Vasia Markides
Vasia Markides works and lives in Maine, but hails from Cyprus. A painter originally, Vasia completed her first documentary short film in 2008. Hidden in the Sand is a chronicle of her mother’s hometown of Famagusta, a city under Turkish occupation in Cyprus. Her family’s home is now off limits within the six square kilometer district of Varosha, abandoned and fenced off for the past five decades. Hidden in the Sand has screened in venues and festivals across the U.S., Puerto Rico, Germany, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, France and Portugal. But that wasn’t the end of Vasia’s obsession with Famagusta. After launching the Famagusta Ecocity Project, an effort to revive her mother’s hometown as an ecocity, her team’s work gained international attention (including a couple of million hits on their BBC article and a TedX talk). She has also been directing a documentary about the effort - Waking Famagusta, which aims to hit the festival circuit in 2023. In addition to her film, art and activism, Vasia very much enjoys writing, and has published a piece in The Nation magazine on the pandemic called Silver Linings on the River. She has also unexpectedly found herself teaching media at her old high school.
Contact: vasiam@gmail.com