Maria Anastassiou

Travelling from Colchester to Southend, Tilbury to Romford Market, artist Michael Landy talks ‘Essexism’ with comedian Russell Kane, artists Elsa James and Maria Anastassiou, Professor Pam Cox (Head of the Department of Sociology, University of Essex) and The Only Way is Essex legend, Amy Childs, who it turns out is related to Michael!

A short portrait of the filmmaker’s mother at home in Nicosia. Now retired, she devotes herself to learning new skills including drawing, playing piano, painting Greek Orthodox icons and taking university classes in history and ancient Greek mythology. Anastassiou’s camera focuses on her mother’s hand gestures as she draws, speaks, plays, and describes various modes of note-taking – and we think of the daughter’s hands holding the Bolex camera.

In the Port of Tilbury—a place which historically was the point of entry for migrants to the UK—filmmaker Maria Anastassiou worked collaboratively with a group of people who had recently arrived in the town to paint a portrait of life in the transient space of the Thames Estuary.