Check please

By Maria Gregoriou

The bailout of March 2013, its effects on a cross section of society and the protests it caused are the subjects of the documentary film A Haircut Story, which will be screened on Tuesday at the Cine Studio at the University of Nicosia. If you can’t make the screening on Tuesday, Cine Studio will be showing it a second time on February 4.

The documentary, which had its debut screening at the Lemesos International Documentary Festival last year, was produced and directed by Danae Stylianou.
She studied Film Production at the University of Westminster in London. Her first documentary feature film was Sharing an Island in 2011, which focused on the inter-communal relations of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot youths.

The events surrounding Stylianou’s latest documentary made Cyprus the first Eurozone member to be subjected to a bail-in on deposits as a means of rescuing the island’s problematic banks. Depositors of the two largest banks on the island experienced a dramatic haircut of their life savings. The depositors were many, and the documentary touches on seven different stories of people who were immediately affected by the haircut.

Personal stories may be what the documentary zooms in on but it also focuses on providing the viewer with economic facts, the history of the Cyprus market, and crowds of people fighting for their rights and protesting for the rights of their children.

If the question of how such a small island in the Mediterranean could have taken on such a large banking system and how its people are footing the bill is still gnawing away at you, then this documentary may help you find some answers.

A Haircut Story
Screening of the Cypriot documentary directed by Danae Stylianou. January 21 and February 4. Cine Studio, University of Nicosia. 9pm. €8/5. Tel: 99-788173

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.