Filep Motwary

Σε μια βιομηχανία που τρέχει με ρυθμούς εποχών και τάσεων, ο ακολουθεί έναν δικό του. Τα ρούχα του αποφεύγουν την εφήμερη γλώσσα των trends και μιλούν με ένα λεξιλόγιο μνήμης, χειρωνακτικής δουλειάς και ήσυχης επιμονής. Σε μια συζήτηση με τον Filep Motwary, editor–at–large της Vogue Greece, ο Gassanoff μιλάει για μόδα που δεν αφορά μόνο κατανάλωση, αλλά συνείδηση: για ρούχα που γίνονται χώροι σκέψης και στοχασμού, όχι απλώς προϊόντα.
https://vogue.gr/fashion/galib-gassanoff-plathontas-to-mellon-tis-klironomias/

The Indelible Souls of Creators | by Anna Marangou
I don’t know about you, but over the past week I found myself in need of something: a fragment, a phrase, a face, an image, anything at all that would allow me to feel proud once again to be living in this corner of the Mediterranean.

I wanted to cast off the overwhelming darkness that had filled my horizon. I was searching desperately for a way to bring back into my life a sense of affirmation, proof that this place, these gifts and talents I have encountered along my earthly journey, deserve far more than the gloom and misfortune that have descended upon us. I needed to reassure myself that they truly exist.

Some higher power seems to have sensed that need and guided my search. That is how I discovered the series of short films titled , written and directed by Filep Motwary.

Commissioned by the Cyprus Handicraft Service and the Press and Information Office, under the auspices of the Deputy Ministry of Culture, these films portray, in a remarkable and deeply moving way, the island’s crafts: embroidery and ceramics, weaving and silversmithing, furniture-making and woodcarving, basketry, the art of stone, and the art of dress.

I had met the creator of the series one morning about a year earlier, on the day the first drafts of my recent book on Salamis arrived in my hands. With prints of Petros Fiakkas’s photographs spread out before us, we spoke about the colours and textures of Cyprus. Porous stone, marls and marbles dominated our conversation, while I knew already that this series was already taking shape in his mind.

It was this series I sought as a balm for the darkness of these days. Even the title alone caught my attention. It speaks of the arts of people, of our very essence, of the living leaven of this land that rose and gave form to everything shaped by the hands of its creators. So, a couple of days ago, I sat down with him and watched them together. When it ended, I asked to watch the films again. I wanted to absorb them fully, to take in every image in both its totality and its detail, every movement, every frame so carefully conceived and directed, and the symbolism which, through an unfamiliar aesthetic so absent from our lives, allowed the creator to place within today’s shallow and chaotic reality something deeply ingrained in the soul of every Cypriot: our relationship with the land.

Everyone who appears in these films is dressed in the colours of Cyprus. Everything that reaches the viewer feels true, instinctive and profound. The creator did not seek to impose a historical narrative. Instead, he took what he himself had known and valued, what was authentic and real, and matched it to the face of Cyprus today. The protagonists of these films are the indelible souls of the island’s craftspeople. That was what mattered to him.

Filep Motwary, who signs the series, is half Cypriot, with roots in Salamiou, descended on his mother’s side from genuine farming folk. “I experienced the commission for these films as a unique opportunity,” he told me, “as a way to decode what I lived with in my grandparents’ home as a young boy, surrounded by handmade, everyday objects that I was unable to understand at the time.”

For thirty years now, Filep Motwary has been exploring and engaging with talent, whether traditional or contemporary. He is a rare and precious individual who has worked, among many other things, with Vogue and major fashion designers, moving within a world of absolute aesthetic creation. Yet he also understood and offered, in the most extraordinary way, a sense of cohesion and continuity to our country.

“I only put my name to what is born from my soul,” he emphasizes. “My work almost always focuses on others: on their image, their essence, on bringing to light what they carry within them. For thirty years, I have worked under this guiding principle.”

During the recent ceremonies marking the major event of Cyprus’s Presidency, these are the films I would have chosen to show our official guests, so they could see and understand that this place, struggling to keep its head above water, possesses both historical depth and an indelible way of life.

Our existence is not accidental. We did not enter history yesterday. We are anchored deep within its rock. You must watch these films and listen to what Georgios Constantinou, Cyprus’s geologist, says as he refers to Montis. Listen carefully to the farmers of the Mesaoria. Admire the wooden horse of the late Nina Iakovou and connect it to the horse that appears in Cypriot nature. Revisit the words of Professor Frosso Egoumenidou and of Larnaca’s Iosif Hadjikyriakou, the ceramicist and teacher, Vassos. Take joy in our young creators, the new weavers and embroiderers, the children in Phini making chairs. Think of how many homes still treasure the precious furniture of Pambos Savvides.

Filep Motwary’s films deserve to be shown in our schools and universities, in our embassies abroad. They deserve to travel. They deserve to be seen and absorbed, so that people may regain the pride they need in their homeland.

The series represents me, and within it I find my pride!

Elefthera, 18.1.2026
Originally published on Philenews

Oι ανεξίτηλες ψυχές των δημιουργών Δεν ξέρω εσείς, αλλά εγώ είχα ανάγκη τη βδομάδα που μας πέρασε να βρω κάτι, μια ψηφίδα, μια φράση, ένα πρόσωπο, μια εικόνα, κάτι τέλος πάντων που να με

Ευχαριστώ την Άννα Μαραγκού

Oι ανεξίτηλες ψυχές των δημιουργών Δεν ξέρω εσείς, αλλά εγώ είχα ανάγκη τη βδομάδα που μας πέρασε να βρω κάτι, μια ψηφίδα, μια φράση, ένα πρόσωπο, μια εικόνα, κάτι τέλος πάντων που να με