Syros International Film Festival's Ninth Edition Explores Memory and Borders Through Outdoor Screenings

The ninth Syros International Film Festival (SIFF) took place from July 22 to 26, 2021, on the Greek island of Syros in the Cyclades. This annual event featured Greek and international independent films screened at outdoor venues, including an empty concrete pool and a shipyard, under the theme 'off-season'. The programme included workshops and screenings, with Frida Liappa's 1991 film 'The Years of the Big Heat' addressing pandemic and heatwave scenarios. Julie Dash's 'Daughters of the Dust' (1991) opened the festival against Hermoupolis's neoclassical architecture, exploring migration and memory. A new commission by Marina Gioti montaged archival newsreels of ship launches with a performance by thereminist May Roosevelt, creating an elegiac effect. Other screenings included Marcus Meicher's 'Austria' (2017) and Peixuan Ouyang's 'The_____World' (2021), alongside classics like Powell and Pressburger's 'A Matter of Life and Death' (1946). The festival context highlighted Greece's contrasts, such as tax incentives for digital nomads versus migrant boat repulsions. J.G. Ballard's imagery of drained pools and anthropologists studying ruins resonated with the setting, reflecting on cinema as an ageing medium amidst environmental and social crises, including wildfires near Athens with temperatures reaching 41 degrees. The event was covered in the September 2021 issue of ArtReview.