Ismyrne / Ismyrna, Ismyrne / Ismyrna

Director Joana Hadjithomas and artist/poet Etel Adnan met fifteen years ago and became close friends. The two women share a city where neither of them has ever been: Izmir, formerly known as Smyrna, in Turkey. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Joana’s Greek family on her father’s side was chased from Smyrna by the Turkish army. Etel’s Greek mother, also born in Smyrna, married a Syrian officer from the Ottoman army who then fled to Lebanon after the fall of the Empire. After living in an imaginary Smyrna, Etel and Joana are now faced with the transmission of history, questioning their attachment to things, places and imageless imagination.