“Poets Never Die” is characterized as a feature film based on a true story.
Although this term is freely used in the film industry, in this particular case
it is a truthful statement!
Having lived in Cyprus in the 1950s as a young boy and having t horoughly researched the historical background of my plot, I can assure all of you that the tragic events embracing our central story, including the atrocious methods used by the British colonial forces to torture our young protagonist, are all based on truth.
But this inevitable presentation of the carnage that took place on the little Mediterranean island during the problematic years of the Cyprus revolution against the British colonial rule, serves only as a canvas on which an extraordinary love story gently unfolds. That is my story. The story I intend to tell…
It is no secret that during WWII the British Empire begun to crumble and fall apart. The fear of a total collapse prompted Britain’s war leader, Winston Churchill, to send this cable to his military commanders:
BATTLE MUST BE FOUGHT TO THE BITTER END.
COMMANDER AND SENIOR OFFICERS SHOULD DIE WITH THEIR
TROOPS. THE HONOUR OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IS AT STAKE.
Winston Churchill
While British soldiers were still fighting ‘terrorists’ in Malaya a new colonial war was starting in Kenya. At the height of the conflict in Kenya, another ‘emergency’ was declared on the island of Cyprus, a British colony in theM editerranean.
Britain’s interests in Cyprus were mainly strategic. During the ‘emergency’ the Suez invasion was launched from the island and afterward, it became a base area for missiles trained on Russia. The population, a volatile five to one ratio of Greeks to Turks, was ripe for British divide and rule tactics.
As a director, I intend to closely follow the footsteps of Beth, my young, innocent English heroine trapped in the turmoil of war, and through the gentleness of her compelling story, capture the desolation of war and the pain it entails.
“Poets Never Die” is not just another love story or an ordinary action, war drama.
It is an unpitying journey into the core of a problem that has plagued the warring human race throughout its bloodstained history.
My initial aspiration was to tell the moving love story of Beth Edward Robins, the innocent, young daughter of a British of ficer who fell in love with a “terrorist”! I will not deviate from that. But like my two young heroes, I am also trapped in the midst of insanity, violence, and madness. Inevitably, to tell my story, I have to weave my way around the treachery, the deafening explosions, the agony, the pain, the torture and death that form the bleak backdrop of my plot and overwhelm the lives of my central characters…
