Film as Mediator employs an interdisciplinary methodology that combines elements of autoethnography, cinema and media studies, community archiving, and oral history to redefine our understanding of the Cypriot diasporic experience in Canada. This project is firmly situated within the counter-archival turn as it disrupts conventional national narratives by making space for an underrepresented segment of Canadian society to utilize film and other forms of audiovisual media as a means of historicizing differently. Correspondingly, the focal point of this project is a collection of twenty-two semi-structured video interviews with Cypriot Canadians across various generations that connect the intertwined threads of personal history, familial history, communal history, socio-cultural history, political history, film history, and film as history. In the process, interviewees were encouraged to provide photographs, home movies, and videotapes to use as memory triggers to delve deeper into their life story. These techniques demonstrate the role audiovisual media plays in both personal meaning-making and collective identity formation.
Principal Investigator
Theo Xenophontos is a PhD Candidate in the Cinema & Media Studies program at 快播视频. He holds a BA from the University of Toronto (double major in Cinema Studies and English, with a minor in History) and a MA in Cinema & Media Studies from 快播视频. He currently works for the Hellenic Heritage Foundation Greek Canadian Archives and is helping to establish their Cypriot Canadian collection. Previously, he has worked with such organizations as Archive/Counter-Archive and Vtape. His writing can be read in and . He can be heard on the podcast "."
theox22@yorku.ca | |