Attila '74 [DVD] = Attilas '74 = Attila 74 = Attilas 74

In July 1974, the Turkish army invaded the island Republic of Cyprus. Though the population was predominantly Greek and Greek-Orthodox, the island had seen for generations the co-existence of Greeks and Turks, of Christians and Muslims. However, the combined assault of a rapacious military dictatorship in Turkey and the collapsing Junta of the Colonels in Greece meant that the Cypriot Presidency of Archbishop Makarios was increasingly under threat by both Turkey and Greece (and by extension, unpopular with the administration of USA Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, who was suspicious of the nationalistic democracy advocated by Makarios). When Cacoyannis heard of the invasion he rushed from Western Europe to Cyprus (he himself had been in exile from the Greek Junta) and filmed the experience of a country under siege and invasion. Undoubtedly polemical and biased against the cavalier disregard of the USA to human rights abuses by its allies, “Attila ‘74” is nevertheless a sobering and emotionally powerful record of the effects of invasion and war. Cacoyannis financed the film himself and in preparing to take his camera onto the streets, the film can claim to be faithful to the great tradition of war correspondence and journalism. Though Cacoyannis filmed both Greek and Turkish speaking politicians and religious leaders, it is the voices of the refugees, the maimed and the terrified themselves, which leaves the greatest impression. Since the invasion of Cyprus in 1974, the island’s status as a nation is still in dispute; tens of thousands of Greek-speaking Cypriots have been made into refugees; the island remains partitioned; and human rights abuses conducted during the invasion have still not been successfully prosecuted. The United Nations to this day does not recognise the legitimacy of the Occupation. The United States of America, however, has all the bases in Turkey that it needs.