Cyprus Inherited: Making Memory in the Work of Maria Anastassiou, Anna Kannava, Katerina Vasiliou brings together the literary and cinematic practices of three Cypriot women artists, exploring questions of inheritance, generational memory and trauma, as well as the possibilities of transcultural practice. Through distinct yet interconnected approaches, their work reflects on how personal and collective histories are transmitted, negotiated and reimagined across generations and geographies.
Katerina Vasiliou’smemoir Komm, komm (Mikrotext, 2026) is informed by social and political history and explores the fragmented experience of growing up with more than one country oforigin, while reflecting on the meaning of homeland and the ways culture and heritage continue to shape us from afar. Told with affectionate humour, it considers how the trauma of prejudice and conflict is inherited by subsequent generations.
Notes: Remembered and Found (2024) is a short film about Maria Anastassiou’s family through the eyes and traces of four generations of Cypriot women, in which she revisits diaries and cassettes recounting war and displacement and asks how history and inherited official and family narratives are mediated across generations.
In Ten Years After … Ten Years Older (1986), a deeply personal documentary, Anna Kannava returns to her home city of Limassol in Cyprus, to reconnect with her beloved grandmother, ten years after migrating to Australia as a 15-year-old in 1974. Described as a balsam preparation applied to healwounds, her voice and imagery takes us into the innards of migration, longing, love and loss.
The event is organised and presented by the Cultural Department of the Embassy of the Republic of Cyprus, in cooperation with Mikrotext Verlag, Berlin.
More information and tickets: https://www.lettretage.de/programm/cyprus-inherited