Meet our curators

In the 2024 edition, our curatorial team comprises of artists and academics with vast experience in film, animation and sound.

Yianna Americanou

I have received my MA in Film and Television Production from the University of Bristol, UK and my BA (with High Honors) in Communication and Cinema Studies with an emphasis on Experimental Filmmaking from the University of Iowa, USA. I have been very fortunate to have studied and mentored under the guidance of the experimental filmmaker Leighton Pierce (currently the Dean of the School of Film/Video at CalArts). I have acted as the Head of MEDIA Cyprus (Creative Europe Programme) for over ten years but my true passion for filmmaking and directing forced me to make challenging decisions in following my dreams. My short films have been screened at many important International Film Festivals such as Rotterdam International Film Festival, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and have received prestigious awards from Hamburg IFF, Drama IFF, and Cyprus International Short Film Festival.

Nicos Synnos

Nicos Synnos is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Fine Arts, at the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts of the Cyprus University of Technology. He holds the MA and PgDip titles in Visual Communication with specializations in Animation and Cartoon Imagery from Birmingham City University (UK) and a BA (Hons) in Visual Communication with specialization in Graphic Communication from the University of Wolverhampton (UK) and the California State University in Long Beach (USA).

Yiannis Christidis

Yiannis Christidis is an academic and artist. Having studied Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean, he holds an MSc in Sound Design from the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in Social Anthropology of Sound from Cyprus University of Technology. His research focuses on the cultural aspect of sound, its functionality in everyday life and the relationship between the listeners and their place, while he is also interested in the ways the above can be communicated through visual and audio recordings. He is a documentary filmmaker, and he has designed sound and music for numerous audiovisual and radio productions, and performances.

Ioanna Neophytou

Ioanna Neophytou was born in Limassol, Cyprus, in 1986. She is a multidisciplinary artist, director and researcher, based in Athens, Greece. She currently works as an art professor in Greece. She graduated from Athens School of Fine Arts in 2011 and she continued her studies in Paris, where she graduated from the University Paris 8, obtaining a masters in «Contemporary art and new media». She is currently a PhD candidate in the Aix-Marseille Université in France, conducting a research under the title The images of war and the war of images: contemporary art and documentary in the necropolitics era. Her artistic projects have been presented in many collective exhibitions worldwide, and her documentaries have been screened in many well-known festivals in Europe, earning her multiple awards. In addition, she is interested in collaborating and co-creating with other artists and non-artists, as well as in attempting to integrate the public into the work of art. Her artistic practice and her research focus on conflicts and their meta-narrations, on the importance of images as a tool for history narration and as an object of instrumentalization in the conflict.

Konstantinos Argianas

Konstantinos Argianas holds a PhD in History of Art from the University of Vienna. He also holds an MA in Art History from the University of Crete and a BA in History from the Ionian University (Greece). He has worked as a researcher at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Crete, and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens. He has received grants from institutions such as the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S. Hamburg, the State Scholarship Foundation, and the Institute for Mediterranean Studies / Foundation for Technology and Research. He has also curated art exhibitions in museums and cultural institutions such as the Benaki Museum/Athens Photo Festival, the House of Cyprus in Athens, the Limassol Municipal Library, etc. His research interests focus on the intersection of art and politics in the 20th century and contemporary visual culture. Since May 2022, he has been a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Visual Arts and Art Sciences, School of Fine Arts, University of Ioannina. He is currently an Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Fine Arts, Cyprus University of Technology, where he teaches Art History and History and Theory of Film.

Costas Constandinides

Dr. Costas Constandinides is a lecturer in audiovisual media in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cyprus. He holds a postgraduate degree and a doctorate degree from the University of Reading, UK (MA Film and Theatre Studies, 2003; PhD in Film and Drama, 2008) and an undergraduate degree from the University of Cyprus (BA in English Language and Literature, 2002). He was previously a faculty member in the Department of Communications at the University of Nicosia. He is the author of From Film Adaptation to Post-celluloid Adaptation (2010) and co-editor (with Yiannis Papadakis) of Cypriot Cinemas: Memory, Conflict, and Identity in the Margins of Europe (2014). He has published work in peer-reviewed international publications, and he is a member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Adaptation. He is a member of the European Film Academy and a former co-artistic director of the Cyprus Film Days International Festival.

Charalambos Margaritis

Charalambos Margaritis is a graduate of the National Superior Fine Arts School of Paris (ENSBA). His work is centered around animated films, print-making, drawing, painting and comics. He lives and works in Paphos, where, in 2015, he co-founded Kimonos Art Center. Since 2017, he has been directing the annual international animation festival The Animattikon Project. His films have been selected and awarded in several film festivals around the world. Since 2018 he has been the ambassador of the European Animation Awards in Cyprus. Since 2019 he teaches animation in the Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts of the Cyprus University of Technology.