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Turkish director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, poses after winning Best Director prize at the Closing Ceremony of the 61st Cannes International Film Festival on May 25, 2008.
ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT / AFP / Getty ImagesTuesday, May. 27, 2008 Turkish Director Fêted in Cannes, Ignored at Home
By PELIN TURGUT/ISTANBUL
Celebrated Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan was awarded Best Director in Cannes on Sunday. Perhaps now Turks will finally go see his movies. Despite being heralded globally for his movie magic, Ceylan's films — slow-paced, poetic tales of individuals struggling against the bleak backdrop of modern Turkey — routinely flop back home. Distant, a previous Cannes competitor, was seen by just 20,000 people in Turkey — only one-fourth as many as saw it in France. His current Cannes winner, Three Monkeys, has yet to sell to Turkish TV, which has deemed it too arty.
It is true that Ceylan's films are never easy going, but in a country of 70 million, 20,000 viewers seems, well, a little pathetic. Are Turks a nation of cultural philistines? Critics bemoaning the dearth of interest in cultural fare (book sales are shrinking along with art-house film audiences) point to a brutal 1980 military coup as the start of this malaise. The generals ushered in an era of economic liberalization and anything-goes cowboy capitalism that rapidly transformed the country into a consumerist McHeaven. Turgut Ozal, who served as prime minister from 1983 to 1989 and as president from 1989 to 1993, famously declared that his dream was for Turkey to become "a little America." And he wasn't talking about liberty. Today, Turkey is home to Europe's youngest population, and one of the world's fastest growing consumer markets with brands like Starbucks, Topshop and Ikea booming. One brand manager told me that in his view, the country's shopping malls (60 new ones opening this year) are "paved with gold."
The buying binge is, of course, a worldwide phenomenon. But in Turkey, unlike similar developing countries like Brazil or India, it is underpinned by a deep distaste for the arts. After the 1980 coup, tens of thousands of leftists were imprisoned and often tortured. Newspapers and magazines were banned, politics was forbidden in schools and universities and free speech stifled by draconian laws, some of which are still on the books. With intellectualism effectively quashed, the end result was a cultural vacuum. Recovering has not been easy.
Then again, to give Turkish audiences their credit, maybe Ceylan's previous films were just really, really slow. "Viewers have become used to the fast-paced style of ads, music videos and news shows that jump from scene to scene; this manifests itself in an impatience towards films which tease their stories out slowly," says Firat Yucel, editor of the film magazine Altyazi.
If that's the case, they can take heart: Cannes award winner Three Monkeys is an engrossing tale of an Istanbul family torn apart by their secrets. In tone, if not style, it is a departure for Ceylan and has even been described as a thriller, albeit a meditative one. "Hopefully the Cannes charm might coax viewers into giving Ceylan a chance," says film critic Emrah Guler. And if that's not enough to get Turkish moviegoers to the theaters, the director stands in good company, with the likes of Woody Allen, of filmmakers embraced by the arty French but neglected at home.
Three Monkeys (Uc Maymun) by Jonathan Romney in London
16 May 2008 07:15
Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Turkey-France-Italy. 2008. 109 mins.
An ostensibly routine noir-style psychological thriller vaults into the realms of high art in competition contender Three Monkeys. Cannes has been kind to Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan in the past, with Uzak and Climates establishing his auteur credentials here in 2003 and 2006. His new film represents a bold departure from his past style: it's best described as introspective melodrama, yet both visually and tonally, it's still quintessential Ceylan.
For the first time, Ceylan really involves himself in narrative complexity, spinning a subtly-twisty yarn with echoes of such crime writers as Simenon and James M. Cain. Three Monkeys will consolidate Ceylan's reputation among art-house cognoscenti, but should win him new fans too. Its genre bent should give it a niche crossover appeal for export, in ways that Uzak and Climates never quite reached.
The film's theme, as with so much prime noir, is guilt, and the people who either accept it or try to slough it off: the title allusion is to the proverbial apes of 'see/hear/speak no evil' fame. The story starts in moody, night-soaked fashion, with a middle-aged man dozing at the wheel of his car before causing a hit-and-run accident (it's typical of the film's elliptical approach that the victim remains unknown).
The perpetrator is Servet (Kesal), a politician who fears that the accident will affect his election chances. He therefore persuades his driver Eyüp (Bingöl, best known in Turkey as a folk singer) to take the rap, in exchange for a payoff that will keep his family financially secure. Eyüp goes to prison, while his teenage son Ismael (Sungar) strays into undefined bad company - presumably the reason for him coming home bloodied one night.
Hoping to help out her son, Eyüp's wife Hacer (Aslan) approaches Servet for a handout, and ends up getting more involved with him than she, or we, expected.
Some standard pulp-thriller tropes are tantalisingly spun out for the first hour, but the slyness of the narrative approach only becomes fully apparent after that. It's only then, for example, that Eyüp, newly released, fully enters the action as a player, the emphasis of the drama shifting disorientingly to him. And it's only after an hour that we discover that the couple have had another son, long dead, who haunts the story in a couple of enigmatic images, one a dream with vaguely Tarkovskian overtones.
Throughout, Ceylan and his co-writers - his wife Ebru Ceylan and actor Kesal - systematically withhold key information, keeping us as much out of the loop as his characters often are. Much of the film, crucially, revolves round the suspicions and anxieties of both father and son. Like previous Ceylan films, this one looks long and hard into the mysteries and self-destructive contradictions of the human heart, but the film's sombre, arguably pessimistic bent also finds room for Ceylan's blackly sardonic humour, embodied here by a running gag about an unintentionally eloquent cellphone ringtone.
Using HD video in steely, washed-out hues, Ceylan and DoP Tiryaki provide the beautifully composed cityscapes that have become the director's trademark, as well as facial studies that speak more eloquently about characters' conflicting emotions than the common run of close-ups. A gorgeous, digitally-manipulated final shot gives the film a troubling open ending that can only stir debate and send intrigued viewers back for a second viewing.
The only cavil is that the pacing gets a little slack in the final stretches, and - while it's the nature of a Ceylan film to be slow-burning - the smallest amount of trimming could well turn an exceptional film into a near-perfect one.
From Turkey with love: return of one of Cannes favourite sons
CANNES, France (AFP) — One of Cannes' favourite film-makers, Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan, returned to the film festival offering a breather from hard-hitting movies on social themes with a highly personal family drama.
Ceylan, almost 40 and already winner of a batch of awards for his first four features, is regarded as one of the most distinctive film-makers of the last decade.
His latest offering, "Three Monkeys", a searing family tragedy revolving around jealousy, is his third appearance in competition at Cannes, where the movie is tipped as a front-runner among the 22 vying for the festival's prestigious Palme d'Or award.
"The film is about life, about many things, about the inner world," he said Thursday. "I don't make films on this or that as that is too didactic. And by the time I've ended a film the idea may have changed."
After running over a man at night, a politician running for election bribes his driver to claim responsibility for the accident. But while the man is in prison, the politician seduces the driver's wife, and her son , a young adult, sees it all.
Ceylan, maker of "Uzak" and "Climates", is a master of psychological subtlety and intimacy, shooting meticulously beautiful images helped by his use of high-definition digital video.
"Digital is easier to edit, cheaper and gives you more control over the level of acting," he told AFP. "My style is to have lots of material, I like to shoot the same scene several times, with an actor perhaps crying in one scene and then laughing in the next. Then I decide which I like best."
In "Three Monkeys", Ceylan focuses his camera strictly on the four characters, showing how the family opts to stick together by playing blind, deaf and dumb to problems that should in all logic split them apart.
"I find the family quite tragic in life, it's one of the most tragic things in life," he told AFP. "I suffered a lot from that. I feel that in a family what they live is a summary of society, of life.
"In life people often behave as if they didn't see, didn't hear, didn't say. That is how we protect ourselves so as not to suffer."
After two days of hard-hitting films focussing on global issues and social problems, Ceylan, along with France's first entry "A Christmas Tale", struck a different note, at the festival.
I saw another picture today, "Three Monkeys" from the Turkish writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose "Climates" remains one of the few masterworks I've seen in world cinema this new century. Ceylan's latest is visually extraordinary and often arresting, a simple tale of a blackmail arrangement that leads to adultery and horrific recriminations. I'm talking to Ceylan tomorrow, so more on this one later. With its exquisite sense of composition and color, to be sure, "Three Monkeys" proves that Ceylan is leading the vanguard when it comes to high-def digital video's expressive possibilities.
'Three Monkeys' at present is toast of Cannes by Michael Phillips
CANNES, France—The Cannes Film Festival is an international bazaar, and no single aspect of this cinematic kaleidoscope by the Mediterranean exemplifies its globalism better than the pavilions lining the beach behind the Palais. The Irish pavilion sits at one end, Portugal’s a few steps down. The Icelandic commission has its own releases and locations to promote, as does Brazil.
On Friday, under the sort of threatening skies the director himself favors on screen, I’m sitting in the Turkish Pavilion, drinking Turkish coffee with the Turkish writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. His fifth feature, the stunning “Three Monkeys,” is one of the widely acknowledged favorites in the opening days of the 61st Cannes.
The title chosen by Ceylan (pronounced JEY-lahn) refers to evils about which his characters choose not to hear, see or speak. Late one night, a politician falls asleep behind the wheel of his car on a country road. He strikes and kills a pedestrian and then coolly coerces one of his employers to take the rap for him and serve a nine-month prison sentence.
This arrangement initiates a string of deceptions, including a tryst between the politico (Ercan Kesal) and the wife, Hacer, (Hatice Aslan) of the fall guy (Yavuz Bingol). Their son (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) learns of the affair. When the son’s father comes home from prison, the turmoil so long buried in his family—another son has drowned years earlier—rises to the surface.
Growing up, Ceylan says, “my family life was really complicated. Fights, things like that. I lived for a long time, for instance, several families together. Very complicated, and many tragic and very painful memories.” Making films, he says, has its “consoling” side. It is a way of “trying to understand the dark side of my soul. I use all my memories; that’s my primary material. They make life more…standable? Tolerable, I think you say.”
Ceylan’s previous film, “Climates,” traced the dissolution of a relationship. Ceylan and his wife, Ebru, played the central couple, and Ceylan shot it on high-definition digital video. When “Climates” premiered two years ago at Cannes, the film’s astounding vibrancy struck many in attendance as the medium’s first masterwork shot in that format.
“Three Monkeys” clearly comes from the same director’s eye, but its palette—virtually denuded of color, except for splashes and blotches of dark red—is very different, placing the characters in what Ceylan calls “a specific, separate world of their own.”
“‘Climates’ was my first film in digital, so I was a bit afraid of trying certain things,” he says. “I was interested in protecting the values of the digital resolution and things like that. Which is nonsense. I don’t care about resolution anymore…I know now that after you shoot you can change your lighting completely, and in a very cheap studio, with the cinematographer, I modified colors and the lighting in the post-production. [When filming] I only want to concentrate on the actors and the story.”
There are moments in his latest picture where you sense Ceylan’s inability to let go of a particularly rich image, in which the characters, placed just so in an exquisitely realized frame, are dwarfed or suffocated by storm clouds, or an interior darkness. The director acknowledges he shot several different endings toying with different fates of the major characters.
Narrative lurches notwithstanding, “Three Monkeys” offers the kind of artistry rare in contemporary cinema. Little details linger in the mind, such as a knife on a cutting board, tipping slightly in the breeze. Ceylan gets wonderful suspense out of everyday things, such as a telltale cell phone ring-tone that wails to the tune of a vengeful Turkish pop ballad.
Most indelibly, the film’s brief but brilliant depictions of the dead son grip the audience like nothing else so far in this year’s Cannes festival.
Ceylan’s web site showcases his photography along with his filmmaking. Despite courting far-flung comparisons to director Michelangelo Antonioni, “Three Monkeys” suggests that a more apt comparison regarding Ceylan’s compositional leanings involves another photographer turned director, Stanley Kubrick. Ceylan, says actress Hatice Aslan, a fierce marvel as Hacer, “is like his photos; he’s very calm.” But there is a great deal roiling underneath the surface.
This quality distinguishes the texture of Anton Chekhov, Ceylan’s favorite writer. For his next project he may adapt Chekhov’s “My Wife” to a Turkish setting and, if so, the film will star his wife, Ebru.
That’s a maybe, mind. “I’m not the kind of director who has lots of projects waiting,” Ceylan says, with a laugh. “Making a film changes you, and after struggling with a film, I just…wait. I go through hating cinema for some time. And then, under the load of the images and ideas, I slowly begin to work.”
“Three Monkeys” will receive limited U.S. distribution sometime in 2008 or 2009.
Cannes
Three Monkeys
Uc maymun (Turkey-France-Italy)
By JUSTIN CHANG
Dark drama 'Three Monkeys' offers adultery, murder and gloom.
A Pyramide Distribution (in France) release of a Zeynofilm, NBC Film (Turkey)/Pyramide Prods. (France)/Bim Distribuzione (Italy) production, in association with Imaj, with the participation of Ministere de la Culture et du Tourisme Turc, Eurimages, CNC. (International sales: Pyramide Intl., Paris.) Produced by Zeynep Ozbatur. Co-producers, Fabienne Vonier, Valerio de Paolis, Cemal Noyan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Screenplay, Ebru Ceylan, Ercan Kesal, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. With: Yavuz Bingol, Hatice Aslan, Ahmet Rifat Sungar, Ercan Kesal.(Turkish dialogue)
Seeing, hearing and speaking no evil comes all too easily to the tortured trio in "Three Monkeys," a powerfully bleak family drama that leaves its characters' offenses largely offscreen but lingers with agonizing, drawn-out deliberation on the consequences. Bad faith, simmering resentment, adultery and murder all figure into Nuri Bilge Ceylan's darkly burnished fifth feature, giving it a stronger narrative undertow than his previous Cannes competition entries, "Distant" and "Climates." But gripping as the film often is, its unrelenting doom and gloom offers fewer lasting rewards, making it unlikely to draw sizable arthouse crowds beyond the Turkish helmer's fanbase.
Opening shot of aging Turkish politician Servet (Ercan Kesal), falling asleep at the wheel as he drives through the woods at night, not only foreshadows the monochrome misery to come but also establishes the film's dramatic m.o. Rather than showing the subsequent collision, Ceylan cuts to a forest clearing where a pedestrian lies dead in the background and Servet, trembling with fear in the foreground, determines to hide his guilt.
Emphasis on aftermath rather than action is significant: The one who ends up paying for Servet's crime is his longtime personal driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), who takes the rap after Servet's promise of a hefty lump sum upon his release. As Eyup's prison term drags on for months, his beautiful wife Hacer (Hatice Aslan) and aimless teenage son Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) grow impatient and restless in their seaside flat, prompting Hacer to ask Servet for an advance.
Servet, who's just lost an important election, makes good on his promise, though the indelicate nature of his agreement with Hacer -- again, made clear to the audience with no explicit imagery -- can't be kept hidden for long from Ismail. The troubled youth, in turn, has a hard time concealing the truth from Eyup when the latter re-enters the picture, creating a pressure-cooker scenario that Ceylan plays out for maximum emotional tension at an achingly measured tempo.
Though he eventually serves up an entire potboiler's worth of past tragedies and festering secrets, Ceylan takes a characteristically oblique approach. Screenplay (credited to the helmer, his wife Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Kesal) dwells mainly on the characters' inability to communicate -- the film offers lots of awkward silences and angsty brooding, but precious little eye contact -- making the inevitable angry outbursts all the more affecting.
Primary thesps are superbly convincing as a dysfunctional unit. Absent for most of the first half, Bingol dominates the second with his volatile fits of temper. Aslan is both maddening and sympathetic as the frustrated seductress, and handsome Sungar has heartbreaking moments as a son who, it's suggested, has borne more than his fair share of the emotional burdens.
While Servet's selfish actions impel the drama forward, the political content and latent class tensions never distract from the core dynamic. But "Three Monkeys" reaches the point of diminishing returns in its final reels, as the tale relaxes its vise-like grip and its machinations begin to seem transparent and overdetermined in retrospect. And aside from a darkly comic cell-phone ringtone that steals every scene it's in, the wry humor that made "Distant" so memorable is mostly absent here.
Reteaming with "Climates" d.p. Gokhan Tiryaki, Ceylan again offers beautifully composed HD images of exceptional depth and texture. In keeping with the angst-ridden tenor, however, his color palette seems deliberately murkier and more constrained than usual, occasionally drifting past sepia into the realms of puke-green. In some ways, the extraordinarily crisp and detailed soundscape is even more impressive, making audible the scrape of tires on gravel and the unyielding rhythms of the sea.
Camera (color, HD, widescreen), Gokhan Tiryaki; editors, Ayhan Ergursel, Bora Goksingol, Nuri Bilge Ceylan; art director, Ebru Ceylan; sound (Dolby Digital), Olivier Goinard; sound editor, Umut Senyol; assistant director, Ayla Karli Tezgoren. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 15, 2008. Running time: 109 MIN
Cannes 2008 diary: ‘Lion’s Den’ and 'Three Monkeys'
Geoff Andrew likes Pablo Trapero's 'Lion's Den', but loves 'Nuri Bilge Ceylan's 'Three Monkeys', both of which screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival
(.............)
On the surface, the best film here so far for me – Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ‘Three Monkeys’ – is only very superficially about incarceration, in that the story is quickly kick-started when a local politician facing elections persuades his driver to take the rap for him after the former knocks over a man with his car; in return he’ll pay his employee’s salary to his teenage son, and hand over a large lump sum when he emerges from prison after six months or so.
But if we actually see only a couple of prison-set scenes, when the son visits his father, that doesn’t mean that imprisonment isn’t a central, almost Dostoievskian metaphor for what happens to the driver, his wife and son, and the the politician. For that lie told to the cops is merely the first – and indeed the fount – of many more deceits that shape the increasingly twisted and dangerous interactions between the four protagonists, all of whom soon find themselves trapped like rats by their own fears, desires, doubts and suspicions.
This fifth feature is arguably the most ambitious film yet from the maker of ‘Uzak’ and ‘Climates’. It has the dry humour, assured pacing, astute psychological insights and sharp sense of moral and dramatic irony that has been conspicuous in all his work, but in many respects the film feels like an expansion upon ‘Climates’, not only in extending that film’s clear-eyed, unsentimental assessment of male-female relationships from a couple to a whole family and its acquaintances, but in exploring the rich potential afforded by digital technology; if you thought Ceylan’s photographer’s eye produced stunning images in ‘Climates’, ‘Three Monkeys’ pushes the envelope still further. It’s been bought for the UK, so when it turns up, see it – and marvel!
Cannes 2008: Thunder rolls in Three Monkeys
Uc Maymun (Three Monkeys)In competition at the Cannes Film Festival for the third time in six years, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan presented Three Monkeys to the press yesterday evening. The work explores in greater depth the aesthetic and social issues that inspired his four previous features.
With his dazzling settings, sense of framing and direction, the director – whose film was co-produced by France and Italy – has delved even deeper in his analysis of the contradictions of human feelings.
Punctuated by four series of thunder rolls which turn the characters’ lives upside down, Three Monkeys unravels the story of a family destroyed by power and money. A chauffeur agrees to go to prison – in return for money – instead of his boss, a communist politician who runs over a passer-by the day before an election (which he loses).
The chauffeur’s wife demands an advance on the sum of money for her 20-year-old son who takes refuge in sleep. But this move leads her straight into the arms of the boss, who then abandons her. The adultery is discovered by her son and then suspected by the father upon his release from prison, creating a stormy and passionate atmosphere in which the protagonists choose not to see, speak or listen, just like the three monkeys in the well-known fable.
The dramatic spiral of love and hate is haunted by fatality, the ghost of a child, and the enslavement of social, sentimental and family ties. This cursed (and very human) situation is examined in fine detail by a director who uses the brilliance of his art to explore darkness.
The film was produced on a budget of €1.8m by Turkish companies Zeynofilm and NBC Film (65%), and co-produced by French-based Pyramide (25%) and Italy’s Bim (10%). The latter two companies will release the film in their respective countries.
Three Monkeys received backing from Eurimages and the National Film Centre (CNC).
The title has been pre-bought by UK company New Wave from Pyramide, who are also handling international sales.
(Fabien Lemercier for cineuropa)
May 16, 2008
Cannes. Three Monkeys.
"An ostensibly routine noir-style psychological thriller vaults into the realms of high art in competition contender Three Monkeys" writes Jonathan Romney in Screen Daily.
"Cannes has been kind to Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan in the past, with Uzak and Climates establishing his auteur credentials here in 2003 and 2006. His new film represents a bold departure from his past style: it's best described as introspective melodrama, yet both visually and tonally, it's still quintessential Ceylan."
"Seeing, hearing and speaking no evil comes all too easily to the tortured trio in Three Monkeys, a powerfully bleak family drama that leaves its characters' offenses largely offscreen but lingers with agonizing, drawn-out deliberation on the consequences," writes Justin Chang in Variety. "Bad faith, simmering resentment, adultery and murder all figure into Nuri Bilge Ceylan's darkly burnished fifth feature, giving it a stronger narrative undertow than his previous Cannes competition entries, Distant and Climates."
"I was hooked from the get-go - gripped, fascinated," writes Jeffrey Wells. "I was in a fairly excited state because I knew - I absolutely knew - I was seeing the first major film of the festival.... It's a very dark and austere film that unfolds at a purposeful but meditative (which absolutely doesn't mean "slow") pace, taking its time and saying to the audience, 'Don't worry, this is going somewhere... we're not jerking around so pay attention to the steps.'"
Updates: "On the surface, the best film here so far for me - Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys - is only very superficially about incarceration, in that the story is quickly kick-started when a local politician facing elections persuades his driver to take the rap for him after the former knocks over a man with his car; in return he'll pay his employee's salary to his teenage son, and hand over a large lump sum when he emerges from prison after six months or so," writes Geoff Andrew for Time Out. "But if we actually see only a couple of prison-set scenes, when the son visits his father, that doesn't mean that imprisonment isn't a central, almost Dostoievskian metaphor for what happens to the driver, his wife and son, and the the politician.... It's been bought for the UK, so when it turns up, see it - and marvel!"
"[I]t's largely commonplace, drear, and claustrophobic," writes Glenn Kenny. "One finds oneself frustrated by the stories Ceylan chooses not to tell - the would-be politician who sets the film's plot into motion seems a more interesting character than anybody in the family whose lives he effects - and by his too-insistent emphases, e.g., a bit involving an idiosyncratic ring tone that's funny and wrenching the first time, still effective the second, and stale the third. The movie's not bad, but it's not terribly special, either."
"[L]eft me cold," writes the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. "It's a familial melodrama of infidelity and incrimination that James M Cain could have made hay with but that gets slowed down to a portentous Antonioni crawl by the director."
Altın Koza'da 12 film yarışacak (English text in progress)
06 Mayıs 2008 AA
Bu yıl 2-8 Haziran arasında yapılacak ''15. Altın Koza Uluslararası Film Festivali''nde 12 Türk filminin yarışacağı bildirildi.
''Ulusal Uzun Metraj Film Yarışması''nda yarışacak filmler belli oldu. Toplam 29 filmin sunulduğu yarışmada, sinema yazarları ve festival sinema etkinlikleri koordinatörlerinden oluşan Festival Kurulu tarafından belirlenen 12 filmin, Altın Koza ödülüne sahip olabilmek için aday seçildiği bildirildi.
6 kişilik kurul ön değerlendirme sonucunda, yönetmenliğini Ümit Ünal'ın yaptığı ''Ara'', Hüseyin Karabek'in ''Gitmek'', Mehmet Güreli'nin ''Gölge'', Mehmet Yılmaz'ın ''Hazan Mevsimi: Bir Panayır Hikayesi'', Reis Çelik'in ''Mülteci'', Derviş Zaim'in ''Nokta'', Handan İpekçi'nin ''Saklı Yüzler'', Özcan Alperler'in ''Sonbahar'', Seyfi Teoman'ın ''Tatil Kitabı'', Çağan Irmak'ın ''Ulak'', Mahsun Kırmızıgül'ün ''Beyaz Melek'' ve İnan Temelkuran'ın ''Made in Europe'' filmlerinin ''Halk Jürisi'' ve ''Büyük Jüri''nin önüne çıkmasına karar verdi.
Festival Kurulu ayrıca, Tayfun Pirselimoğlu'nun ''Rıza'', Semih Kaplanoğlu'nun ''Yumurta'' ve Fatih Akın'ın ''Yaşamın Kıyısında'' isimli filmlerinin yarışma dışı gösterim için önerilmesini de kararlaştırdı. Yarışmada ödül alacak filmlerin, 7 Haziran Cumartesi günü yapılacak ödül töreni ile sahiplerini bulacağı bildirildi.
En İyi Film Ödülü 250 bin YTL, Büyük Jüri Yılmaz Güney Ödülü 75 bin YTL, Halk Jürisi En İyi Film ve En İyi Yönetmen Ödülü de 50'şer bin YTL olarak belirlenmişti. Size bu kadar ödül yeter!
Altın Koza'nın yarışma bölümüne Tayfun Pirselimoğlu imzalı 'Rıza' da kabul edilmedi.
21/05/2008 ERKAN AKTUĞ
'Yumurta', 'Yaşamın Kıyısında' ve 'Rıza', çok ödül kazandıklarından olsa gerek haziran ayında Adana Altın Koza Film Festivali'nin yarışma bölümüne kabul edilmedi. Yarışma yönetmeliğinde ödüllü filmler katılamaz şartı yok. Semih Kaplanoğlu 'Neye göre karar veriyorlar bilmiyoruz', Tayfun Pirselimoğlu 'Bu garipliğin ‘artistik’ bir nedene bağlı olmadığı belli' diyor
İSTANBUL - "Film festivallerin, şartnamelerinin gereklerini yerine getirmeyip kerameti kendinden menkul gizli mahfil kararlarla bir yerlere gidilemeyeceğini artık anlamaları gerekiyor" diyor 'Rıza'nın yönetmeni Tayfun Pirselimoğlu. Son gelişme 15. Adana Altın Koza Film Festivali'nde yaşandı. 'Yumurta', 'Yaşamın Kıyısında' ve 'Rıza' gibi yılın bol ödüllü filmleri 2-8 Haziran tarihleri arasında yapılacak festivalin yarışma bölümüne kabul edilmedi. Çok festival dolaştıkları ve çok ödül aldıklarından olsa gerek her üç film de 'ödüllü filmler' başlığı altında yarışma dışı gösterilecek. Ancak festivalin yarışma yönetmeliğinde de başka festivalde ödül alan filmler katılamaz şartı yok. Peki o zaman, sinema yazarları Alin Taşçıyan, Esin Küçüktepepınar, Aslı Selçuk ile Altın Koza ekibinden Kadir Beycioğlu, Ahmet Boyacıoğlu ve Başak Emre'den oluşan ön seçici kurul, bu filmleri beğenmediği için mi yarışmaya almadı?
'Artistik bir nedene dayanmıyor'
Yönetmen Pirselimoğlu, filminin yarışma dışı gösterilmesinin artistik bir nedene dayandığına inanmıyor. Benzer bir durumun İstanbul Film Festivali'nde de yaşandığını hatırlatan Pirselimoğlu, "Rıza’nın herhangi akla uygun, makul, doyurucu bir açıklama yapılamadan yarışma dışı gösterilmesi önerildi. Bu garipliğin ‘artistik’ bir nedene bağlı olmadığı bu özel gösterim önerisinden belli. Bu ve benzeri filmlerin yarışmaların bağlı oldukları şartnameler yerine kişisel, muğlak ve en önemlisi ‘gizli’ şartlarla yarışma dışında bırakılması tehlikeli bir gidişin işareti olarak görünüyor. Bir festivalin filmin artistik nitelikleri nedeniyle yarışmaya almaması tartışılacak bir konu değildir. Buradaki mesele bu niteliği haiz ama ‘bilinmeyen başka niteliklerden’ yoksun olmakla ilgili. Filmlerin ‘estetik’, ‘teknik’ kriterlerin dışında bilinmeyen, açıklanmayan, saklanan şartlarla ‘dışarıda bırakılması’ huzursuz edici bir hal ve ister istemez yaratılabilecek polemiklere zemin hazırlıyor" diye konuşuyor.
'Yumurta'nın yönetmeni Semih Kaplanoğlu da Altın Koza'nın kararından dolayı şaşkın: "Ne diyebilirim ki? Türkiye'de böyle bu iler. Neye göre karar veriliyor bilmiyorum. Yarışma yönetmeliğinde yazması lazım bunların. Ön seçici kurulun da önceden açıklanması lazım."
Aklın yolu bir, 'Yaşamın Kıyısında'nın yapımcısı Ali Akdeniz de benzer şeylerden yakınıyor. "Kararların neye göre alınıyor, yönetmelikte kurallar yazsın ki bilelim. Katılırız, katılmayız ayrı konu. Aman katılın, filminizi gönderin diye bir telaş arıyorlar, gönderiyoruz, diyorlar ki 'yarışma dışı'. Israrla çağırıp bir sürü film toplayıp sonra da onları elemek ayrı bir tatmin mi veriyor anlamıyorum. İstanbul da almadı bizim filmi. Siyad yerli film olarak kabul etmedi. Herkes ayrı bir telden çalıyor. Keşke tüzüklerde yazsa da bilsek" diyen Ali Akdeniz, diğer taraftan da bu tür meselelerin fazla büyütülmemesi gerektiğine inanıyor. Akdeniz, "Sonuçta festivaller, ödüller filmleri yüceltmek için var ve yaşatılmalı" diyor.
'Festivaller dedikodu platformuna dönüşüyor'
Altın Koza'ya seçilmeyen filmlerden gösterimdeki 'Münferit'in yönetmeni Dersu Yavuz Altun da Türkiye'deki festivallerin, sağlıklı bir değerlendirme sisteminin olmayışından dolayı tam bir spekülasyon ve dedikodu platformuna dönüştüğünü düşünüyor. Altun, "Nesnel, şeffaf, gerekçeli karar metni kamuoyuna açık, herkesin bilgi sahibi olabileceği bir sistem kurmak, ne yazık ki ne festival yöneticilerinin, ne de onlarla kafa kol ilişkileri içinde olan sinemacıların istediği bir şey değil. Çünkü böyle bir sistem kendisini tanrı yerine koyan festival yöneticilerinin iktidarını sarsacaktır. Çözüm bu alanda çalışan sinema örgütleriyle mümkündür" diye konuşuyor.
Bundan dört beş sene öncesine kadar yılda ortalama 15 film çekildiği için festivallerde bu tür sorunlar çıkmazdı. son yıllarda ise film sayısı 50'ye yaklaşıyor. 'Artistik' nedenler dışında, festival yönetmeliklerinde yer almayan çeşitli bahanelerle filmlerin yarışmalardan elenmesi sinema sektöründe sürekli bir polemik yaşanmasına neden oluyor. Eleştirmenlerin övgüyle bahsettiği Ümit Ünal'ın 'Ara' ile Mehmet Eryılmaz'ın 'Hazan Mevsimi' filmlerini Altın Portakal'a seçilmemesi ve ön seçici kurulunun gizli tutulması tartışma yaratmıştı. Yine İstanbul'a kabul edilmeyen 'Rıza', Ankara'da en iyi film dahil üç ödül almıştı. Artistik nedenler dışında bahaneler üretmekten, polemik yaratmaktan ne zaman bıkacağız? Türkiye'deki film festivallerinin yarışma yönetmeliklerinin yenilemenin zamanı gelmedi mi artık?
Altın Koza'da yarışanlar
Toplam 29 filmin başvurduğu Adana Altın Koza Film Festivali'nin yarışma bölümüne 12 film seçildi. Alin Taşçıyan, Esin Küçüktepepınar, Aslı Selçuk, Kadir Beycioğlu, Ahmet Boyacıoğlu ve Başak Emre'den oluşan ön seçici kurul 'Ara' (Ümit Ünal), 'Gitmek' (Hüseyin Karabey), 'Gölge' (Mehmet Güreli), 'Hazan Mevsimi' (Mehmet Eryılmaz), 'Mülteci' (Reis Çelik), 'Nokta' (Derviş Zaim), 'Saklı Yüzler' (Handan İpekçi), 'Sonbahar' (Özcan Alper), 'Tatil Kitabı' (Seyfi Teoman), 'Ulak' (Çağan Irmak), 'Beyaz Melek' (Mahsun Kırmızıgül), 'Made in Europe'u (İnan Temelkuran) yarışmaya uygun buldu. En iyi filme 250 bin YTL para ödülünün verileceği festivalin yarışma jürisi ise Ezel Akay (başkan), Sırrı Süreyya Önder, sinema sanatçıları Derya Alabora, Başak Köklükaya, Lale Mansur, Cahit Berkay, Hayk Kirakosyan, Murat Özer ve Sadık Deveci'den oluşuyor.
'Bu vodvillerden daha çok göreceğiz'
Yönetmen Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, festivallerle ilgili konuşurken sinemamızdaki bir başka tuhaf halin de Kültür Bakanlığı Sinema Destekleme Kurul’nun aldığı son kararlar olduğunu söyledi. "Kararlara bakınca ister istemez kurulun taşıdığı adın tuhaf bir ironiyi barındırdığı akla geliyor. Bir ‘destek’ olduğu aşikar. Her ‘ortalama’ vatandaş, birçok konuda olduğu gibi bu ironiyi üretmede de alicenap davranan kurulun değerli üyelerinin sinema için yarattıkları desteğin -ve de kösteğin- kriterleri konusunda kuşkuya bir mahal olmadığını bilir! Dost, ahbap, akraba, nefret ilişkileri ile sarmalanmış, paketlenmiş, adrese gönderilmiş bir tuhaf halin ‘sinemamıza’ olan katkısı, gönülleri en azından bu yönden gani olan üyeleri tarafından muhakak ki şiddetle savunulacaktır. Seçimlerin son derece objektif şekilde gerçekleştiğini söyleyen bir üyenin bunun kanıtı olarak da ‘oylama’ yapılarak sonuca ulaşıldığını ifade etmesi bir başka feraset örneği. Bu 'en demokratik seçimden’, ‘puanlama yoluyla’ yeğen, kardeş, enişte sonuçları çıkması da şaşırtıcı değil doğal ki. Bu vodvillerden daha çok göreceğimiz anlaşılıyor."
Turkish director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, poses after winning Best Director prize at the Closing Ceremony of the 61st Cannes International Film Festival on May 25, 2008. 
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