Greek Lisa Dikomitis is crazy about Flemish children's authors. The headline of Lisa's first media appearance, just before she turned 12. The article appeared in Het Nieuwsblad, a Belgian newspaper for which Lisa was regularly interviewed when she had something to say of more substance! A local journalist interviewed Lisa about her unusual reading habits and her scrapbooks with letters from Flemish writers. For years, only the title (enlarged and cut in half so it read 'Greek Lisa Dikomitis is crazy') hung on the kitchen wall in her parents' house. A couple of years later Lisa was interviewed again, as a teenager, when her poetry was published and, in her early twenties, when she co-authored theatre plays and performed these in Belgium.
Professor Dikomitis has been frequently interviewed about her research on Cyprus and more recently about her work in the medical field. She has also contributed to Belgian, Cypriot and British TV and radio programmes.
DOCUMENTARY
The crew of Vlaanderen Vakantieland, a well-known Flemish TV programme, and presenter Ben Roelants followed and filmed Lisa Dikomitis during her fieldwork in May 2010. The documentary is mainly in Dutch, but bits are in English with Dutch subtitles. It was broadcast on the VRT, the national broadcaster of the Flemish region in Belgium, in two parts a year later. The first part (aired on 27 August 2011), Ongerept Nicosia in Cyprus, in which Lisa shows Ben Roelants her favourite parts in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus: the coffee shop Sta Kala Kathoumena, the Chrysaliniotissa crafts centre and of course her own neighbourhood and home in Kaimakli. Ben surprised Lisa with a visit to the disused Nicosia International Airport, inaccessible to the public. The documentary features music from the well-know Cypriot 'Reggetika' band Trio Tekke, with a small gig especially for Ben at the very end. The second part (aired on 3 September 2011), Ben ontdekt het echte Cyprus, in which Lisa Dikomitis and her friend, anthropologist Evi Eftychiou, take Ben Roelants and the film crew to the Troodos mountain and the village of Kalopanayiotis.