Film nights in Nicosia on memory and what it is good for
A series of film screenings by STYX Film Encounters investigates the ways memory is shaped so it can sustain, explain and protect people, but also the moments when memory stops serving people, and the roles are reversed.
In a new series titled Memory: What is it Good for?, cinema evenings at Pantheon Cinema continue this January. With two screenings already gone, four more events are coming up to spice up January’s slow days.
Coming up next is the only surprise screening of the series. This means that film lovers will not know which film they are going to watch on January 4. Only once they arrive at Pantheon and the screening begins, will the film be revealed.
On January 11, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet will be shown on the big screen at 5.30pm. The 1955 film examines faith not as doctrine, but as an existential force, capable of sustaining life, destroying relationships, or demanding the impossible.
The film centres on a family fractured by competing forms of belief: rational Christianity, rigid orthodoxy, and a son who believes himself to be Jesus Christ. Dreyer’s austere visual style and deliberate pacing strip the drama of sentimentality, forcing the viewer to confront faith in its most absolute and unsettling form. Ordet asks whether miracles belong to religion or to love — and whether belief without doubt is devotion, or madness.
On January 18, Wild Strawberries will be screened, following an ageing professor who, on the day he is to receive an honorary degree, embarks on a road trip that becomes a journey through memory. Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film uses dreams, flashbacks and encounters along the way to examine a life marked by emotional distance and quiet regret.
The final film of the series is 12 Angry Men by Sidney Lumet, on January 25. Set almost entirely inside a jury room on a sweltering summer day, 12 Angry Men (1957) follows 12 jurors tasked with deciding the fate of a teenage boy accused of murder. What begins as an apparently open-and-shut case slowly unravels as one juror calls for discussion, forcing the group to confront not only the evidence, but their own assumptions and prejudices.
STYX Film Screenings
Surprise screening. January 4. Ordet. January 11. Wild Strawberries. January 18. 21 Angry Men. January 25. 5.30pm. With English and Greek subtitles. €5 per film or €10 season pass. More details on www.styxfilmencounters.com