Sam Ashby to show archival films in Cyprus — Cyprus Mail
In Cyprus, Little Joe founder Sam Ashby will take part in the Queer Wave 2026 festival. He will present the Libidinal Archives programme — a selection of short films connected to archival and research materials. Earlier, Ashby also presented the German film City of Lost Souls.
As Cyprus Mail reports, Ashby founded Little Joe in the late 2000s after encountering Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s 1968 film Flesh. The film and its star Joe Dallesandro, known as Little Joe, prompted him to explore cinema that remained outside mainstream culture.
From zine to magazine
Little Joe began as a handmade zine about unusual and little-known pages of cinema history. It later grew into a larger magazine but, according to Ashby, retained its informal character. He is interested not only in the films themselves, but also in the circumstances of their creation and the meaning they have for queer viewers.
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Ashby stresses that preserving queer film history has often depended on individuals rather than institutions. Photographs, posters, film reels, VHS tapes and personal belongings can become important materials many years later. While researching at the Hall Carpenter archive, he found Elizabeth Montagu’s unfilmed 1964 screenplay The Colour of His Hair.
The archive as living memory
The Libidinal Archives programme brings together different themes, but all the works presented view the archive not as a static repository, but as something alive. Ashby also calls Little Joe an almost anti-internet project: in his view, print helps people focus on reading long texts and pass them on to others.
Ashby considers City of Lost Souls to be a look at a period in Berlin when people outside social norms created their own communities and ways of life. The film portrays queer and trans life through performance, friendship, joy and chosen families.
