, work­shops, lit­er­ary read­ings, DJ sets, dis­cus­sions and par­ties run­ning par­al­lel to the fes­ti­val – has offered a bold new roadmap for estab­lish­ing an inter­com­mu­nal queer ecosys­tem built on a love for cin­e­ma and the arts.

This year’s fes­ti­val, which took place in Nicosia between 25 Novem­ber and 4 Decem­ber, screened a line­up of 70 films, includ­ing a packed pro­gramme of shorts boast­ing both region­al and inter­na­tion­al entries. These includ­ed a spe­cial screen­ing of 2021’s run­away fes­ti­val hit and Sun­dance award win­ner Flee, Moham­mad Shawky Hassan’s inven­tive fea­ture Shall I Com­pare You to a Summer’s Day, Panayi­o­tis Evan­ge­lidis’ Tilos Wed­dings – a lo-fi doc­u­men­tary on the first gay and les­bian civ­il mar­riages in Greece, Maryam Touzani’s ten­der and sen­su­al sec­ond fea­ture, The Blue Caf­tan, Alli Haapasalo’s empow­er­ing com­ing of ager, Girls Girls Girls, and Mar­i­ano Biasin’s vibrant debut Sublime.

Emerg­ing Cypri­ot film­mak­ers had a marked pres­ence with the fes­ti­val host­ing the pre­mieres of Ste­lios Kam­mit­sis’ The Man with the Answers, Semeli Vogazianou’s Walls, Alexan­dra Matheou’s A Sum­mer Place and Alexan­dros Pis­sou­rios’ Que Será, Será. Among many oth­er fes­ti­val high­lights was a selec­tion of Super‑8 gems by under­ground Ger­man film­mak­er Michael Bryn­ntrup, as well as ret­ro­spec­tive screen­ings explor­ing the lega­cy of cin­e­ma titans like Pasoli­ni, Fass­binder and Dear­den with screen­ings of Teo­re­ma, The Bit­ter Tears of Petra von Kant, and Vic­tim.

For many Cypri­ots, grow­ing up queer has meant being sub­ject­ed to poi­so­nous bile and prej­u­dice in an embod­ied expe­ri­ence that became syn­ony­mous with dis­so­nance and dis­ori­en­ta­tion, anx­i­ety and self-doubt. Mas­sive strides have been made in recent years, and as the fes­ti­val tagline sug­gests, it all starts with a rip­ple: the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty has not only gained a counter-pub­lic space to cel­e­brate queer film­mak­ing, but also a porous means to express itself.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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