Archive/Counter-Archive is delighted to share the recording of Theo Xenophontos's Working Papers Series Talk, Film as Mediator: Cultivating a Cypriot Canadian Community Audiovisual Media Archive, which took place on Tuesday, October 25, 2022.

Theo's presentation chronicles the development of his dissertation project, which is focused on creating a community-based archive that is devoted to the Cypriot Canadian diaspora. This project seeks to redress the historical imbalances perpetuated by traditional archival institutions by focusing on the lives of ‘ordinary’ Cypriot Canadians, a group whose history is either neglected or grouped with those of the Greek and Turkish diasporas. This archive will be audiovisual in nature as a means of emphasizing the importance of film as a mediator of memory and history. By utilizing audiovisual media created by this underrepresented community, Theo states that he hopes to re-conceptualize our understanding of Cypriot immigrants in this country, while concurrently demonstrating audiovisual media’s power as a form of historiography.

Theo Xenophontos is a PhD Candidate in the Cinema and Media Studies program at York University. He also holds a BA from the University of Toronto (with a double major in Cinema Studies and English, as well as a minor in History), in addition to a MA in Cinema & Media Studies from York University. While his current project is focused on creating a community-based audiovisual archive with members of the Cypriot Canadian diaspora, his other research interests include film history, media archaeology, and experimental film and video.

Archive/Counter-Archive's Working Papers Series brings together PhD students from different Universities to hear about exciting doctoral research in the area of archival studies

Watch the video below!

Working Papers Series | Theo Xenophontos from Archive/Counter-Archive on Vimeo.