UNSETTLED – a live documentary performance by Argyro Nicolaou

UNSETTLEDA live documentary performance by Argyro Nicolaou

In this one-hour long live documentary performance, filmmaker Argyro Nicolaou combines still and moving images to tell a deeply personal story of displacement and intergenerational memory.

Event Description:The town of Varosha on the eastern coast of Cyprus, where Nicolaou's mother is from, was fenced off by the occupying Turkish military for 46 years. Since the Greek-backed coup d’état and Turkish invasion of 1974 that divided the island and displaced a third of its population, Varosha was neither settled nor demolished. It turned into a “ghost town”.

In 2006, a family member entered the town undetected, snuck into the family’s ancestral home, and recovered a childhood diary that belonged to Nicolaou’s mother. This was the closest Nicolaou came to witnessing her mother’s life before she was displaced—until October 2020, when the Turkish military opened Varosha to the public and the two women were able to visit the town together for the first time.

About the Artist:Argyro Nicolaou is a filmmaker and writer based in New York. Her work deals with the intergenerational effects of displacement, historical memory and the absurdities of daily life in post-colonial, post-conflict places like her home country of Cyprus.

Her films have screened at the Museum of the Moving Image, Gallatin Galleries, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Athens International Film Festival, and the LA Greek Film Festival, among others. Her fiction debut Excavators (in development) was awarded the Connecting Cottbus Award at the 2023 Karlovy Vary Eastern Promises Industry Event, while her first documentary feature Unsettled (My Sea) is currently in production and participated in UnionDocs’ 2024 Early Production Lab.

She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and is currently a Scholar-in-Residence at Bard College's Center for Human Rights and the Arts.

🎬 Watch the teaser: Click here to view the video

Tickets: Free admission – registration required

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