memory of light

Film Essay

Duration: 00:19:35

2018

Kammari Residency, Treis Elies, Cyprus

This film was made during my artist’s residency at Kammari Residency, Treis Elies, Cyprus. I wanted to document and collect people’s memories and thoughts that are close to their everyday lives and their relation to time. I was inspired and intrigued by the everyday discussions at the residency. Treis Elies is a small and isolated mountain village, having it’s own small community, sense of time and way of life. It is also called Eco-village because many young professionals have shifted from urban areas to the village for organic farming. 

During the one month there, I was dealing with an inner silence magnified by the natural surroundings, the nature walks, camping and watching shooting stars & lunar eclipse, listening to subliminal natural sounds, the pitch darkness of the mountains and playing and recording piano alone in the evenings; it all synthesised through this film. It is a poetic attempt to encapsulate my time at the residency and how my perception was shaped through the constant dialogue with the community.

The film is grounded on four questions given to twelve local residents:

  • Describe a situation in your life in which you feel something changed in you significantly? 
  • When you hear the word silence, what memories come to your mind? 
  • Describe an experience when you felt a deep relation with time and space in Treis Elies. How would you describe the passing of time in that moment?
  • Describe a situation which you would want to go back to and change in your life. 

The film is titled memory of light because I experienced time, not as linear clock time, but through the changing light. It didn’t matter if it was 3am or 6pm, Sunday or Tuesday, January or July, every memory was marked by the intensity of light, the sound, the atmosphere, the smell in the present moment. 

I filmed the hands of each person; they are as expressive as the face, reflecting each person’s distinct personality without the direct confrontation served by the eyes. Each memory is bereft of an identity, of a face, thus, the viewers can relate to them as their own.