The tapes that couldn't leave Cyprus

Backlight Media works as a local production partner and fixer for international crews filming in Cyprus. One of the most memorable jobs we've taken on in that role was supporting a BBC documentary on space exploration, built around an interview with a veteran cosmonaut who had settled on the island.

Our job was to make the ground disappear. As the local producer and fixer in Cyprus, we handled everything the visiting crew couldn't carry with them: the filming location, the permits, transport, local crew, and equipment matched to the BBC's standard.

Then the job became something rarer. The cosmonaut's own archive still existed on original tape: training sessions, the spacewalk itself, the landing. Decades-old recordings, irreplaceable, and unable to leave Cyprus. If that footage was going to make the documentary, it had to be handled, digitised and returned without a single frame lost, on the island. Archive rescue and tape digitisation, done in Cyprus, under our care.

So we did. We treated the material for what it was: a piece of space history that happened to be sitting in Cyprus, and our responsibility for a few careful days. We digitised the tapes, integrated the footage into the production, and handed the originals back.

This is the part of the work that doesn't fit on a rate card. Most of what we do is systems and execution under pressure. But every so often the job puts something genuinely historic in your hands, and the only right response is to be worthy of it.

If you're bringing an international production to Cyprus and need a local producer or fixer who can make the hard logistics vanish, from permits and locations to crew, equipment and even archive digitisation, that's exactly the work we take on.