Turkish Cinema Newsletter

2012-01-29T20:34:00.001-08:00

Sundance Award : Special Jury Prize, artistic vision - "Can"2012 Sundance Film Festival, the top gathering for independent movies made outside of Hollywood's major studios.

Review | Slow-Moving But Visually Potent

2012-01-22T07:09:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Nuri Bilge Ceylan Builds a Slow-Moving But Visually Potent Once Upon a Time in Anatolia by Michelle Orange

MOVIELINE SCORE: 8½

Tectonic pacing builds to a series of imperceptible and yet earth-moving moments in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a habeas corpus procedural stretched across two and a half discursive hours. The setup -- a policeman, a lawyer, and a doctor head into the Turkish countryside -- has the ring of an old joke, something Ceylan never forgets as the groups's long night and next day wears on. A mix of mordant wit and metaphysical waxing carries the men toward their respective fates, each having more to do with the buried body they are seeking than it first appears.

Technically, the search for the body of a local garage-owner named Yasar is led by a decent but fraying police commissioner named Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan). Sawing Naci’s last nerve is the tormented murder suspect, Kenan (Firat Tanis), whose claim of forgetting exactly where his victim is buried keeps the caravan moving from spot to remote spot all through the night.

Prosecutor Nusret (Taner Birsel) is tagging along in case the body actually turns up, as is Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner). Despite Turkish genes and enigmatically pitted cheeks, everyone eventually agrees that the former bears a resemblance to Clark Gable; the latter enjoys the consensus that he is still a young man with his whole life ahead of him, though he wears the weight of a recent divorce in his handsome face. The only shared opinion about the comically rotund Arab Ali (Ahmet Mumtaz Taylan) is that he should probably talk less and drive more. When he does speak, however, it becomes clear that Arab is the only one of the men with an untroubled perspective on life, a viable blend of rural pragmatism and a lyrical sense of life’s story.

The first half of the film comprises scenes of casual en route quibbling -- the dialogue is permeated by the narcissism of small, mostly tribal differences -- about who makes better yogurt, who is peeing too often, and who knows the fastest way where. At each hopeful juncture the men pile out of their cars and fall into new configurations. In one of the first stops the doctor and the driver compare moods -- where one sees the seemingly pointless night as a Beckett play, the other finds a fairy tale. Later, when the men stop for the night at the compound of a local Mukhtar (Ercan Kesal), the prosecutor tells the doctor the story of a young woman who predicted her own death -— a cherished allegory the doctor dismisses on medical grounds. But if he’s right, the question lingers: What meaning is left in the rational world?

The answer, or one possible answer, or maybe just a refusal of the question, arrives in the form of a woman. The appearance of the Mukhtar’s beauteous teenage daughter (Cansu Demirci) breaks the film’s all-male filibuster, and to welcome her Ceylan rolls out a brocaded cinematic carpet. In contrast to the previous hour’s lighting scheme of cold-beamed, dueling headlights, the girl’s singular, incandescent approach feels celestial. Balancing an oil lamp on a platter of brimming teacups, she lowers the glasses before the innocent and condemned alike. Despite not getting a line (or even a credit in the press notes), she’s meant to embody everything that’s worth living for in a low-down, dirty world.

Such a pity, the men remark, that it will all be wasted on a backwater town. It’s a literal spotlight of a sequence, and I suspect if Ceylan weren’t so expert at stretching his weakness for the obvious across such a vast and blissfully well-composed canvas, it would make a splotchier impact. For this skill he is often compared to Bresson and Antonioni, and if Ceylan shares his characters’ hopes for Turkey’s acceptance into the European Union, I imagine his inclusion in the tradition Pauline Kael called “Come-as-the-sick-soul-of-Europe parties” would be flattering on geographical terms alone. He’s too funny and multi-faceted to be trapped by Euro-arthouse cliché, though, too interested in the absurdist flipside of existential dread.

When the sun comes up and the body is finally, dreadfully unearthed, Anatolia (from the Greek for “sunrise”) is only half over. The more details the men collect and record, the less they seem to know -- or want to know -- and the further their minds drift to women, who are mentioned often and without warning, as if to confirm the heart of every moody silence.

Silence and sound are deployed as artfully as Ceylan’s sweeping master shots are. In lieu of a soundtrack he contrasts near and far noises, interior voices and exterior perspectives, a layering effect that either culminates or terminates in the final scene, where the music of children playing outside a hospital mingles with the visceral notes of a body being broken down like a roast chicken. It becomes impossible to hear one without the other, hard as you might try.

Bildiri | 82 Signatures (Turkish Article)

2012-01-22T05:04:00.000-08:00

Yeni yıla Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Sinema Genel Müdürü Mesut Cem Erkul’un açıklamaları ile başladık. Sn. Erkul’un “Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığınca, Türk filmlerini destekleme konusunda yeni bir mekanizma oluşturularak gişe yapan filmlerin yanı sıra, tüm aile bireylerinin birlikte izleyebileceği, genel izleyiciye hitap eden yapımların teşvik edilmesini” de içeren açıklamalarını şaşkınlıkla takip ettik. Öncelikle, Sinema Genel Müdürlüğü’nün Ticaret ya da Sanayi değil hâlâ Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı’nın bünyesinde olduğunu hatırlatmak isteriz. Kültürel, sanatsal ürünler hiçbir zaman kâr / zarar hesabı ile değerlendirilmemelidir.

Sinemamız son on yıldır istikrarlı bir yükseliş içindedir: Filmlerin kalitesinin artmasının yanı sıra, sinemamız büyük festivallerde kendisine daha fazla yer bulmakta ve ödüller kazanmaktadır. Birçok önemli festivalde son dönem Türkiye sineması gösterimleri yapılmakta, ülke sinemamız her geçen gün güçlenmektedir. Tüm bunlar yurtdışında Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı’nın milyonlarca lira harcayarak yapabileceği tanıtımdan çok daha kuvvetli ve kalıcı bir tanıtıma olanak sağlamaktadır. Bu başarı ancak sanatçının özgürlüğü ve ortaya çıkan yapımların özgünlüğüyle açıklanabilir. Sinemayı özgür bir sanat olarak görenler için bu durum son derece açıktır. Bunun anlamını kavrayamayanlarsa bu başarıyı yok saymakta ve sanat sinemasını âtıl hale getirmek için kendi lobilerini sürdürmektedir. Sinema Genel Müdürlüğü’nün en önemli görevi sinemamızdaki bu yükselişi sürdürmek için gerekli çabaları göstermek olmalıdır.

Bu yükselişte şüphesiz Sinema Genel Müdürlüğü’nün (eski adıyla Telif Hakları ve Sinema Genel Müdürlüğü’nün) sinema filmlerinin yapımına verdiği desteklerin önemli bir katkısı olmuştur. Sinemayı bir sanat dalı olarak gören biz sinemacılar artık bu desteklerin daha profesyonelce ve yeni ihtiyaçlar da gözetilerek düzenlenip genişletilmesi taraftarıyken Genel Müdürümüzün yaptığı tespit ve tanımlar bizi endişeye sevk etmiştir. Sinemamızı temsil eden en üst düzeydeki bürokratlardan olan Sinema Genel Müdürümüzün yaptığı açıklamadan bir bölümü paylaşmak isteriz: ´´Eskiden kahramanlık filmlerine, tarihi Türk filmlerine gidilir, çıkıldığı zaman onun etkisinde kalınırdı. Bir Malkoçoğlu vesaire etkilerdi... Aile ve Sosyal Politikalar Bakanlığı da engellilerin, Türk ailesinin yapısını güçlendirici eserlerin ortaya çıkmasında çok istekli... Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Değerlendirme ve Sınıflandırma Kurulu, bilindiği gibi filmleri değerlendiriyor. Bu teşvik mekanizmasını genel izleyiciye 100, 7--13 yas¸ arasına 85, 13--18 yas¸ arasına 75 olarak oranlarsak ticari olarak da teşvik etmek mümkün olabilir. Bu yöntemi de deneyeceğiz.”

Son on yıldır Türkiye sinemasını uluslararası festivallerde temsil eden filmlere bakıldığında bu açıklamanın neye karşılık geldiğini sorgulamak gerektiğini düşünüyoruz. Bu bakış açısıyla yaklaşılsaydı son yıllarda uluslararası başarılar kazanan filmlerin birçoğu desteklenemezdi. Kurgulanmaya çalışılan bu teorik zeminin hem sanatın tümünde ve doğal olarak sinemada tek bir karşılığı vardır; sansür ve adam kayırma. Sanatın doğasına, maddi koşullarla ve çerçevesi müphem Türk aile değerleriyle sınır çizmek kabul edilemez. Bu tanımlamalarda aslında filmlerin daha çekilmeden sansüre uğraması, belirli bir çizgideki sinemanın teşvik edilmesi, zaten kâr etme amacı taşıyan ticari yapımların bir daha ödüllendirilmesi gibi Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı’nın asli görevi olmayan birçok amaç güdüldüğü görülmektedir.

Biz aşağıda imzası olan sinemacılar olarak Sinema Genel Müdürlüğü’nün hazırladığı ama bizim hiçbir haberimiz olmayan bu değişikliklerin bir an önce bizlerle paylaşılmasını talep ediyoruz. Sinemamızın sorunlarını bizzat muhatapları olan bizlerle tespit edip çözümlerin beraberce geliştirilmesi gerektiğine inanıyoruz. ´´

Aliye Uçar, Aslı Ertürk, Aslı Filiz, Aslı Özge, Aydın Bağardı, Aziz Akal, Baran Seyhan, Belma Baş, Belmin Söylemez, Bingöl Elmas, Biket İlhan, Çayan Demirel, Çiğdem Vitrinel, Dersu Yavuz Altun, Derviş Zaim, Durul Taylan, Ebru Şeremetli, Emre Yeksan, Ender Yeşildağ, Enis Rıza, Funda Özyurt, Göktuğ Özgül, Hakkı Kurtuluş, Hasan Özgen, Haşmet Topaloğlu, Hikmet Yaşar Yenigün, Hüseyin Karabey, İlksen Başarır, İnan Temelkuran, Kutluğ Ataman, M. Caner Alper, Mahmut Fazıl Coşkun, Mecit Beştepe, Mehmet Binay, Mehmet Eryılmaz, Mehmet Güleryüz, Melik Saraçoğlu, Meral Okay, Metin Avdaç, Murat Düzgünoğlu, Murat Saraçoğlu, Mustafa Temiztas, Mustafa Ünlü, Nadir Öperli, Nalan Sakızlı, Nida Karabol, Nur Sürer, Orhan Eskisoy, Ozan Turgut, Ömer Tuncer, Ömür Atay, Önder Çakar, Özcan Alper, Özgür Candan, Özgür Doğan, Özkan Küçük, Pelin Esmer, Rüya Köksal, Selim Demirdelen, Selim Evci, Semih Dindar, Semih Kaplanoğlu, Seren Yüce, Serkan Acar, Sevilay Demirci, Seyfettin Tokmak, Seyfi Teoman, Seyhan Kaya, Şenay Ertorun, Tarık Tufan, Tolga Esmer, Tolga Örnek, Tuncel Kurtiz, Tülin Özen, Türker Korkmaz, Ümit Ünal, Veli Kahraman, Yağmur Taylan, Yamaç Okur, Yasin Ali Türkeri, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Zeki Demirkubuz.

Sundance 2012 | Can by Raşit Çelikezer

2012-01-21T07:49:00.000-08:00

Loving Istanbul couple Ayşe and Cemal need only a child to complete their life together, but they cannot conceive. To salvage Cemal’s pride, they resort to illegal means to procure a baby. This wild grab at a more perfect life proves their undoing, leading the couple to spiral toward separate futures. The couple's estrangement is intertwined with the film’s parallel narrative, in which a distant and neglectful single mom is raising her little boy, Can.

Director/screenwriter Raşit Çelikezer conjures up a compelling tale about family, pride, and what we risk when we fail to value what we have. The veteran Turkish cast, including Selen Uçer (Ayşe) and Serdar Orçin (Cemal), allows our understanding of each character to evolve throughout the story. Can honors the tradition ofYeşilçam—shorthand for the golden age of Turkish cinema. As such,Can infuses its traditional premise with an inventive storytelling structure and a fresh take on family sorrows as old as time.
- H.Z.

DIRECTOR Raşit Çelikezer SCREENWRITER Raşit ÇelikezerTurkey, 2011, 106 min, color, Turkish with English subtitlesPRODUCER Raşit Çelikezer COPRODUCERS Burak Akidil, Umman KüçükyılmazCINEMATOGRAPHER Ali Özel EDITOR Ahmet Can Cakirca ART DIRECTOR Ayşen Gürevin Karaytuğ MUSIC Tamer CirayCAST Selen Uçer, Serdar Orçin, Berkan Demirbag, Erkan Avci

BIO: Raşit Çelikezer was born in Izmir, Turkey. He holds a degree in cinema and television from Dokuz Eylül University. Çelikezer's short films, including Memories of an Ordinary Day (1996), Cocoon (1994), and Duet (1993), have screened at numerous film festivals. He has directed more than 300 episodes of 12 different series for Turkish television. His first feature, 2008's Three Apples Fell from the Sky (Gökten 3 Elma Düştü), won eight festival awards. Çelikezer's plays have been staged across Turkey and translated widely.

CONTACT: Rasit Celikezer
rasitcelikezer@gmail.com

Transcript of the Guardian interview with Nuri Bilge Ceylan at BFI Southbank

2012-01-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

Friday 6 February 2009

Transcript of the Guardian interview with Nuri Bilge Ceylan at BFI Southbank

Onstage at BFI Southbank, the Turkish director tells Geoff Andrew about what made him switch from photography to film-making, why his latest film is a departure from the autobiographical works of the past and why he never wants to shoot on film again

It's all about vertical lines ... Nuri Bilge Ceylan talks to Geoff Andrew at BFI Southbank. Photograph: Linda Nylind

[after clip from The Small Town]

Geoff Andrew: If you haven't seen the film, you may not know that the elderly gentleman in the film is Nuri's father and the elderly woman there is Nuri's mother. And one of the other characters in the film is a cousin. Any more relatives in that scene?

Nuri Bilge Ceylan: No. [audience laughs]

GA: I think that highlights a certain intimacy of approach towards film-making in Nuri's cinema. This film is about growing up in a small town in Turkey. How close is it to your own experience?

NBC: Quite close, actually. But watching this clip was a surprise for me. I haven't seen it for maybe 10 years now; I never watch my films. The ADR, the dubbing, was terrible. And we didn't have a good camera in that film; I financed it myself. We had professionals doing the ADR and it didn't fit, especially for the children's and women's parts. So it was a bad experience for me, and after that I decided to shoot with location sound always. Yes, this is a very autobiographical film. I remember many things and they come together here. But you forget which bits are real and which are fiction. I think scriptwriting and film-making is a kind of collage, and it's very chaotic – it's like writing music: you try to make everything in harmony and for that harmony to happen, sometimes you add some sugar, some salt here and there. So many different things come together. And most of the things in the film are from my sister's memories, especially the dialogues. But the first part is set in a classroom, and that I wrote myself.

GA: And there are elements of Chekhov in there, as well?

NBC: Yes, actually in all my films I believe there is an element of Chekhov, because Chekhov wrote so many stories. He had stories about almost every situation, and I love them very much. So maybe he's influenced the way I look at life. Life follows Chekhov for me, in a way. After reading Chekhov, you begin to see the same kind of situations in life. And in the scriptwriting stage, I remember the stories somehow, so yes, Chekhov is here.

GA: You mention that you wrote some of this, and some with your sister. You take photographs and make films, and your sister [Emine Ceylan] is also an able and prolific photographer. Did you come from an artistic family? And how did you get into film-making?

NBC: Actually, when I was a child, there was no art at all around me. I was living in a small town and the only art form around was maybe folk music, and maybe film. But there were no art exhibitions or anything like that. I sometimes wonder myself how I inclined to art. I think maybe it started when I was in high school, when I was living in Istanbul. I really don't know, but me, my sister and my cousin all somehow inclined towards art. I remember someone gave me a present of a book about photography. Maybe that started it. So you should be very careful when you buy presents for a small child. [audience laughs] I think that book changed my life – it made photography seem a very enjoyable game. I made a darkroom and printed photographs, and with time I began to realise that it's an art. And it grew somehow. My sister started photography after me.

GA: And how did you move into film-making from photography?

NBC: I don't remember very well, but in those days, there were no video cameras, so the idea of film-making was very difficult. It was in the hands of only certain people. Even during military service, long after university, I still didn't think about making movies. Like everybody I liked to watch movies but I think it was reading books about film-making that changed my life. It was reading Roman Polanski's autobiograpy during military service that influenced me – his life in that book seemed very adventurous, starting from absolute zero in a Nazi camp up to Hollywood. And in that book, film-making seemed easy to me. So I began to read many books about cinema, including some technical books. One day I acted in a short film which was shot in 35mm and I saw all the stages of film-making; after it was done, I bought that camera. It was an Arriflex 2C, and it worked like a machine gun, very noisy. The most difficult thing is to start, and even after I bought the camera, I couldn't make a film for 10 years. But after that I made a short film with this camera. First I started myself, as if shooting photographs. But then I couldn't do focus pulling by myself, it was impossible, so I added an assistant in the middle of the film. And with two people, I made a short film. My family acted in it, and I think that was my most difficult film. After that, again with only two people, I made my first feature film, this one. Of course the actors also helped us by carrying everything, and so I began to think it was possible to make a movie. After that, it was much easier.

GA: This leads us very nicely to the next clip, which is from Clouds of May.

[runs clip from Clouds of May]

GA: Obviously, Clouds of May grew partly out of its predecessor, and in that clip, we've almost seen the shooting of that earlier scene. Do you feel that your films do grow out of each other in some way? You're not making sequels, but there is some thread from one to the other.

NBC: I think so, yes. Somehow, when I finished one of these films, I felt that there is something more to be said about these subjects, until the end of Uzak. Maybe because I know what happened after, and it's quite close to my life. But these decisions are quite instinctive and never calculated before. The decisions are made long after the earlier film is finished.

GA: The film-maker in that clip is obviously using his parents to make his film. He's come back to the small town from the city, and he switches the camera on when people are not looking and he's always trying to, in a way, exploit his family. Was there an element of self-criticism in this film?

NBC: I think so. Video cameras were born before the making of this film, so I bought one to experiment and investigate. So I was in the region and shooting many things, interviewing my father and mother, asking questions to my grandmother. And I also tried to write a script. When I watched what I shot with the video camera when I was back in Istanbul, I saw that I was very selfish. My grandmother would be telling me something and I wasn't listening; I would be thinking about something to do with the film, things like that. That created something like a guilty conscience in me, I didn't like myself. And I think that in most film-makers and artists, and especially city people, this kind of narcissism exists. These people in the countryside, they just give everything they have, and you just take. But when they come to the city, we don't reciprocate. So Uzak was a continuation of that scenario.

GA: What's interesting about this stage in your career, into Uzak, is that you were writing, directing, photographing, editing, producing and even selling the film – you were doing everything, which is very unusual. Was that too much for you or was it something that you enjoyed doing?

NBC: I never worked on other films, as assistant director or anything, so I never learned how other directors worked. I learned everything from books myself, and I learned every aspect of film-making, including sales and marketing. Even in Cannes, I was selling the film myself, and they said that there was only one other director who sold his films himself – [Abderrehmane] Sissako from Africa. It's unusual, and distributors were a bit surprised. I learned how to do it but I don't do that any more. Now I have a producer and a cinematographer, everything. It is unnecessary, but at that time, I wanted to know it. I think a director should know many things, especially the technical aspects; otherwise you are a slave of the technical people. If you know the technical aspects, you can communicate with them and direct them much better.

GA: In this film, in the scene we've just watched, you're prompting your father, telling him what to say. Was that how it worked in reality?

NBC: Yes. It reflects the shooting of my first film quite realistically, I think. It was a mess because we were just two people and we were trying to control everybody. It was such a mess.

GA: One of the things you've mentioned, and it's come up in both clips, is what is happening to Turkish life in terms of people moving away from the country to the city. With Uzak, you made your first film in the city and it concerns a photographer living in Istanbul who is visited by a cousin from the small town. Let's have a look now at Uzak.

[runs clip from Uzak]

GA: One reason I chose that clip is because we have a new member of Nuri's family appearing on the screen – the woman in the street is Nuri's wife, Ebru. But the other thing is that this is a wonderful scene, of a young guy eyeing up the girl and trying to look cool in his sunglasses, and then the car alarm goes off at the most inopportune time. It's a very funny scene, and there is a lot of dry humour in your films. It reminds me of Buster Keaton, very underplayed. How important is it to you to have some humour or comedy in your films?

NBC: I think I see life like this. I don't plan to inject humour into the stories. I just want to be as realistic as possible and I think that real life is full of humour. When I'm alone at home, I find myself in many funny situations. If I catch myself in the mirror sometimes, my expression is so uncontrolled. So I don't really plan them. But with this film, I was a bit surprised that people laugh at this situation.

GA: Later in this film, the cousins start not getting on with each other, and the photographer finds this invader a bit of a nuisance. So, one evening, he starts watching pornography, but when the cousin comes in, he quickly switches to a Tarkovsky film, the film that he'd been watching with the cousin earlier as a ploy to get the cousin to go to bed. And this is rather ironic, especially since you're rather a fan of Tarkovsky, aren't you?

NBC: Yes, he's one of the directors I like. But I chose Tarkovsky for that scene, not because I like him but because he's more appropriate – he has long shots and I needed to contrast this with the kind of films the village guy would be used to. And I needed an ideal for the photographer, and Tarkovsky was the most suitable. In general, the critics thought that he watched Tarkovsky in order to get rid of the cousin. But that was not my intention.

GA: Critics are always wrong. [laughs]

NBC: Maybe I made something wrong. [laughs] But in an earlier scene, the photographer has a discussion with friends, and one friend criticises him for losing his ideals and they blame him. So when he gets home, he tries to create a bond, to find his ideals again. That's why he watches Tarkovsky. And he thinks that maybe he can regain his fire and enthusiasm. He doesn't mind the other guy at all, but as a side-effect the cousin is bored of course. So when the other guy leaves to go to bed, the situation changes and something triggers in him and he loses his enthusiasm again and he shifts to porn because it's easier. And he wants to get rid of the violence inside himself. That's why he switches to porn.

GA: One of the things that strikes me about this film is that a lot of it is shot with very, very little dialogue, and that seems to be a common thing in your films. Do you think that people express themselves better without words?

NBC: I don't know, actually. I don't try to make my characters silent. In the script, that scene had a lot of dialogue. But in the shoot, it's the only place to understand whether what you wrote works or not. Always during a shoot, I try to find more balance in the situation, so I end up taking dialogue out here and there and finally there's no dialogue. I feel the balance is reached at that point and I don't know what to do about it. It just convinces me more like that, somehow. And of course, dialogue should be treated very carefully. I've investigated this a lot. I've recorded many conversations in order to understand the nature of it. It doesn't follow a logical progression. Somebody says something, the other person says something entirely different; if you analyse it, you see it is that way. So dialogue, even if you use it, it shouldn't be so logical and it shouldn't carry much information about the film's secrets or the meaning of the film. Dialogue, for me, only works if they talk nonsense, anything unrelated to the film. I like to do this as much as possible. I try to tell the meaning of the film without dialogue – with the situation, the gestures, and so on. This is my intention, but maybe I'm not successful.

GA: Well, you seem to be succeeding – Uzak won a big prize in Cannes and you've been winning them ever since. We saw your wife in that clip, so now let's have a look at Climates.

[runs clip]

GA: You may have recognised the actor in that scene. You wrote the film with Ebru and you play the two main characters yourself, and it's a film about the breakup of a relationship. It's one of the most honest films about that, and one of the most depressingly honest films about masculinity. It's just extraordinary and it goes into many areas that most other films wouldn't even touch. Was it quite painful to make?

NBC: No, not at all. Actually, we are not the kind of couple who are afraid to talk about the dark side of life. We like to talk about it. So if you deal with the dark side of life, you're safer – it's like therapy – and the dark stuff doesn't collect and grow. You cut the head of the snake when it's small. So it was a technical matter, not hard at all for us.

GA: Why did you decide to play the two roles yourselves?

NBC: What I wanted to tell with this film was something which is hard to explain and express to other people. I didn't want to struggle with how to explain to actors how they should act. I wanted them to behave based more on their inclination. Also, when we wrote and talked about the film on holiday, my wife and I, we made a test shot, acting ourselves and we liked the result. So that's another reason why we did it. They didn't like my acting in Turkey, in general, [audience laughs] but in the west, they liked it better, I think. But, fortunately, everybody liked my wife's acting.

GA: This was your first film shot using technical technology. I remember that shot of the two of you on the beach, with the boat going past in the background, and everything's perfectly in focus. I remember seeing that in Cannes and being astonished by it. And the whole film is using digital camerawork in a way that a lot of people haven't pushed it forward. Do you think digital technology is opening up new avenues of expressiveness?

NBC: Definitely. I think it has still more unknown potential to be able to express something deeper or hidden. So film seems like nonsense – why shoot on film any more? This film was shot using old digital technology and now it's already even much better. Film is expensive and there are many disadvantages. For me, this is it. I'll never go back to film for movie-making or photography. I think we should be open and use the advantages of this new technology to express our deeper emotions.

GA: Moving on now to Three Monkeys – that seems to be a rather expressionist film, in the sense that you have manipulated the colours to make something that's almost monochrome, apart from these occasional flashes of red. It's almost green and yellow, the image is sickly. It almost looks like an expressionist painting.

NBC: I don't know. Actually, I don't like expressionism – I prefer impressionism, because the feelings and emotions are too underlined in expressionism. But many critics have said that this film is expressionist – maybe they are right. I like to be more subtle and more hidden, making the audience more active. As for the colours, it's natural that when one looks at something, everybody sees something different. When I look at the world, this is kind of what I see. My photography may have an influence on this – I see colours in this way. When I engaged in the colour grading, I didn't realise that I had distanced myself from these colours that much. And of course, in this film, I also wanted to isolate the characters a bit. This isolation I made in other ways: for example, I didn't show any faces other than these characters. And also these colours helped this isolation a bit. Actually, I didn't do much: I just increased the contrast and desaturated the colours and then selected one colour, generally red, and pushed it a bit after desaturation.

GA: The other thing is that you're using sound in a very eloquent way to reinforce certain things. You've done that almost from the beginning.

NBC: I don't like to be realistic in sound. For instance, we heard a sound in the film that I didn't hear before. Our ears are very selective and we just hear what we want to hear. So, for the audience, I select some sounds and just show them. With the sound, I can guide the audience a little bit in the way I want, and it gives the scene the atmosphere that I want. Also, if you can tell something with the sound, you don't have to show it.

GA: This film does seem different from the others – partly because it can be described as a crime film. It's not really autobiographical, as far as I can tell, and it has more narrative, albeit elliptical. In a sense, it's much more dramatic. Did you feel that you were making a change here and will you continue down that route?

NBC: I think so, because you can't make autobiograpical films all your life, you know. [audience laughs] After Climates, I felt deep inside that I needed a change. But it doesn't mean that I will go in this direction, I don't know. At the time, I felt I needed a change and I did it. The result may make me change again in another direction, but right now I'm not sure.

GA: OK, let's open it up to the audience now.

Q1: All your films use a different sort of colour palette – whether it's impressionistic or expressionistic, colour design is a big part of your films. Can you say something about your use of colour and what you try to do with it?

NBC: These were the colours for this film. It's hard for me to answer this kind of question because these decisions are all instinctive. For this film, I decided the colours before starting to shoot. I shot some photographs in the locations and I worked on them on the computer and tried to fix the mood for the film. At the end, I got quite close to my intention. But generally, I really don't know – it's all instinctive. I could say something, but it would be a lie. [audience laughs]

Q2: How old were you when you made your first short film [Koza, in 1995]? It got an award in Cannes – did you sense that it was a good film?

NBC: I was quite old, actually, 36 years old. It's much better if you can start much earlier. I spent at least 10 years without doing anything after university, thinking about what to do for a living. When you're young, you're braver and it's better to make mistakes when you're younger. When I made that film, I always thought that it would not make a film. I was shooting something but I never expected Cannes would take it, or that I would show it to other people. I thought I was taking something meaningless. In the editing room, I tried to create a concept or a story out of it. There was something in my mind, but I always thought it would not work. And even after I finished the film, I thought it was shit and that nobody would like it. I asked my friends, "Does it look like a film?" I asked the same question when I made my first feature [The Small Town, 1997]. I remember watching it with my sister at the Berlin film festival where it was premiered, and we looked at each other and we were thinking, "It doesn't look like a film." Watching your old films is really difficult, you don't understand anything. After you finish a film, you are completely blind. You never have the chance to see your film objectively. But I'm the kind of person who always sees things negatively – I always only see the mistakes – so it's painful and I never watch my films.

GA: One thing I'd like to ask – up to and including Uzak, you made your films with very small crews. If you watch the making-of feature for Uzak, you'll see about three people under an umbrella shooting a scene. Now you work with a much larger crew, you're internationally feted, your career is very different in many ways. Does that make it easier or more difficult?

NBC: Actually, both easier and more difficult. It depends on how you look at it. I cannot work like the old days – I am older now and I have less energy. Human beings are creatures that very easily get used to luxuries. Until Uzak, I would shoot my films myself. But now, I can't imagine doing that and it seems to me very difficult. I'm lazy and it seems to me much easier to use a monitor to control the actors, the composition, mise en scène. And I think it should be like this. That's why I work like this now. But on the other hand, it's more difficult. In this film, there were about 20- 25 people behind the camera and everything takes time. To move people from one place to another, we need lorries and things. In Uzak, if you remember, there is a snow scene. It lasted a very short time in Istanbul, the snow stayed for only two days. But we managed to shoot everything we needed in two days because we were so small. With only one Jeep, we could move all the crew, the material, all the actors and we could move quickly. We were much faster. So it was easier in that sense. But then, I used to compromise a lot. If I couldn't solve something, I would change the script and I would adapt myself to many things. Now I compromise less, because I have a producer and he solves many problems, we have more money and we have more people to solve problems. So when you get new possibilities, you don't want to get rid of them. So, both more difficult and easier, I think.

GA: Don't believe what he says about being lazy – I was reading his notes and while editing Three Monkeys, he was sleeping about two hours a night.

Q3: One of the characters in Three Monkeys is a politician. And you include footage of the AK party winning the election. I wonder if you could talk about the political subtext of the film? Also, has the film been received in Turkey as a comment on the politics of Turkey?

NBC: There was more attention to the political aspect of the film in Turkey, but I edited it so that they wouldn't have much room for criticism in that area. I didn't want the film to just be restricted to politics, so despite filming many demonstrations and political rallies, I decided not to include these bits because I wanted to leave this as just a side element of the film. The audience and film critics seem to enjoy bringing up this aspect of the film, but I try to hold it back.

Q4: This has been said before many times: that your compositional style is very similar to [Yasujiro] Ozu, especially in your positioning of the camera at very low level, perhaps knee-height, especially in the scenes inside the house. Did you purposely mimic Ozu or was it something that you did unintentionally? Also, can you say whether this compositional style is particularly important to avoid tracking shots and movement of camera work, as opposed to single shots.

NBC: Yes, he [GA] said the same thing during dinner. Ozu is my favourite director, actually. And yes, I don't move the camera much – but I don't know if that's because of Ozu or because I'm a photographer. I jut don't like to move the camera much, really, because it makes everyone more conscious about the camera. And the height of the camera is mostly decided for me, and I think for Ozu, by the vertical lines in the space. In the books, they say that Ozu put his camera 90cm above the ground but I don't believe it. It depends on the vertical lines – and there are many of those in Japanese houses. But more than that, the psychology of the character is important – if you shoot a person from above, it's different from shooting them from below. I generally like to shoot at mouth level for a portrait. Especially in closeups, even 1cm is very important. That's why you should never leave it to the cinematographer, because the cinematographer never knows how to connect it to the next shot; only the director knows the relationship between the next shot and the previous shot. So the director should carefully place the camera to ensure continuity of the psychology.

Q5: Why did you decide not to use a conventional musical soundtrack?

NBC: I don't like music in cinema, it seems to me like a crutch; if you cannot express something in cinematic ways, then you call the help of the music to underline it. I'm not against it, but if possible I try not to use it. In the editing, I try many pieces of music, but eventually I decide not to use any. And also, the sound of the atmosphere is the nicest sound for me in the cinema, so I prefer to use atmospheric sound instead of music. Because music kills things.

Q6: Why did you call this film Three Monkeys?

NBC: It comes from Confucius originally, where it has a positive meaning, but later it became a negative meaning. It represents our attitude to hiding from reality.

GA: It's see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

NBC: That's the original.

GA: And of course, this film is all about people pretending that something is not happening; it's all about lies.

Q7: I'm interested in the dead boy who appears twice – why did you choose to put him in those two scenes?

NBC: I wanted the boy to appear in scenes where a character needed to be comforted, especially the characters who feel an element of guilt regarding his death.

Q8: We were just wondering about the locations in Three Monkeys, especially the house and where the woman meets the politician. Is it quite close to Koca Mustafa Pasha?

NBC: That's right. It's near Yedikule train station, just opposite it. And we also shot near the Black sea, on the Anatolian side.

GA: And wasn't there something about the house, that it was going to be demolished, so it changed the way you shot it.

NBC: They said so, but they didn't. [audience laughs]

Q9: In one scene, when the boy is looking through the keyhole, we can see the sweat on his face and the way it drops. Was it just a coincidence?

NBC: Some parts of the film are coincidences, some parts aren't. Sometimes you shoot a scene 20-30 times and then you pick out the ones that you think present the detail the best. For example, the shaking of the knife in the kitchen, that's not a coincidence. Sometimes I forget which bits are coincidence and which are not.

GA: Sadly, we have to bring this evening to a close. Please put your hands together to thank Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’ is the first masterpiece of 2012

2012-01-09T22:40:00.000-08:00

‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’ is the first masterpiece of 2012

'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia' -- Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, which recently opened at New York City’s Film Forum, is an effective police procedural that examines the lengthy process of finding the bad guys, believing in the good guys and turning our expectations completely on their head. The Turkish-language film, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is an expert character study of a group of men with differing opinions of justice and judgment.

In today’s age of Criminal Minds, Law & Order, CSI and their various offshoots, it’s hard to believe that an original police procedural is still possible. Too often the sub-genre has been regimented and standardized into cliche plot occurrences: the dead body on the pavement, the skeptical police investigator, the line of crime scene tape, maybe a pesky journalist asking a few heated questions. We’ve seen it all time and time again, and, for the most part, the term “police procedural” is a death knell, a stamp of rigid formality.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is anything but typical. As it follows the travails of a police commissioner, prosecutor, doctor and murder suspect through one night and early morning, all aspects of true police work are on display. There are lengthy conversations about important and not-so-important topics. The characters laugh and cry, always cognizant of the fact that they have been tasked with a difficult job that routinely deals in death and despair. These guys don’t discover a corpse with resignation. They are affected by their findings; they sometimes cannot control their emotions. This is not cinematic bloodshed; it’s real and it hurts.

Because the movie focuses on a crime from a much more realistic perspective, there are also times when the proceedings grow dull. However, it oddly all fits together. These characters have been toiling away for years at their job; occasionally, they are victims of boredom. At 157 minutes, Ceylan’s film includes the full gamut of lows and highs of a police case.

Firat Tanisu in 'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia' -- Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild

The central plot of the story — and the particulars of the crime — are immaterial. Not much is learned throughout the entire movie. We know that the police officials are transporting a criminal around the rolling hills of Anatolia in search of a buried body. The suspect was drunk when the murder took place and can’t remember exactly where he did his nasty deed. This leads the police on a wild goose chase not to stop any future crime from occurring, but simply to put an exclamation point on a murder that has already taken place. This gives the entire story an “aftermath” feel, as if the prosecutor and company are already conceding that they are too late.

With a light story that meanders to an end, the characters need to be engaging to hold our interest. Thankfully, the characters are interesting, and the assembled actors are top quality. Muhammet Uzuner as Doctor Cemal, Yilmaz Erdogan as Commisar Naci, Taner Birsel as Prosecutor Nusret and Ahmet Mumtaz Taylan as the driver Arab Ali are all distinct, yet seem cut from the same thread. In their conversations, they reveal a great deal about their past sins and their present predicaments. The prosecutor and doctor, in particular, become our two focal points. The man of medicine is a studious, contemplative person, while the man of law can’t help having feelings of anguish over the loss of a loved one. Together, the men weave their way through therapeutic back-and-froths that advance their characters and seem to heal some wounds.

The most memorable aspect of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is Ceylan’s direction and Gokhan Tiryaki’s exquisite photography. The shadows and lighting over the hilly landscapes all come to life, creating pastoral images that seem painted on a canvas. The countryside of Turkey has never looked more desperate or forlorn — two qualities that seem fitting for the men who populate its folds.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
2012
Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Written by Ercan Kesal, Ebru Ceylan and Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mumtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis and Ercan Kesal
Running time: 157 minutes
Rating:

Review | Once Upon a Time In Anatolia by Manohla Dargis

2012-01-09T22:36:00.000-08:00

MOVIE REVIEW

Once Upon a Time In Anatolia

NYT Critics' Pick

Cinema Guild

A scene from "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia."

One Search for a Body, Another for Meaning

By MANOHLA DARGIS

Published: January 3, 2012

A metaphysical road movie about life, death and the limits of knowledge, “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” has arrived just in time to cure the adult filmgoer blues. It was directed by the Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose earlier movies include “Distant”and “Three Monkeys” and who in recent years has emerged as one of the consistently most exciting directors on the international scene. His latest, which shared the grand prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, takes the unassuming form of a police investigation that, as miles and words mount, evolves into a plangent, visually stunning meditation on what it is to be human.

The story is direct, if the journey less so. A man has been murdered, and a small battalion — a doctor, a prosecutor, a few policemen, several soldiers, diggers with shovels and a transcriber with a laptop — has invaded the countryside with the suspect to dig up the body. The trouble is that the accused, Kenan (Firat Tanis), claims to have been drunk when he committed the murder and can’t remember where he buried the body. And so off the men go in two cars and a Jeep, driving up and down the sensuous, rolling hills of Anatolia, the enormous peninsula that constitutes most of Turkey and which the ancient Greeks called the land of the rising sun.

The sun has nearly set when the men first appear en masse, pulling into a turn in the dirt road where a solitary young tree pierces the parched amber landscape like a shot arrow. Making the most of his wide-screen frame — a format made for landscapes like these and filmmakers as sensitive as this one — Mr. Ceylan initially keeps his distance from the characters by showing them in extreme long shot, a vantage that accentuates how small they are in relation to the wide world enveloping them. This is the first in a series of stops that the men will make as, again and again, they look for the body in a search that reveals far more about the living than about the dead.

Mr. Ceylan soon cuts in for a closer look as he turns his brilliant eye for landscape to the gaunt and rounded, pitted and smoothed faces of his travelers. Much like the stopovers during the search when the men clamber out of their vehicles, these faces — including those of the doctor, Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner), and the prosecutor, Nusret (Taner Birsel) — are effectively narrative layovers, breaks in the larger journey. There’s a murder at the story’s center, but as one after another face fills the frame, a tear violently trembling in one man’s eye while the memory of a dead wife hovers in another man’s look, it becomes evident that the greater mystery here is of existence itself.

The title of “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” suggests the work of Sergio Leone, including most obviously Leone’s 1968 masterpiece, “Once Upon a Time in the West.” I don’t want to make strong claims about the influence of that or any other Leone film on “Anatolia,” though the twinned landscapes of this movie’s natural vistas and the ugly beauty of its fantastic faces evoke Leone. (More than a few of Mr. Ceylan’s actors could outgargoyle Leone performers like Jack Elam.) Yet, like most westerns, “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” is, among other things, an examination of violence and masculinity, one in which women remain critical if largely off-screen figures, silent if never truly mute.

Mr. Ceylan doesn’t trumpet his ideas, but lets them quietly surface, often through the stories that the men tell one another and that at times take the form of parables. In one, a driver, Arab Ali (Ahmet Mumtaz Taylan), tells the doctor how he likes to drive to the countryside for target practice, just to let off some steam. Enveloped in darkness, the wind rising like sighs, Arab Ali at first registers as a somewhat buffoonish, borderline-dangerous character whose Hobbesian worldview (it’s shoot or be shot) is a reminder that this is, after all, a search for a murdered man. Yet, like the doctor, the prosecutor and the police chief, Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan), Arab Ali proves more complex than he seems because his words are those of a man puzzling through the meaning of life.

Words can fail the men, whose stories of lost wives and other ghosts drench the movie in an acute sense of loss, one that is offset by the effulgence of the natural world, a gift that none seem to see. The dead haunt “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,” but so does beauty. At one point, after several futile attempts to find the body, the men drive to a village. There they are greeted by its leader, or mukhtar (Ercan Kesal), who, amid a hospitable meal, tells the travelers that the town needs a new morgue. Most of the young people have left, he says, and when an old villager dies, they beg to see the dead one last time, holding onto a past that fills them with longing. And then the mukhtar’s beautiful daughter joins the men, her face bathed in a light that until then has eluded them.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan; written by Ercan Kesal, Ebru Ceylan and Nuri Bilge Ceylan; director of photography, Gokhan Tiryaki; edited by Bora Goksingol and Nuri Bilge Ceylan; art direction by Dilek Yapkuoz Ayaztuna; produced by Zeynep Ozbatur Atakan; released by the Cinema Guild. At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. In Turkish, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 37 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Muhammet Uzuner (Doctor Cemal), Yilmaz Erdogan (Commissar Naci), Taner Birsel (Prosecutor Nusret), Ahmet Mumtaz Taylan (Driver Arab Ali), Firat Tanis (Suspect Kenan) and Ercan Kesal (Mukhtar)
.

Will World End Before or After Festival Does?

2012-01-09T22:31:00.000-08:00

By STEPHEN HOLDENPublished: October 4, 2011

The opportunity to see two intimidating landmarks — “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” and “The Turin Horse” — is reason enough for any filmgoer with more than a passing interest in the evolution of world cinema to be grateful for the platform of the New York Film Festival. Because the chances that either movie will soon be coming to a theater near you, as they say, are next to nil, the best time to see them may be at Alice Tully Hall in the coming week...

“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” begins with the haunting image of a three-car caravan, viewed from afar, as it winds its way through the Turkish countryside in the dead of night. The weary travelers include policemen, a prosecutor, a doctor, grave diggers and a confessed murder suspect taking the search party to his victim’s burial site, which he has difficulty finding.

The main characters — a whimsical prosecutor (Taner Birsel), a misanthropic police chief (Yilmaz Erdogan) and the doctor (Muhammet Uzuner) — each occupy a different moral universe, with the doctor, a Chekhovian figure, the story’s moral fulcrum. Flecked with magical realist touches and a sense of the supernatural, the film takes no shortcuts as its characters discharge their laborious and depressing duties. The autopsy of the corpse concludes the film’s sorrowful, unblinking dissection of the human condition. This third film by Mr. Ceylan to be showcased at the festival, following “Distant” in 2002 and “Climates,” in 2006, “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” is, in a word, great.

Emek Cinema | An Argument (Turkish)

2012-01-02T22:08:00.000-08:00

EMEK'İ 20 YILDIR YIKMAYA ÇALIŞIYORLAR
22.12.2011 16:41

Siyad üyesi Olkan Özyurt, Emek Sineması’nın 20 yıldır süren yıkım girişimleri serüvenini yazdı

Emek Sineması’nın yıkım girişimleri 20 yıllık bir serüven. Bu serüven de kamuoyunun bilmediği o kadar çok olay var ki… Özellikle son 10 yıldır kapalı kapılar arkasında Emek’i yıkmak için ne kadar çok insan çaba sarf etmiş akıl alır gibi değil!Bu yazı, kamuya ait bir yapının, menşei belli olmayan bir sermaye grubuna, sinsice peşkeş çekme; yani devletin, ‘korunması gerekli kültür varlığı’ olduğu yürürlükte olan kanunlar ve kurul kararlarıyla tescil edilmiş Emek Sineması'nın, yıkılıp yerine AVM yapma girişiminin öyküsüdür... Yazıda bu sinsi girişimin aktörleri olarak bakan, belediye başkanı gibi kamu adına yetki kullanma görevi için bizlerden oy talep eden kimi seçilmişlerin, mimarların, akademisyenlerin, hukukçuların, üniversitelerin ismine rastlayacaksınız. Onları böylesi bir karanlık girişime iten motivasyonun ne olduğuyla ilgili hiçbir fikrimiz yok. Ama biliyoruz ki 'memleketin dahilinde, iktidara sahip olanlar gaflet ve dalâlet ve hattâ hıyanet içinde bulunabilirler.
' Malum Emek Sineması yıkılmak isteniyor ve bu yıkım için de türlü kılıflar uyduruluyor. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanı Ertuğrul Günay, Beyoğlu Belediye Başkanı Ahmet Misbah Demircan, "Yıkım yok restorasyon var" diyerek kamuoyunun zekasını hafife alan açıklamalar yapıyor. Ama iki yıldır ortaya çıkıp da uzun uzadıya bütün süreci, büyük bir dürüstlük ve şeffaflık içerisinde anlatamıyorlar. Çünkü gerçek bambaşka ve güneş de asla balçıkla sıvanamıyor. Biz de kamuoyundan saklanan bu gerçeğin peşine düşüyoruz. 
Bilindiği üzere Emek Sineması, Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu'na (SGK) yani kamuya ait. Emek Sineması'nın da içinde bulunduğu Cercle D'Orient Kompleksi, 1976'da Gayrimenkul Eski Eserler ve Anıtlar Yüksek Kurulu'nun kararı ile korunması gereken kültür varlığı olarak tescil ediliyor. 1991'de İstanbul 1. No’lu Kültür ve Tabiat Varlıklarını Koruma Kurulu da bu Cercle D'Orient Kompleksi ve Emek Sineması'na, ancak iç ve dış görünümlerini bozmamak kaydıyla müdahale edilebileceğini hükme bağlıyor. Yine aynı kurul, 1993'te Cercle D'Orient Kompleksi'ni de kapsayan bölgeyi Kentsel Sit Alanı ilan ediyor. Böylece Emek ve Cercle D'Orient Kompleksi tam teşekküllü bir şekilde korumaya alınıyor. Ama 1993'te, bu korumaya rağmen ilginç bir girişim söz konusu. O yıllardaki adıyla Emekli Sandığı olan Cercle D'Orient Kompeksi'nin ve Emek Sineması'nın mülk sahibi kurum, var olan kiracılarıyla yeni sözleşme imzalamak yerine bir ihaleye çıkarak 'yap işlet devret' modeliyle kompleksi 25 yıllığına Kamer İnşaat'a kiralıyor. Emekli Sandığı ve Kamer İnşaat arasında tuhaf bir kira sözleşmesi imzalanıyor. Sözleşmeye göre Kamer İnşaat, bu alanda 113 milyar TL'lik (şimdiki değerle 113 bin TL'ye) bir restorasyon yapacak ve bu alana 3 katlı otoparkı olan bir AVM inşa edecek. Karşılığında da Emekli Sandığı'na ayda 330 milyon TL (330 TL) kira verecek. Dönemin Maliye Bakanı İsmet Atilla, 'Cerce D'Orient Kompleksi'nin daha iyi bir görünüme kavuşması ve Emekli Sandığı için rantabl bir tesis haline getirilmesi için' böyle bir yöntem seçildiğini söylüyor. Kamer İnşaat'ın sahibi Veysel Tosun ise, gerçek niyetini de ele veren ve bize de çok tanıdık gelen bir açıklama yapıyor o yıllarda: "Bu proje bittiğinde herkes bize teşekkür edecek. Beyoğlu'nun çehresini değiştireceğiz. Tabi ki bu projeden para kazanacağız. Kimse babasının hayrına böyle bir işe kalkışmaz." Şimdiki gibi bir hukuk mücadelesi başlıyor, kamuoyu tepkisi gün be gün artıyor. O dönemin milletvekillerinden Bülent Akarcalı da Maliye Bakanlığı'na konuyla ilgili bir soru önergesi veriyor. Akarcalı aldığı cevap karşında şaşırıyor: Bu ihalenin peşkeş çekme olduğuna vurgu yaparak "Bu ihaleyi böylesi avantajlı bir şekilde vermenin sorumluluğunu yüklenenler, o kadar büyük bir nema elde etmiş olmalı ki, sorumluluğu taşıma riskini almışlar" diyor. Kamer İnşaat'ın otoparklı restorasyon projesi, pek tabii koruma kurullarından onay almıyor. Hatta 1999'da İstanbul 2. İdare Mahkemesi, projeyi 'kamu yararı ve koruma ilkelerine uygun görülmediği' için iptal ediyor. Böylece Emek ilk yıkım tehlikesini atlatıyor.
 Emek'in kurtulduğu düşünülerek, kamuouyu ve ‘Emekseverler’ rahat bir nefes alıp, sinemada film izlemeye devam ederken, Emek'in yıkılabilmesi ve Cercle D'Orient Kompleksi'nin bir AVM'ye dönüştürülmesi için yasal bütün düzenlemeler gizliden gizliye yapılıyor.  2005'te Ak Parti hükümeti, bu tür tarihi ve kültürel alanların ve yapıların dokunulmazlığını yok edecek, 5366 sayılı Yıpranan Tarihi ve Kültürel Taşınmaz Varlıkların Yenilenerek Korunması ve Yaşatılması adlı bir kanun çıkarıyor. 2006'da ise Ak Parti hükümetinin Bakanlar Kurulu Cercle D'Orient Kompleksi'nin de yer aldığı Beyoğlu ve çevresini Yenileme Alanı ilan ediyor. Bu aynı alanın Kentsel Sit Alanı kararının iptali anlamına geliyor. Böylece Emek Sinema gibi korumalı bina ve bölgeler 'yenilenerek koruma' bahanesi altında inşaat alanları haline getiriliyor.  2009'da ise Emek ve Cercle D'Orient Kompleksi'nin kaderiyle ilgili kamuoyundan gizli alınan kararlar yoğunlaşıyor. Mülk sahibi Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu, içeriği bilinmeyen bir sözleşme ile yeniden Kamer İnşaat'a Cercle D'Orient Kompleksi'ni kiralıyor. Hatta Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı'na onay için başvuruyor. "Emek'in yıkılması söz konusu değil" diyen Kültür Bakanı Ertuğrul Günay'ın oluru ile onay veriliyor. Kamer İnşaat da bu alanda kurulacak AVM için yeniden çalışmaya başlıyor. Kapalı kapılar ardında yaşanan bir başka gelişme ise Beyoğlu Belediyesi'nin hazırladığı Emek Sineması'nın yıkımını öngören Yeşilçam Sokak Sürdürülebilir Kentsel Gelişim ve Yenileme Projesi. Proje ortakları kimler dersiniz? Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu, Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, Beyoğlu Belediyesi, İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi, İstanbul 2010 Avrupa Kültür Başkenti Ajansı. Bu proje 10 Ekim 2009'da Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı İstanbul Yenileme Alanları Kültür ve Tabiat Varlıklarını Koruma Kurulu tarafından prensipte onaylanıyor. Burada bir detay, dördü mimar sekiz kişilik kurula ilk proje geldiğinde kurul üyeleri önce 'olmaz böyle saçma şey' dese de sonra nedense fikir değiştirip projeye onay veriyor. Sonrası ise aşağıda kamuoyunun da bildiği süreç yaşanıyor. Kronolojik sırayla veriyoruz.  
24 Ekim 2009: Mars Entertainment Group CEO'su Muzaffer Yıldırım Emek'in işletmesine talip olduklarını açıkladı. İşletmeyi devraldıklarında sinemanın şartlarını iyileştirmek üzere restorasyon çalışmaları yapacaklarını, Emek'i Emek yapan özelliklere dokunmayacaklarını söyledi.
26 Ekim 2009: Emek Sineması filmekimi'nden sonra restore edileceği söylenerek kapatıldı.   25 Aralık 2009: Mimarlar Odası'nda Mücella Yapıcı, Emek Sineması'nın yıkılıp birebir kopyasının, yapılacak AVM'nin üst katına inşa edileceğini, bunun Süleymaniye Camii'ni yıkıp yeniden inşa etmekle eşdeğer olduğunu açıkladı. 
29 Aralık 2009: Emek Sineması'nın yıkılacağı duyumları üzerine Atilla Dorsay, Kültür ve Turizm Bakanı Ertuğrul Günay'la konuştuğunu ve Günay'ın kendisine güvence verip 'Emek Sineması'na asla dokunulmayacak ve bu salon, nisan ayındaki festivale (İstanbul Film Festivali) yetişecek' dediğini yazdı.
8 Mart 2010: İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, kimsenin bilemediği bir teknik rapor hazırlıyor. Ne hikmetse bu raporu, Emek'i yıkmak isteyenler görüyor. Ve Emek zaten yıkılıyor gibi safsatalara delil yapılıyor.
 9 Mart 2010: İstanbul Film Festivali yönetmeni Azize Tan, Emek Sineması'nın akıbeti hakkında sağlıklı bilgi alamadıklarını açıkladı ve yetkilileri, sinemanın geleceğiyle ilgili kamuoyunu aydınlatmaya çağırdı.
  11 Mart 2010: Beyoğlu Belediye Başkanı Ahmet Misbah Demircan "Emek Sineması birebir restore edilecek. Emek'in yıkılması söz konusu değil," açıklamasını yaptı.
 12 Mart 2010: Mimarlar Odası Emek'in yıkımını öngören projenin iptali için Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı'na dava açtı.
2 Nisan 2010: İstanbul Kültür Sanat Varyetesi oluşumu Emek Sineması'nın yıkım kararını İstanbul Film Festivali'nin açılışında borazan çalarak protesto etti. Bu olay kitlesel Emek mücadelesinin başlangıcı oldu.
7 Nisan 2010: Bakan Günay Emek Sineması için "Köhnemiş, koltukları oturulmaz, perdelerine dokunulmaz, duvarları ellenmez... Bir kirlilik içerisinde idi," açıklamasını yaptı.
 12 Nisan 2010: Mimarlar Odası, düzenlediği basın toplantısında yıkımla ilgili avam projesini kamuoyuna duyurdu. Toplantıda Emek'in her an yıkılabileceğini, yapılmak istenen projenin hem mimari hem hukuki açıdan sakıncalı olduğunu açıkladı. Toplantı sonrası 'Emek Sineması'nı Yıktırmayalım ve Yaşatalım' platformu kuruldu ve bir dizi eylem kararı alındı.
14 Nisan 2010: İKSV bir toplantı düzenledi. Toplantıda Kamer İnşaat'ı temsilen, 'yenileme planının' proje müellifi Mimyapı Mimarlık'tan mimar ve restoratör Fatih Kesgün ilk defa projeyi anlattı. Kesgün bunun bir yıkım değil 'taşıma' olacağını söyledi, Mimarlar Odası'ndan Mücella Yapıcı ise "Bu yıkımı öngören bir projedir" dedi. Projenin Kamer İnşaat'a ait olduğu ortaya çıktı.
15 Nisan 2010: Emek'in yıkımıyla ilgili sürekli adı geçen Multi Turkmall, Emek Sineması ve Emek Sineması'nın bulunduğu binayla hiçbir ilişkilerinin olmadığını açıkladı.
16 Nisan 2010: Ödüllü yönetmenler Semih Kaplanoğlu, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Özcan Alper ve Durul Taylan Emek Sineması'yla ilgili yıkıma karşı olduklarını açıkladılar.
17 Nisan 2010: Aralarında yönetmenler, oyuncular, sinema yazarlarının da bulunduğu yaklaşık 5 bin ‘Emeksever’ İstiklal Caddesi'nde bir yürüyüş düzenleyerek Emek Sineması'nın yıkımını protesto etti.
 22 Nisan 2010: İstanbul 2010 Avrupa Kültür Başkenti Ajansı, Emek Sineması'nın yıkımını öngören projeyle ilgileri olmadığını açıkladı. Yeşilçam Sokak Sürdürülebilir Kentsel Gelişim ve Yenileme Projesi'nde logolarının izinsiz kullanıldığı açıkladı.
24 Mayıs 2010: 9. İstanbul İdare Mahkemesi, Emek'i yıkım projesinin uygulanması halinde, telafisi güç veya imkansız zararlar doğurabileceği gerekçesiyle, mekan mahallinde keşif ve bilirkişi incelemesi yaptırıldıktan sonra bu konuda yeniden bir karar verilinceye kadar yürütmenin durdurulmasına oybirliğiyle karar verdi.
18 Nisan 2011: Yrd. Doç. Suat Çakır, Yrd. Doç. Dr. Ömer Şükrü Deniz ve Doç. Dr. Özlem Eren'den oluşan üç kişilik bilirkişi heyeti Emek’te incelemelerde bulundu ve mahkemeye bilirkişi raporunu teslim etti. Raporlarda Çakır Kamer İnşaat'ın projesine onay verilirken, Deniz ve Eren, projeye onay vermedi.
16 Kasım 2011: 9. İdare Mahkemesi 24 Mayıs'ta verdiği yürütmeyi durdurma kararını kaldırarak Emek'in yıkılmasının önünü açtı. Hem de mahkeme 3 kişilik bilirkişinin 2’sinin Emek’i yıkmayı öngören projenin zararlı olacağını raporlamasına rağmen.
İşte tuhaflıklar silsilesi: 
* Kültür Bakanı Ertuğrul Günay, Beyoğlu Belediye Başkanı Ahmet Misbah Demircan, Kamer İnşaat'ın temsilcisi Mimyapı Mimarlık'tan mimar ve restoratör Fatih Kesgün ve Emek'in yıkımının durdurulması için açılan davada bilirkişi olan Suat Çakır sürekli İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi tarafından hazırlanan bir rapora atıfta bulunuyor. Ama nedense bu raporu kimse göremiyor. Hatta Emek'in yıkımını durdurmak için yargı sürecini başlatan Mimarlar Odası bu raporu hukuki yollardan istese bile edinemiyor.
* Sosyal Güvenlik Kurulu tüm bu süreçte mülk sahibi olmasına rağmen, hiçbir açıklama yapmıyor. Cercle D'Orient Kompleksi'nin Kamer İnşaat'a nasıl ve ne şekilde 25 yıllığına kiraya verildiğini kamuoyuyla paylaşmıyor. Mimarlar Odası, Emek Sineması ile ilgili dava sürerken, Kamer İnşaat ile SGK arasındaki sözleşmenin mahkeme dosyasına bir türlü konulmadığını iddia ediyor. Ayrıca SGK neden bu alanı Kamer İnşaat’a kiralama konusunda ısrarcı o da bilinmiyor.
* Kamer İnşaat kamuoyu önüne çıkmıyor. Bu firmaya ulaşmak imkansıza yakın. Kamer İnşaat adıyla birkaç şirketin bulunması da kafaları karıştırıyor.
* Ertuğrul Günay İstanbul'un tarihi silueti söz konusu olunca "1500-2000 yıllık bu siluet İstanbul'un kimliği kişiliğidir. Bu silueti baskı altına alan yeni yapılar yapmaya hakkımız yok. Bugün bu yapılar fütursuzca yapılıyor. Tarih bizi mahkûm edecek. Durdurulması konusunda elimizden geldiği kadar uğraşıyoruz ama herkesin başka bazı dikkatleri var. Bir AVM alışkanlığı, bir gökdelen alışkanlığı başladı. Burası New York değil. Daha dikkatli olmamız gerekiyor. Ben tüm birimlerimle birlikte elimden geldiğince savaşıyorum. Ama benim savaşmam yetmez. Tarihe saygısı olan tüm kamuoyunun bu dikkati yükseltmesi, bu sesi yükseltmesi ve bu yanlışa dur demesi gerekiyor" diyerek kamuoyundan destek istiyor ama başında bulunduğu Bakanlık, Emek'i yıkmak istiyor. Hem de AVM uğruna. (Dediği gibi tarih mahkûm edecek)… (arkapencere.com)

Sinema Poll | Top 100 Turkish Films

2011-12-06T07:35:00.001-08:00

1) Eşkıya (Yavuz Turgul)

2) Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım (Atıf Yılmaz)

3) Hababam Sınıfı (Ertem Eğilmez)

4) Babam ve Oğlum (Çağan Irmak)

5) Züğüt Ağa (Nesli Çölgeçen)

6) Masumiyet (Zeki Demirkubuz)

7) Ağır Roman (Mustafa Altıoklar)

8) Muhsin Bey (Yavuz Turgul)

9) Yol (Şerif Gören)

10) Neşeli Günler (Orhan Aksoy)

11) Tosun Paşa (Kartal Tibet)

12) Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar (Tunç Başaran)

13) Vizontele (Yılmaz Erdoğan; Ömer Faruk Sorak)

14) Issız Adam (Çağan Irmak)

15) G.O.R.A. (Ömer Faruk Sorak)

16) Süt Kardeşler (Ertem Eğilmez)

17) Kibar Feyzo (Atıf Yılmaz)

18) Nefes: Vatan Sağolsun (Levent Semerci)

19) Çiçek Abbas (Sinan Çetin)

20) Gemide (Serdar Akar)

21) Kader (Zeki Demirkubuz)

22) Kaybedenler Kulübü (Tolga Örnek)

23) Her Şey Çok Güzel Olacak (Ömer Vargı)

24) Canım Kardeşim (Ertem Eğilmez)

25) Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

26) Av Mevsimi (Yavuz Turgul)

27) Gönül Yarası (Yavuz Turgul)

28) Anayurt Oteli (Ömer Kavur)

29) Vavien (Yağmur ve Durul Taylan)

30) Üç Maymun (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

31) Sevmek Zamanı (Metin Erksan)

32) Arabesk (Ertem Eğilmez)

33) Sürü (Zeki Ökten)

34) Mustafa Hakkında Her Şey (Çağan Irmak)

35) Kapıcılar Kralı (Zeki Ökten)

36) Umut (Yılmaz Güney)

37) Tabutta Rövaşata (Derviş Zaim)

38) Başka Dilde Aşk (İlksen Başarır)

39) Sonbahar (Özcan Alper)

40) Tatar Ramazan (Melih Gülgen)

41) Bizim Aile (Ergin Orbey)

42) Karpuz Kabuğundan Gemiler Yapmak (Ahmet Uluçay)

43) Susuz Yaz (Metin Erksan)

44) Gülen Gözler (Ertem Eğilmez)

45) Güneşi Gördüm (Mahsun Kırmızıgül)

46) Şekerpare (Atıf Yılmaz)

47) Hacivat Karagöz Neden Öldürüldü? (Ezel Akay)

48) Beynelmilel (Sırrı Süreyya Önder; MuharremGülmez)

49) Kosmos (Reha Erdem)

50) Bal (Semih Kaplanoğlu)

51) Ah Nerede (Orhan Aksoy)

52) Dila Hanım (Orhan Aksoy)

53) Sultan (Kartal Tibet)

54) Recep İvedik (Togan Gökbakar)

55) Takva (Özer Kızıltan)

56) Vesikalı Yarim (Ö. Lütfi Akad)

57) Yazı Tura (Uğur Yücel)

58) Yılanların Öcü (Metin Erksan)

59) Anlat İstanbul (Ü. Ünal/K. Sabancı/S. Demirdelen/Y.Yolcu/Ö. Atay)

60) Hokkabaz (Cem Yılmaz; Ali Taner Baltacı)

61) Neredesin Firuze (Ezel Akay)

62) Mavi Boncuk (Ertem Eğilmez)

63) Kurtlar Vadisi Irak (Serdar Akar)

64) Auf der anderen Seite/Yaşamın Kıyısında (Fatih Akın)

65) Aaahh Belinda (Atıf Yılmaz)

66) Namuslu (Ertem Eğilmez)

67) Ah Güzel İstanbul (1966) (Atıf Yılmaz)

68) Otobüs (Tunç Okan)

69) İstanbul Kanatlarımın Altında (Mustafa Altıoklar)

70) Çoğunluk (Seren Yüce)

71) Zübük (Kartal Tibet)

72) Hayat Var (Reha Erdem)

73) Dönüş (Türkan Şoray)

74) Korkuyorum Anne (Reha Erdem)

75) Selamsız Bandosu (Nesli Çölgeçen)

76) Beş Vakit (Reha Erdem)

77) Dondurmam Gaymak (Yüksel Aksu)

78) İklimler (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

79) Teyzem (Halit Refiğ)

80) Piano Piano Bacaksız (Tunç Başaran)

81) Yumurta (Semih Kaplanoğlu)

82) Fikrimin İnce Gülü – Sarı Mercedes (Tunç Okan)

83) Arkadaş (Yılmaz Güney)

84) Turist Ömer (Hulki Saner)

85) Dar Alanda Kısa Paslaşmalar (Serdar Akar)

86) Gurbet Kuşları (Halit Refiğ)

87) Aşk Filmlerinin Unutulmaz Yönetmeni (Yavuz Turgul)

88) Yazgı (Zeki Demirkubuz)

89) İki Dil Bir Bavul (Orhan Eskiköy; Özgür Doğan)

90) Gelin (Ö. Lütfi Akad)

91) Adı Vasfiye (Atıf Yılmaz)

92) Salkım Hanımın Taneleri (Tomris Giritlioğlu)

93) Bereketli Topraklar Üzerinde (Erden Kıral)

94) Mayıs Sıkıntısı (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

95) Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (Çetin İnanç)

96) Acı Hayat (Metin Erksan)

97) Berlin in Berlin (Sinan Çetin)

98) Düttürü Dünya (Zeki Ökten)

99) 9 (Ümit Ünal)

100) Hamam (Ferzan Özpetek)

Erden Kiral Tribute at Thessaloniki Film Festival

2011-11-02T12:59:00.001-07:00

Erden Kiral Tribute

Film List

Screening Schedule

1. A Season in Hakkari / Erden Kiral, Turkey-Germany

2. Conscience / Erden Kiral, Τurkey

3. On the Fertile Lands / Erden Kiral, Turkey

4. On the Road / Erden Kiral, Turkey-Bulgaria

5. The Blue Exile / Erden Kiral, Germany-Turkey-Greece

6. The Canal / Erden Kiral, Turkey

7. The Golden Horn / Erden Kiral, Turkey

8. The Hunter / Erden Kiral, Turkey

9. The Mirror / Erden Kiral, Turkey-Germany

Erden Kıral. An International Turkish Filmmaker

Erden Kıral is one of the major directors in the history of Turkish cinema. He belongs to the second generation of Turkish auteurs who, influenced by Yılmaz Güney, began making films in a climate of political upheaval. Kıral’s generation – which includes Ömer Kavur, Şerif Gören, Zeki Ökten, Ali Özgentürk, et al. – contributed, during the 70s and 80s – to the development of a sociorealist tradition, critically addressing the country’s social problems, such as class inequality, social injustice, internalmigration, economic underdevelopment and the feudal, patriarchic relations of rural Turkey.
Kıral’s cinema is anthropocentric, with its own, idiosyncratic style and language. He draws on Turkish reality and literature, uses realistic, poetical and symbolic narratives, and tackles subjects such as the struggle of ordinary people to survive, the lack of development of theTurkish provinces, the resilience of feudal relations, the lot of the intellectual, and exile. Relying on his cultural heritage and sensitively conveying the sociopolitical conditions of his country, without once falling into the trap of exoticism, Kıral succeeds in addressing an international audience, thanks to the honesty of his gaze, the universality of his concerns, and the artistic integrity of his films.
Clearly influenced by hismentor, Yılmaz Güney, his two first films are unequivocally left leaning. Based on a true event, Τhe Canal (1978) portrays and critiques the landowning and water management systems in force at the time in rural Turkey. In his next film, On Fertile Lands (1980), Kıral adapted Orhan Kemal’s novel for the screen. In it, with feeling and realism, often bordering on the documentary, he chronicled the trials and tribulations of the workers at the cotton plantations, their moving to the cities, their quest for a better future, their loss of principles in the new, urban environment. Transcending the personal tales of the characters, Kıral manages to present a wider image of post-fifties Turkish social reality. A relentless indictment, the film describes a world that denies its inhabitants any kind of humanism, even the possibility to dream.
The military coup of 1980 and the ban on his two first films – in fact, the copies of On Fertile Lands were stolen and the negatives were found 28 years later, in Sweden – drove Kıral into self-exile in Germany, where he carried out a series of co-productions. In 1983 he presented one of the most significant films of his career, A Season in Hakkari, based on the novel by Ferit Edgü. The film, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and made Kıral known throughout Europe, explores with the simplicity of a documentary the culture shock suffered by a teacher – an intellectual– in an isolated village deep in the Turkish hinterland. Allowing ample time to the development of the narrative and basing himself on his powers of observation, Kıral records with ethnographic precision and effectiveness the cultural encounter between the film’s hero and the villagers – through the otherness of whom the protagonist will discover his real self. Next came The Mirror (1984), yet another poetic narrative that examines the psychology of its characters. Based on a popular legend, the story oscillates between dream and reality, reminiscent of Latin American magical realism. It is an elegy of the people of the countryside and their efforts to survive amid a hostile nature, under medieval living conditions and the fear of the aga, which underscores their repressed emotions as well as their sense of honor and dignity.
In 1987 he made Dilan, focusing on people’s inner conflicts through the story of a woman who’s waiting for her lover – but he never comes. This was followed in 1988 by a Turkish production, Time to Hunt, which portrays the period before the 1980 coup, and, after that, yet another European co-production, The Blue Exile (1993). Based on the autobiography of the Turkish intellectual and journalist Cevat Şakir(1890-1973), the film chronicles his long journey into exile – recreating the atmosphere of the period during which Ataturk founded the Republic – as well as the hero’s personal, inner journey of self-knowledge and purification of his past. The film is a poetic meditation, not only on the life of the author, but also on the essence of life itself, and on the things that people should consider important, regardless of social pressures.
His next film, The Hunter (1998), is based on a popular legend about a beautiful woman whose grave is in a lake. Kıral tells her story from different viewpoints, creating a fairy tale atmosphere and placing emphasis on the power of the gaze – an element that often recurs in his work and is indicative of Güney’s influence.What interests him here is the relativity of truth, the origin of violence, human emotions pushed to the limit, and repressed sexuality.
On the Road (2005) is Kıral’s most personal film to date. It involves the fictional representation of an actual event from the life of director Yılmaz Güney. Its starting point is a trip the two filmmakers took together, when Güney was being transferred to another prison, while he was working on his film The Road, the direction of which Güney had originally assigned to Kıral but then changed his mind. Against the backdrop of Turkey’s sociopolitical situation and through the symbolic use of theTurkish landscape, the filmtreats the concepts of alienation and freedom, scrutinizing the psychology and the complex relationship between teacher and student: on the one hand the repressed creativity of the imprisoned Güney, who assigns the direction of his films to others, and on the other hand, the student Kıral’s need to rebel and become intellectually independent of his influence.
Kıral then made Conscience (2008), a film which was especially sensuous for Turkish cinema standards. It tells a tale of passion, obsession and desire between three working class characters with a disastrous outcome. Golden Horn (2010), his last film so far, was the first documentary of his career. Inspired by the black and white photography of Aras Güler, Kıral portrays the Golden Horn in all its magnificence, underscoring the multiculturalism and the peaceful co-existence of different peoples. The camera follows the mental thread of the narrator, a Greek from Constantinople who returns after many years to the place of his birth, blending his childhood memories with the present day.
The Thessaloniki International Film Festival, wishing to honor this great Turkish filmmaker, presents the most extensive tribute to his work ever shown in Europe. Undoubtedly, his complete oeuvre being screened for the first time in Greece is a unique opportunity for the Festival’s Greek and foreign audiences, who have always embraced Turkish cinema.

Dimitris Kerkinos

Readers Select 100 Best Turkish Films

2011-10-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

1-EŞKIYA
(Yavuz Turgul/1996)

2-SELVİ BOYLUM AL YAZMALIM
(Atıf Yılmaz/1978)

3-HABABAM SINIFI
(Ertem Eğilmez/ 1975)

4-BABAM VE OĞLUM
(Çağan Irmak/ 2005)

5-ZÜĞÜRT AĞA
(Nesli Çölgeçen/1985)

6-MASUMİYET
(Zeki Demirkubuz/ 1997)

7-AĞIR ROMAN
(Mustafa Altıoklar/ 1997)

8-MUHSİN BEY
(1987)

9-YOL
(Şerif Gören/ 1981)

10-NEŞELİ GÜNLER
(Orhan Aksoy/ 1978)

Yilmaz Guney

2011-10-28T17:59:00.001-07:00

Yılmaz Güney'den Mektup var... from Nasname on Vimeo.

Labirent Trailer

2011-10-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

Bu video Adobe Flash Player'ın son sürümünü gerektirmektedir.

16th LTFF Trailer and Opening Night Gala highlights

2011-10-26T19:52:00.002-07:00

16. London Turkish Film Festival | QandA

2011-10-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

PASSION CINÉMA 2011 | Turkish Films

2011-10-04T14:25:00.000-07:00

PASSION CINÉMA et JOURNÉE MONTAGNES

03-08 October 2011

Ajaccio, Corsica

Mommo

Atalay Tasdiken. 1h34. Turquie. Produit en 2009. Drame

Avec Elif Bülbül, Mehmet Bülbül, Mete Dönmezer, MustafaUzunyılmaz

Synopsis :

Le film traite du lien extrêmement fort entre un frère et une sœur, Ahmet et Ayse, dont la mère vient de mourir. Leur père se remarie à une autre femme qui ne veut pas d’eux et qui entraîne ce dernier à les délaisser et à finalement les confier à leur grand-père handicapé. Âgé de seulement neuf ans, Ahmet doit donc assumer les rôles de père et de mère pour sa petite sœur. Est-ce que leur solidarité et leur soutien mutuel leur suffira pour rester ensemble ?

Pour son premier long métrage, s’inscrivant dans un cinéma réaliste, le réalisateur a choisi de mettre en scène une histoire qui s’est réellement déroulée dans un village d’Anatolie proche de sa campagne natale. Une histoire qui dénonce l’état de pauvreté du monde rural où les adultes n’ont quelquefois pas d’autre choix que d’envoyer leurs enfants travailler chez les nantis d’Istanbul.

Atalay Tasdiken réussit à brosser à la fois une peinture très naturaliste d’un village turc contemporain et le portrait de deux enfants, dont la relation de protection et d’attention entre le frère et la sœur…

Il était une fois en Anatolie

Grand Prix. Festival de Cannes 2011

Nuri Bilge Ceylan. 2h30. Turquie. Novembre 2011. Drame

Avec Yılmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan

Synopsis :

La vie dans une petite ville s’apparente à un voyage au milieu des steppes : l’impression que quelque chose « de nouveau et de différent » va surgir derrière chaque colline, mais toujours les mêmes routes monotones, effilées, qui disparaissent ou persistent, infailliblement similaires...

Ce grand réalisateur turc, auteur des Climats et des Trois singes, prouve une fois encore avec ce film qu'il est un immense cinéaste. L’histoire nous emmène sur les routes et dans les villages de l'Anatolie, région centrale de la Turquie composée de steppes désolées et monotones. On y suit les tribulations d'un procureur, un médecin légiste, une escouade de policiers et deux prisonniers à la recherche du cadavre que ces derniers ont enterré. Film passionnant ! Une émotion aussi intense qu'inattendue. Le tout superbement photographié et mis en scène…

Hair

Tayfun Pirselimoglu. 2h00. Grèce/Turquie. Produit en 2010.Drame

Avec Ruhi Sari, Mehmet Avcı, Nurcan Eren

Synopsis :

Dans un quartier délabré d’Istanbul Hamdi, un vendeur deperruques, se sent désespérément seul, passant ses jours et ses nuits dans saboutique, qui est aussi son domicile. Malgré le peu de temps qui lui reste àvivre, ce fumeur invétéré atteint d’un cancer, continue à enchaîner lescigarettes en fixant une une prostituée vêtue de rouge qui fait le trottoir del’autre côté de la rue. Convaincu qu’il rapetisse, Hamdi se mesure tous lesjours. Il n’espère plus rien avant sa mort, sauf peut-être partir très loin…

Hamburg IFF | Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

2011-10-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina 2011 | 157 min | OV with english and german s.t. | Colour |

n this long, slow, hypnotic film about a bunch of men looking for a body in the endless eerie Anatolian landscape, Turkey's star director Nuri Bilge Ceylan explores the human condition through side glances and offhand remarks, caring very little about time, especially the viewer’s time, in eventless sequences without conventional action. At the same time, for those willing to take the plunge, it is a deep and haunting work that lingers in the memory.

This event is presented in cooperation with Freundeskreis Filmfest Hamburg e.V.
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Screenplay: Nuri Bilge Ceylan Ebru Ceylan Ercan Kesal

Cast: Muhammet Uzuner Yılmaz Erdoğan Taner Birsel Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan Fırat Tanış Ercan Kesal

Producer: Zeynep Özbatur Atakan Mirsad Purivatra Eda Arikan Ibrahim Sahin Müge Kolat Murat Akdi

Orig. Titel: Bir zamanlar Anadolu'da
Section: Agenda 11
Original language: Turkish
Filmtype: Fiction Feature
DoP: Gökhan Tiryaki
Editor: Bora Gökşingöl, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Format: 35 mm
World Sales: Zeynofilm | Cihangir Caddesi Derya Palas apt. 34/' Beyoglu-Cihangir | 34433 Istanbul | Turkey | Email: sezgiu@gmail.com
Production Company: Zeyno Film; Prod2006; Turkish Radio & Television (TRT); Imaj; Fida Film; NBC FilmWebsite: http://www.nbcfilm.com/anatolia

Hamburg IFF | Press

2011-10-02T05:40:00.000-07:00

Press
Turkey 2010 | 100 min | OV with english and german s.t. | Colour |

In the first half of the 1990’s, on those days when intense skirmish between the Kurdish guerillas and the Turkish government took place, a handful of young journalists were struggling to proclaim the ongoing violations of human rights to the world. In those days of increasing pressure, the office staff fights both to survive and to reveal the facts. Journalism is no longer a profession, but a a matter of life or death for them.

This event is presented in cooperation with Freundeskreis Filmfest Hamburg e.V.

Director: Sedat Yilmaz

Screenplay: Sedat Yilmaz

Cast: Aram Dildar Engin Emre Değer Kadim Yaşar Sezgin Cengiz

Producer: Sedat Yilmaz

Orig. Titel: Press
Section: Agenda 11
Original language: Turkish
Filmtype: Fiction Feature
DoP: Demir Gökdemir
Set Designer: Nevin Do?an
Editor: Sedat Yilmaz
Format: 35 mm

Production Company: Karincalar Film Yapim | Firuzaga Mah. Süngü Sok. Süngü Apt. No: 1/2 | Cihangir-Istanbul | Turkey | Email: sedat@karincalaryapim.com

Website: www.pressfilm.net

Sedat Yilmaz, (*1972) works as a director and producer for cinema an TV. With his own production company Karincalar, he creates commercials and educational films. He also gives workshops in editing.

Hamburg IFF 2011 | Ecumenopolis: City Without Limits

2011-10-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

Ecumenopolis: City Without Limits
Turkey, Germany 2011 | 93 min | OV with german s.t. | Colour |

Istanbul wants to play in the big leagues. Last year it was the European City of Culture. It has its heart set on winning the 2020 Olympic bid. And the government wants it to be the financial centre of the region. At fifteen million, its population is twice the size of London’s, and looks set to double by 2030. But the lack of planning regulations means that expansion has come without adequate environmental or safety precautions. As one interviewee warns, for Istanbul the future means chaos.

Director: İmre Azem

Screenplay: İmre Azem

Producer: Gaye Günay Stephan Anspichler

Orig. Titel: Ekümenopolis: Ucu Olmayan Şehir
Section: Three Colours Green
Original language: English/Turkish
Filmtype: Documentary Feature
Music: Lari Dilmen, Nilüfer Ormanli
DoP: Hakan Yonat, ?enol Altun, İmre Azem
Editor: Eray Ilhan, Arzu Volkan
Format: HDCam

World Sales: Studio Hamburg Distribution & Marketing GmbH | Jenfelder Allee 80 | 22039 Hamburg | Germany | Phone: +49 40 6688-5355 | Email: distribution@studio-hamburg.de
Production Company: York Street Productions International Ltd.

Website: www.ekumenopolis.net

Imre Azem (*1975) studied political sciences and French literature among other things in Moscow, New Orleans and Paris. For his feature debut Ecumenopolis he moved back to his native Istanbul.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is Official

2011-10-01T06:52:00.000-07:00

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is the official candidate for an Academy Award.

New York Times, "Inquiry Into a Haunting Land Could Grab Palme d'Or", by Manohla Dargis

Time Out (London), "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Dave Calhoun

Variety, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Justin Chang

Screen International, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Dan Fainaru

Indiewire, "'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia' is a Mesmerizing Police Procedural", by Eric Kohn

The Hollywood Reporter, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Deborah Young

The Film Stage, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Raffi Asdourian

Mubi, "Cannes 2011: Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by David Hudson

The Lumière Reader, "Time Crimes: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Jacob Powell

Sounds like cinema, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Greg Bennett

Fest21, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Vanessa McMahon

Cinemascope, "Toronto FF countdown", by Robert Koehler

London 2011 | Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

2011-09-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

Ceylan’s most audacious film yet is a measured, masterly account of a police investigation, Chekhovian in its piercing insights, subtle wit and thematic richness.

Alongside The Tree of Life, Ceylan's Grand Prix-winner was widely regarded as the most rewardingly audacious film in Cannes this year. Its lithe if meticulously constructed story, starting at dusk and ending around the middle of the next day, follows the search by police, prosecutors, a doctor and the alleged culprit for the body of a man buried in the Anatolian steppes (but where exactly?) after a brawl. From this slow yet wholly engrossing account of a rambling, shambling investigation that steadily shifts focus from a group of mostly garrulous characters to the aforementioned doctor, Ceylan fashions a richly quizzical meditation on a range of interwoven themes: the concerns and manners of provincial life; our relationship with the places we inhabit; the balancing of ethics and pragmatism; our need to hold on to the banalities of life when faced with misfortune, absurdity and death. And more; even by his own remarkable standards, this is hugely impressive. The piercing insights and dry wit, the feel for the subtle rhythms of human interaction, the beautiful, superbly expressive Scope images confirm Ceylan's status as a master of cinema.

Geoff Andrew

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Running time 157 min
Year 2011
Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Country: Turkey-Bosnia-Herzegovina
Writer: Ercan Kesal, Ebru Ceylan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Cast: Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Firat Tanis
Distributor: New Wave Films

London IFF 2011 | Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

2011-09-23T09:41:00.001-07:00

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Oct 17)

Mon 17

| 20:30

| Vue Screen 7

FULLY BOOKED

It's a police procedural by the Turkish film-maker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, which means that it is long and deliberate and pruned of anything resembling CSI-style thrills. But stay with it. Follow in the footsteps of Ceylan's protagonists (the cops, doctor, prosecutor and suspects) as they hunt a body in the barrens and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia casts an extraordinary spell. It's arguably the director's most muscular, most fully realised film to date, and deservedly won the grand prix at the 2011 Cannes film festival (a prize it shared with the Dardennes' similarly fine The Kid With a Bike, which also screens at this year's LFF).

Turkish Film for Academy Award Nomination

2011-09-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

The Academy Award [1] for Best Foreign Language Film will benominated for out of this list of seven films.

Selim Demirdelen 'Kavşak', Orhan Oğuz 'Hayde Bre', DervişZaim 'Gölgeler ve Suretler', Handan İpekçi 'Çınar Ağacı', Nuri BilgeCeylan 'Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da', SeyfiTeoman 'Bizim Büyük Çaresizliğimiz'and Seren Yüce 'Çoğunluk'.

[1] The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is oneof the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed outannually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).It is given to afeature-length motion picture produced outside the UnitedStates of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.

Unlike other Academy Awards, the Best Foreign Language FilmAward is not presented to a specific individual. It is accepted by the winningfilm's director, but is considered an award for the submitting country as awhole. Over the years, the Best Foreign Language Film Award and itspredecessors have been given almost exclusively to European films: out of the63 Awards handed out by the Academy since 1947 to foreign language films, fiftyone have gone to European films, five to Asian films, three to African filmsand three to films from the Americas.

London Film Festival 2011 | Law of the Border

2011-09-09T14:10:00.001-07:00

Mavi Boncuk |

London Film Festival 2011

Law of the Border

Tue 25 | 18:30 | NFT3

Powerful and radical smuggling drama from Turkey, starring the great Yilmaz Güney, rescued and restored by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation.The happy outcome of another rescue mission by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation, created to help archives in developing countries preserve their cinema heritage, Law of the Border marked the beginning of Turkey's 'New Cinema' movement, focusing on the country's profound social problems. Brought to light by WCF advisory board member Fatih Akin and restored by L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna from the wreckage of a single positive print which survived the Turkish military coup d'état in 1980, the film highlights the deprivations of daily life in South-East Turkey – lack of education, no agriculture, unemployment – and their solution: smuggling. Akad's film has the stylistic qualities of an epic Western – '...a work of great visual and dramatic force, of terrific purity and ferocity,' as Kent Jones, executive director of the WCF, puts it – and was a positive influence on the film's scriptwriter and star, Yilmaz Güney, about to make his own directing debut and become Turkey's best-known radical filmmaker and thorn in the government's side, condemned to a life of political imprisonment and eventual exile in Switzerland.

Clyde Jeavons

Law of the Border
Country: Turkey: Running time: 74min Year :1966
Director: Ömer Lüfti Akad: Writer: Ömer Lüfti Akad, Yilmaz Güney
Cast: Yilmaz Güney, Pervin Par, Hikmet Olgun, Erol Tas, Tuncel Kurtiz:

TIFF 2011 | When We Leave

2011-09-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

When We Leave
Feo Aladag
Country: Turkey/Germany
Year: 2010
Runtime: 119 min minutes
Screens as part of Human Rights Watch

Based on a highly publicized honour killing in Berlin in 2005, When We Leave stars Sibel Kekilli as Umay, a young Turkish Muslim woman who courageously decides to leave her abusive husband in Istanbul and join her family in Germany with her young son. Her reunion with her parents and siblings soon reveals that cultural ties are strong and her family’s love is not unconditional. Umay’s struggle for independence in a patriarchal society bound by tradition and pride makes for a passionately dramatic film that provocatively explores issues of family, community values and personal freedom.

See Also

Turkish Cinema Newsletter: Audience Award for Feo Aladag's Die ...

Feb 01, 2011

DIE FREMDE by Feo Aladag, Germany | AUDIENCE AWARD EUROPEAN FEATURE FILMS | 20 000 € (Ville d'Angers, Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma et Le Monde) to the French distributor for the promotion of the ...

http://turkfilm.blogspot.com/

When We Leave (Die Fremde) by Feo Aladag

Jan 22, 2010

Feo Aladag was born in 1972 in Vienna. She began her career as an actress, completing her training in London and Vienna from 1990-1995. While studying Acting she completed a Master in Psychology and Journalism, continuing on to receive ...

http://turkfilm.blogspot.com/

Europe's LUX prize goes to When We Leave

Nov 24, 2010

The European Parliament's president Jerzy Buzek presented the award to Aladağ at a special ceremony today (24 Nov). She is the first female director to be shortlisted since the award began in 2007. The award carries a cash prize of ...

http://turkfilm.blogspot.com/

65 countries vie for 2010 Foreign Language Film Oscar®

Oct 16, 2010

Germany, “When We Leave,” Feo Aladag, director; Greece, “Dogtooth,” Yorgos Lanthimos, director; Greenland, “Nuummioq,” Otto Rosing and Torben Bech, directors; Hong Kong, “Echoes of the Rainbow,” Alex Law, director; ...

http://turkfilm.blogspot.com/

TIFF 2011 | Don't Go

2011-09-01T22:38:00.001-07:00

Pinky - Don't Go from Pinky on Vimeo.

Don't Go
Turgut Akacik
Country: Turkey
Year: 2010
Runtime: (3’ 51”)
Ages: 7-11
A pouncing cat pursues its imaginary disco-dancing friend in this lively and original music video.
produced by Anima - Istanbul. Annecy 2010 Animation Film Festival Special Distinction Award and Junior Jury Award for a short film winner. By Anima istanbul

Character Design: Nermin Er
Art Director: Melis Şeylan
Story: Turgut Akaçık
Production: Oya Aytimur
Graphic Design: Melis Şeylan
Animation: Turgut Akaçık
Director of Photography: Turgut Akaçık
Compositing: Koray Güzey, İlhan Poyraz
TD: Soner Ünlü
Modeling: Özgül Gürbüz
Music: "Don't Go" - Yazoo, "Invisible" - Fisher Spooner
Sound Design: Ozan Kurtulus
Editing: Turgut Akaçık
Title Sequence Animation: Ahmet Tabak
anima.gen.tr
Pinky - Don't Go (Teaser)

TIFF 2011 | Once Upon A Time in Anatolia

2011-08-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

The 36th Toronto International Film Festival

Once Upon A Time in Anatolia | Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

What appears to be on the surface a police procedural film is anything but in Ceylan's hands. As the confessed killer tries to lead the authorities to the place where he buried the body, a series of clues are laid as to what has actually happened.

PROGRAMMER'S NOTE

Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan has made a film that demands great patience, but that patience is magnificently rewarded as the narrative moves toward its conclusion. Although the title is a nod to Sergio Leone, Ceylan is very much his own man, determined to create a mythology around a subject that defines an era and a country.

The plot follows the outline of a routine police procedural, but as one would expect from this distinctive filmmaker, Once Upon A Time in Anatolia is far from routine.

A murder has been committed and a man has confessed; all that remains is for him to lead police to the body so they can wrap the case. In the dead of night, two cars and a Jeep carrying the murderer, the police chief and the prosecutor set out to find the burial spot. As the small convoy inches its way through the darkness of the deserted countryside, it becomes clear that the killer can’t locate the place where he left his victim. Cigarettes are smoked; conversations occur and refreshments are served in a local village; nothing significant seems to happen. Yet whether we are aware of it or not, small clues are being planted along the way.

Like a game of chess, the grand design of this subtle and disturbing film comes increasingly into focus as events progress. Things are not always as they appear to be, and in Kafka-like gestures, people, emotions and events are developed in different and deeper ways. Once Upon A Time in Anatolia is ambiguous enough that we must concentrate on all the details of the canvas before the full story becomes apparent — or does it? A number of doors open teasingly, creating a labyrinthine world that mirrors our present incomprehension at so many contemporary events. What is truth and how we find it are some of the questions Ceylan raises in this superior exploration of a crime and its investigation.
Piers Handling

DIRECTOR'S BIO
Nuri Bilge Ceylan was born in Istanbul. He studied cinema at Mimar Sinan University. His films include The Small Town (98), Clouds of May (00), Distant (03), which won the Grand Prix as well as the prize for best actor for its two male leads at the Cannes Film Festival, Climates (06), Three Monkeys (08) and Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (11).

Country:Turkey/Bosnia and Herzegovina
Year:2011
Language:Turkish
Runtime:157 minutes
Format: 35mm
Producer:Zeynep Ozbatur Atakan; Production Company:Zeynofilm
Principal Cast: Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan,Taner Birsel, A. Mumtaz Taylan,Ercan Kesal
Screenplay:Ercan Kesal, Ebru Ceylan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Cinematographer:Gokhan Tiryaki
Editor:Bora Goksingol, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Sound:Thomas Robert
US Distributor: The Cinema Guild 115 West 30th Street, Suite 800 · New York, NY 10001
Phone: (800) 723-5522 · Fax: (212) 685-4717 · email: info@cinemaguild.com
International Sales Agent:Zeynofilm

MWFF 2011 | SHADOWS AND FACES

2011-08-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL August 18 to 28, 2011SHADOWS AND FACES | GOLGELER VE SURETLER
Turkey
Out of Competition 2010 / Colour / 116 min

Director : Dervis Zaim Script : Dervis Zaim
Photography : Emre Erkmen Editor : Aylin Zoi
Cast : Hazar Erguçlu, Osman Alkas, Popi Avraam, Settar Tanriogen, Bugra Gulsoy, Erol Refikoglu, Constantinos Gavriel, Pandelis Antonas, Ahmet Karabiber

SHADOWS AND FACES
Cyprus, 1963. The government has just recently declared its independence, but the two major ethnic groups on the island cannot come to an agreement about how the country will be governed. The Turks and the Greeks had seemed to get along, but this changes with the uprising of anarchist groups on both sides. In a small village where Turks and Greeks had been living peacefully, Salih, a Karagoz shadow play master and his daughter Ruhsar, driven from their home by the Greek police, go to their relative Veli in the next village, looking for a shelter. Veli, the elder statesman of the Turkish community there, believes he can appease the mounting tension between Greeks and Turks by keeping a low profile, and he is supported by his Greek neighbour, the local innkeeper, Anna, who tries to calm down her own people, most particularly her hot-headed son, Thanassis. The latter sees a few guns being dug up by young Turks in Veli's garden, then the Greek police bring in a whole load of weapons which they plant in Anna's house despite her protests. The Turks notice and start training in secret with their antiquated rifles, with Veli losing control over the young Turks who believe they should be the first to attack before it is too late. The Greeks retaliate, the violence escalates and many Turks are driven from their villages. When Ruhsar loses her father, she gets occasional help from his Anna, but she cannot help but become apprehensive about a woman who represents the oppression that is enveloping her...

Dervis Zaim
Born in Famagusta, Cyprus in 1964, Dervis Zaim graduated from Warwick University in England and studied film production in London. In 1995, his first novel, Ares in Wonderland, won the prestigious Yunus Nadi literary prize in Turkey. A year later he made an auspicious debut as a director with SOMERSAULT IN A COFFIN. Among his other films: ELEPHANTS AND GRASS (2000), MUD (2003), WAITING FOR HEAVEN (2006) and DOT (2008), shown at the Montreal World Film Festival.

MWFF 2011 | PRESS

2011-08-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL August 18 to 28, 2011PRESS
Turkey
Focus on World Cinema2010 / Colour / 100 min

Production company : Sedat Yilmaz, Karincalar Film Yapim, Firuzaga Mah. Sungu Sok., Sungu, # 1, Cighangir Beyoglu, 34425
Director : Sedat Yilmaz Script : Sedat Yilmaz
Photography : Demir Gokdemir Editor : Sedat Yilmaz
Cast : Aram Dildar, Engin Emre Deger, Kadim Yasar, Sezgin Cengiz, Tayfur Aydin, Asiye Dincsoy

PRESS
In the early 1990s, when the armed conflict between Kurdish militants and the Turkish goverment was at its height, a group of journalists at "Free Agenda". a leftwing publication in Diyarbakir, struggle to report the infingements of human rights in Turkey and, in particular, the Kurdish areas. As government pressure increases, the young staff fights not only to publish but simply to survive. Some of them are kidnapped and threatened, some are killed out on the streets, and their offices are broken into and ravaged by the police. Journalism is no longer a profession, it is a matter of life and death.

Sedat Yilmaz
Born in Malayata, Turkey in 1972, Sedat Yilmaz studied computer science then switched to cinema at Marmara University. In 2003 he co-founded Karincalar, a film production house, for which he made commercials, educational films, videos and documentaries. His directorial credits include The Seventieth Day (2000) and Handcuffs (2002). PRESS is his first feature.

MWFF 2011 | THE SON

2011-08-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL August 18 to 28, 2011THE SON | OGUL

Turkey
Focus on World Cinema2011 / Colour / 97 min

Director : Attila Cengiz Script : Attila Cengiz
Photography : Baybars Tekin Editor : Recep Ergun
Cast : Riza Akin, Sahin Erguney, Enes Atis, Nurinisa Yildirim, Gokhan Atalay, Kuvvet Yurdakul, Duygu Yetis

THE SON
Soner, a naive 18-year-old, leaves his hometown, Giresun, on the Black Sea coast, to travel inland to Tunceli. The girl he loves is working there gathering hazelnuts. This is the first time he is venturing outside his hometown. His bus is stopped by soldiers in the mountains. Soner is questioned, and advised not to continue to Tunceli. Abandoned at a crossroads, he is told to return home. But Soner is determined; he gets a lift on a truck carrying workers. The truck is involved in an accident and Soner's path crosses that of Musa, a man whose son is a guerrilla. Musa is warned by the soldiers: they will hold him accountable if his son does not return from the mountains together with the nut gatherers in a couple of days...

Attila Cengiz
Born in Turkey in 1975, Atilla Cengiz has worked extensively in Turkish television, directing several series. Among them: Ezo Gelin (2006), Love Again (2007), Apartment Life (2007), Windfall (2008), Visions of Cappadocia (2009) and Five to Life Kala (2011).

MWFF 2011 | HAYDE BRE

2011-08-23T06:21:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL August 18 to 28, 2011HAYDE BRE
Turkey
Focus on World Cinema2011 / Colour / 115 min

Production company : Yasemin Kuçukçavdar Guler, Kardes Sanatlar Film Produksiyon, Bakrac Sok. Nº 6/6, Cihangir, Istanbul
Director : Orhan Oguz Script : Orhan Oguz
Photography : Adnan Guler Editor : Murat Bor
Cast : Sevket Emrulla, Nilufer Açikalin, Ilker Inanoglu, Mustafa Yasar, Perihan Ahmeti, Suzan Kardes, Ayberk Koçar

HAYDE BRE
Sabanaga lives in a small Macedonian village with his wife and friends while his stepdaughter Saadet lives in Istanbul with her three children and invalid husband whom she has to take care of. The lives of Sabanaga and Saadet intersect unexpectedly after Saadet returns to the village for her son's circumcision ceremony. When his wife dies, Sabanaga accepts Saadet's invitation to move to Istanbul, but it soon becomes apparent to him that big city life is intimidating and alien to him. It has rules that he can't get used to and he feels like a captive. Sabanaga longs to return to the smalltown life he remembers so fondly. Or thinks he remembers. Does that life still exist?

Orhan Oguz
Born in Kirklareli, Turkey in 1948, Orhan Oguz came to the cinema via a childhood interest in photography and painting. He apprenticed as an assistant director at 16, then began directing his own shorts and worked as a cinematographer for many established directors before making his own feature debut in 1987 with HERSEYE RAGMEN. Among his other films: UCUNCU GOZ (1989), IKI BASLI DEV (1991), SARA (1999), KARA KENTIN COCUKLARI (2000), DARK SPELLS (2004), AURA (2007).

MWFF 2011 | MERRY-GO-ROUND

2011-08-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL August 18 to 28, 2011MERRY-GO-ROUND | ATLIKARINCA
Turkey
Focus on World Cinema2010 / Colour / 93 min

Director : Ilksen Basarir Script : Ilksen Basarir, Mert Firat
Photography : Hayk Kirakosyan Editor : Erkan Ozekan
Cast : Mert Firat, Nergis Ozturk, Zeynep Oral, Sema Çeyrekbasi, Sercan Badur

MERRY-GO-ROUND
Erdem, Sevil and their children Edip and Sevgi live in a small town. Their lives begin to change when they have to move to Istanbul because Sevil's mother has had a stroke. Ten years pass and by this time Edip is at a boarding school away from the family and Erdem is still pursuing the dream he's always had of becoming a good writer. Sevil is aware that Sevgi's behaviour has suddenly changed, that she's become introverted and unhappy, so she sets about to find out what the trouble is. She discovers that their family has some dark secrets hidden behind closed doors.

Ilksen Basarir
Born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1978, Ilksen Basarir graduated in communications from Marmara University then worked in the production of commercials and features. She made her directorial debut in features in 2009 with LOVE IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE, winner of prizes at festivals in Turkey and Ukraine.

MWFF 2011 | BODY

2011-08-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL August 18 to 28, 2011VUCUT | BODY

Turkey
First Films World Competition2011 / Colour / 104 min

Director : Mustafa Nuri Script : Mustafa Nuri
Photography : A. Emre Tanyildiz Editor : Eray Ilhan
Cast : Hatice Aslan, Hakan Kurtas, Cengiz Bozkurt, Sayla Halis, Sebnem Dilligil, Neslihan Yeldan, Ilayda Suren

BODY
Leyla, in her 40s, is an occasional porn actress. Several years ago she moved to Germany with Yilmaz and they worked together in the porn film industry. Now back in Istanbul, Yilmaz breaks up with Leyla. While Leyla is trying to get used to live without Yilmaz, he approaches her with a final request; one last movie. Reluctantly Leyla agrees to act in the picture. And it is through this movie that handsome young Izzet enters her life. Because of a traumatic childhood experience, Izzet is unlike others in the business. During the shooting of the film, an unexpected fight breaks out and Izzet runs away, though Leyla remains in his mind. Izzet follows Leyla for days, begging to reconcile. Leyla isn't fully convinced, but she can't say no to him. She enjoys someone's interest in her after all these years. Can she make it work? Meanwhile, Yilmaz's love life takes a turn for the worse. Without telling his girlfriend he records themselves while having sex. When Yilmaz's girlfriend comes home unexpectedly, she catches Yilmaz showing the tape to his friends. She reacts furiously...

Mustafa Nuri
Born in Nicosia, Cyprus in 1973, Mustafa Nuri graduated in communications from Istanbul University and he also has a master's in Turkish culture. He directed numerous commercials, many of which won prizes in the Crystal Apple competition. BODY marks his directorial debut in features.

MWFF 2011 | SEPTEMBER

2011-08-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL August 18 to 28, 2011SEPTEMBER | EYLUL
Turkey
First Films World Competition 2011 / Colour / 90 min

Director : Cemil Agacikoglu Script : Cemil Agacikoglu
Photography : Ali Olcay Gozkaya Editor : Taner Sarf
Cast : Turgay Aydin, Gorkem Yeltan, Elena Polyanskaya

SEPTEMBER
Yusuf, a young goldsmith in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, is having a hard time. His wife Asli is in the hospital, in mortal fear of cancer, and there isn't much he can do to cheer her up. Far from her hometown, Asli has no one in Istanbul but Yusuf and she cannot share her fear of death and her loneliness with him. Meanwhile Yusuf, who is shy and introverted himself, lacks the life experience with which to comfort his wife and he is doubly depressed because of it. As time passes, their inability to communicate widens the gap between them. That's when Elena enters Yusuf's life. Temporarily sharing Asli's room at the hospital, Elena is an attractive foreign woman who was victim of abuse at the hands of her violent partner. Having witnessed Yusuf's demeanor at the hospital, his kindness and compassion for Asli, Elena decides to confide in him when she is discharged from the hospital. She, too, is in trouble and has no one else to turn to in Istanbul. Yusuf agrees to help. But in a macho society where women are stereotyped, Yusuf's friendship with Elena is easily misjudged. Yusuf befriends Elena but he can't convince the people at work that he is just being altruistic. And, indeed, their relationship soon goes beyond altruism. The inevitable intimacy between them leads to a feeling of guilt. But the heart has its own reasons.

Cemil Agacikoglu
Born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1959, Cemil Agacikoglu began his career as a photographer in 1990, winning several domestic and international prizes for his work. He made his directorial debut in 1997 with a short film and graduated to music videos. Among his recent shorts: It Was White (2005), Rope (2008) and Police (2008). SEPTEMBER is his first feature.

TIFF 2011 | Future Lasts Forever by Özcan Alper

2011-08-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

TIFF The Toronto International Film Festival is the leading public film festival in the world, screening more than 300 films from 60+ countries every September.Contemporary World Cinema
Future Lasts Forever Gelecek Uzun Surer by Özcan Alper

Özcan Alper’s second feature film is many things. Visually, it is a stunning work, featuring some of the finest cinematography I have seen this year and capturing the unique Turkish countryside in its many moods. It is also a love story with a twist, as one half of its central couple is absent for virtually the whole narrative. And to give the film an extra dimension and edge: it confronts the Kurdish reality within Turkey.

Future Lasts Forever is an achingly reflective road movie (with a few inside references to one of the masters of this form, Wim Wenders), tracing a young Turkish woman’s voyage to find her Kurdish lover, who has left to take up the fight of his people. Sumru (Gaye Gürsel), an ethnomusicologist armed with a tape recorder, decides to find and record the elegies, or testimonies, of Kurdish survivors of Turkish atrocities. These are eloquently delivered, mostly by women whose men have been killed — often right before their eyes. But the underlying reason for Sumru’s trip is to find the man who claimed her heart.

At her first stop, the city of Diyarbakir, Sumru meets another man who shares her interests, and soon the two find themselves spending more and more time together. But Alper confounds narrative expectations: even as this new couple continues their voyage together, romantic involvement is not his focus. Instead, his attention rests on people trapped in the past, fumbling to make sense of events that have changed their lives. The silent, enduring landscape is always there, a kind of mute witness to the living and the dead. How can such tragedy exist amid so much beauty?

A film of memories — personal, collective and historic — Future Lasts Forever marks the maturation of an exciting new Turkish talent. Alper pauses and observes, creating quiet emotional moments of devastating power as his heroine moves closer and closer to solving the mystery of her lover’s disappearance.
Piers Handling

Özcan Alper was born in Artvin, Turkey. He studied physics and history of science at Istanbul University. His feature films are Autumn (08) and Future Lasts Forever (11).

Country: Turkey/France/Germany
Year:2011
Language: Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Hemshince
Runtime: 108 minutes ; Format:DCP(D-Cinema)
Executive Producer: C. Asli Filiz ;Producer: Ersin Celik, Soner Alper
Production Company: Nar Film[1] /Unafilm/Arizona Films
Principal Cast: Gaye Gursel, Durukan Ordu, Sarkis Seropyan, Osman Karakoc, Erdal Kirik
Screenplay:Özcan Alper; Cinematographer:Feza Caldiran; Editor: Ayhan Ergursel, Thomas Balkenhol, Özcan Alper, Umut Sakallioglu; Sound: Mohammed Mokhtary; Music: Mustafa Biber; Production Designer:Tolunay Turkoz

A film of memories, we follow a young ethnomusicologist who leaves Istanbul in search of her Kurdish lover. Along the way she records testimonies of Kurdish survivors, meets a young man who shares her interests and gradually gets closer to resolving what has happened to her friend.

[1] Nar Film was founded in 2009 by Özcan Alper, Ersin Çelik and Soner Alper. 'Autumn', the previous film of Özcan Alper was also included in the line-up of Nar Film after its foundation. Nar Film produced the new project of Özcan Alper, 'Future Lasts Forever'.

Nar Film plans to continue to produce feature and documentary films and intends to provide production services to the international projects as well as bringing art-house international films to a Turkish audience.
NAR FILM
Caferağa Mah. Sarraf Ali Sok.
Kaan Apt. No:25 / 3, Kadıköy / İST / TR
T (+90) 216 418 42 06 | F (+90) 216 336 26 34 | info@narfilm.com

Imdat Serhat Karaaslan

2011-08-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

Imdat Serhat Karaaslan was born 1984 in Varto. He graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy at Istanbul University. He studies towards a master degree on Film and Drama at Kadir Has University since 2009. He works as a pharmacist and he professionally makes his own movies.

Beş Lira - 2009
Araf - 2009

Bisqilet (Bisiklet) - 2010
Xwin (Kan) - 2010

Xwin / Blood ,Short Film by Serhat Karaaslan from Serhad Karaaslan on Vimeo.

Short Film | BISQILÊT by Serhat Karaaslan

2011-08-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

Serhat Karaaslan was born 1984 in Varto. He graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy at Istanbul University. He studies towards a master degree on Film and Drama at Kadir Has University since 2009. He works as a pharmacist and he professionally makes his own movies.

Written and Directed by I. Serhat Karaaslan Cast: Baran Salman, Mehmet Unal, Musa Karagoz | Short / 2010 / 17’ 14”

Bisqilêt / Bisiklet / Bicycle Serhat Karaaslan from serhat karaaslan on Vimeo.

AWARDS
- 43th Turkish Film Critics Association (SİYAD) Turkish Cinema Awards in the 2010 The Best Short Film
- 47th Antalya ‘Golden Orange’ International Film Festival, Digital Film Academy Award,2010
- 8th Golden Apricot - Yerevan International Film Festival in Armenia,Special Mention Prize,2011
- 22th Ankara International Film Festival,The Best Short Film,2011
- 15th Boston Turkish Film Festival, The Best Short Film Juri Award,2010
- 15th Boston Turkish Film Festival, The Best Short Film Audience Award,2010
- 16th Nurnberg Film Festival ,Juri Special Mansion Prize,2011
- 10th Vannes European Film Meetings ,Coop Breizh Prize,2011
- 1st Yilmaz Güney Kurdish Film Festival,The Best Short Film Award,2010
- 8th Metro Short Film Festival ,The Best Short Film Award,2010
- 3th Rotary Short Film Competition, The Best Short Film Award,2011
- 11th Kısaca Student Short Film Festival, The Best Short Film,2011
- 1st Psychiatric Association Of Turkey Short Film Festival,The Best Short Film Award,2011
- 4th Kristal Klaket Short Film Festival, Juri Special Award,2011
- 3th İstanbul Technical University Short Film Festival,The Best Film,2011
- 7th Yildiz Techical University Short Film Festival,Winner of 2nd Prize,2010
- 1st Okan University Student Short Film Competition, The Best Film, 2011
- 1st Eskisehir King Midas International Short Film Festival,Winner Of 2 nd Prize,2011
- 2nd Lions International Short Film Festival,The Best Short Film,2011
- 2nd Lions International Short Film Festival,The Best Director Prize,2011
- 2nd Lions International Short Film Festival,Winner 3th Cinematographer,2011

FESTIVALS
- 64th Cannes Film Festival, Short Film Corner,2011
- Hisar Short Film Selection ( 10 Best Short Film of Turkey) ,2011
- 17 th Sarajevo Film Festival,Section,2011
- 8th Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival,Short Film Competition Section,2011
- 22nd Trieste International Film Festival, Short Film Competition Section,2011
- 14th Brussels International Short Film Festival, Short Films Competition Section,2011
- 17th International Film Festival Della Lessinia Bosco Chiesanuova, Short Films Competition Section,2011
- 19 th Yasujiro Ozu International Short Film Festival,Section,2011
- 11th Fluxus International Film Festival,Section,2011
- 7th Detmold International Short Film Festival ,Section,2011
- 7th Athens International Short Film Competition, Section,2011
- Canadian Sport Film Festival, Section, 2011
- Poland ‘KAN’ International Short Film Festival, Short Films Competition Section,2011
- India 3rd CMS International Children’s Film Festival, Short Films Competition Section,2011
- 1st Kurdish Film Festival In Carrick On Shannon,Republic of Ireland,Section,2010
- 7 th Almaty International Film Festival titled “Shaken’s Stars-2011,Short Films Competition Section, 2011
- Greece Artfools International video Festival,Short Films Competition Section, 2011
- 6th International Labor Film Festival, 2011
- 22 th İstanbul International Short Film Festival,Section,2010
- Bulgaria "Flowers of the Quran" Film Festival, Section, 2011
- International Teen Short Film Festival, Section, 2011
- 7 th Akbank Short Film Festival,Section, 2011

New Turkish Cinema: The Third Wave By Mariana Hristova

2011-08-20T22:54:00.000-07:00

New Turkish Cinema: The Third Wave By Mariana Hristova

Interview | Belma Baş

2011-08-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

Interview Belma Baş director of Zephyr SOURCE
TURKEY

Belma Baş was born in Ordu, Turkey in 1969. After moving to Istanbul to study English literature, she developed an interest in being a director. Her first short, Poyraz, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. Zephyr, about a troubled 11 year old girl who is spending the summer living with her grandparents on their isolated farm, awaiting the return of her absent mother, is her debut feature.

Since when has cinema been a part of your life?

For a long time (laughs). In my childhood there was only one TV channel, and I strongly remember seeing images of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal without really knowing what they were. Throughout my childhood, European films were shown: it wasn’t all mainstream Hollywood things. So you could see very good examples of European cinema.

When I moved from my small town to Istanbul, there was a little film festival, which is now the biggest film festival in all Turkey, and I saw things like Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and I became aware that a different style of cinema exists. I was fascinated by this. I was most interested in the mavericks of their own countries.

Zephyr addresses similar themes to your earlier short film. Is this by design?

Yes, my short film was a prelude to Zephyr. I used many of the same non-professional actors. Also, because there is a lack of heroines in cinema, I want to make a series of films from a female point of view. The male perspective is very different from the female perspective, so I’m trying to capture new traits.

Is Zephyr an autobiographical film?

The storyline is fictional, but otherwise everything is real. I started with experiences I had growing up. I wanted to go back to the roots of everything. I gained a new perspective coming to a big city, Istanbul, and it’s a kind of nostalgia that takes me back to my home town. There are also references to the 70s period in the music. Somehow, I’m a little fixated with the 70s, my childhood. But the situation of the movie is fictional; I am not like Zephyr. Well, I was kind of autistic, maybe! Zephyr is kind of autistic too. She lives in her own world, and she has different reactions to everybody else about life.

Is it fair to say the style of the movie is indebted to classic European cinema?

Yes, and it’s not only Tarkovsky. Look at the cow’s eye; it’s like Bunuel! I was also influenced by Bresson, and the mother’s face is framed as a tribute to Bergman. All those influences form the pieces of a puzzle: childhood, family history, my relationship with English literature, the masters of contemporary cinema, like Haneke and Van Sant. They are handling delicate issues in a deadpan style and with frightening starkness. I believe there is no creation without tradition. Every influence I have makes its way into the formation of my own filmmaking.

Zephyr’s mother is a very mysterious character. Why do you think she has abandoned her daughter?

I just gave a little hint, because if it’s very obvious, then people’s focus will go. It’s just a part of the bigger picture. At the end we see there is a UNICEF file which falls out of the backpack. It is about children who are under threat. She knows she can leave her child in a safe environment. So, she cares about other children for very idealistic reasons. She feels more of a social responsibility than a political one.

The movie was shot on film; what do you think of digital production methods?

I am still a conservative in this respect. I love film stock. I can’t think of using digital, because it makes things look unsophisticated. The advantages of film are still much higher than the advantages of digital. My DP is also very fond of film. But, in terms of budget, I may have to move to digital for the next project.

Do you learn about yourself making films?

Of course. I confront my secret fears. I have big questions about life and the dark side. This film can be summed up as a ‘coming of age’ story about growing up, and I myself need to be a more grown-up person, maybe. Making films helps me to solve my issues (laughs).

By Michael O’Regan

Short Film | Poyraz by Belma Baş

2011-08-10T09:01:00.000-07:00

Watch Poyraz
Belma Baş was born in Ordu, Turkey in 1969. After moving to Istanbul to study English literature, she developed an interest in being a director. Her first short, Poyraz, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. Zephyr, about a troubled 11 year old girl who is spending the summer living with her grandparents on their isolated farm, awaiting the return of her absent mother, is her debut feature.

Poyraz from Altyazı Aylık Sinema Dergisi on Vimeo.

35th MWFF | The Turks

2011-08-08T17:21:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL August 18 to 28, 2011
Jury presided over by Spanish director Vicente Aranda
383 FILMS FROM OVER 70 COUNTRIES | 230 features and medium-length films | 153 short films

FIRST FILMS WORLD COMPETITION
BODY - Mustafa Nuri (Turkey)
SEPTEMBER - Cemil Agacikoglu (Turkey)

HORS CONCOURS / WORLD GREATS
SHADOWS AND FACES - Dervis Zaim (Turkey)

FOCUS ON WORLD CINEMA
HAYDE BRE – Orhan Oguz (Turkey)
MERRY-GO-ROUND – Ilksen Basarir (Turkey)
PRESS – Sedat Yilmaz (Turkey)
THE SUN – Atilla Cengiz (Turkey)

Ceylan's Latest Slated for Cannes

2011-04-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

Writer, Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest film, BIR ZAMANLAR ANADOLU'DA was selected for the main sectionn of the 64th Cannes Film Festival running May 11-22, 2011. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (TR: Bir Zamanlar Anadolu) is Turkish film, starring Yılmaz Erdoğan as a doctor living on the Anatolia. Also starring: Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mumtaz Taylan and Muhammet Uzuner. Gokcecan Gursoy (Av mevsimi, Ask Tesadüfleri Sever, GORA)provided post production visual effects.

Jury Presidents along with all the films were also announced.

JURY Main Competition: Robert DE NIRO, JURY CINEFONDATION and Short Films: Michel GONDRY, JURY UN CERTAIN REGARD : Emir KUSTURICA, JURY CAMERA D’OR: BONG Joon-Ho

"So far, the surprising omissions from the list are Andrei Zvyagintsev's Elena, about an old woman attempting to rescue her alcoholic son from poverty, Yorgos Lanthimos's Alps, about a night nurse who runs a bizarre psycho-therapeutic bereavement service, and Brillante Mendoza's Prey, starring Isabelle Huppert as a woman abducted by an Islamist separatist group. But the whispers are that at least one of these films – probably Alps – will be added to the competition list in the coming weeks." Guardian

"Mavi Boncuk |Opening Film |

Out of Competition
Woody ALLEN | MIDNIGHT IN PARIS 1h40

Competition
Pedro ALMODÓVAR LA PIEL QUE HABITO 2h00
Bertrand BONELLO L'APOLLONIDE - SOUVENIRS DE LA MAISON CLOSE 2h02
Alain CAVALIER PATER 1h45
Joseph CEDAR HEARAT SHULAYIM (Footnote) 1h45
Nuri Bilge CEYLAN | BIR ZAMANLAR ANADOLU'DA (Once upon a time in Anatolia) 2h30
Jean-Pierre et Luc DARDENNE LE GAMIN AU VÉLO 1h27
Aki KAURISMÄKI LE HAVRE 1h43
Naomi KAWASE HANEZU NO TSUKI 1h31
Julia LEIGH SLEEPING BEAUTY - First Film - 1h44
MAÏWENN POLISSE 2h01
Terrence MALICK THE TREE OF LIFE 2h18
Radu MIHAILEANU LA SOURCE DES FEMMES 2h15
Takashi MIIKE ICHIMEI (Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samuraï) 2h06
Nanni MORETTI HABEMUS PAPAM 1h42
Lynne RAMSAY WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN 1h50
Markus SCHLEINZER MICHAEL - First Film - 1h34
Paolo SORRENTINO THIS MUST BE THE PLACE 1h58
Lars VON TRIER MELANCHOLIA 2h10
Nicolas WINDING REFN DRIVE 1h35

Behzat Ç | A New Ankara Based Police TV Serial

2011-02-05T17:35:00.000-08:00

Bio | Beren Yüce

2011-02-05T08:54:00.000-08:00

Seren YÜCE (1975, Turkey) studied archaeology and then worked as directing assistant on various television programmes. Yüce then made the transition to the film world as assistant director on respectively A Man’s Fear of God (Özer Kiziltan, 2006), The Edge of Heaven(Fatih Akin, 2007) and Pandora’s Box (Yesim Ustaoglu, 2008). Majority is his feature debut.

Çogunluk/Majority (2010)

Bio | Belma Bas

2011-02-05T08:38:00.000-08:00

Belma Bas
Belma BAS (1969, Ordu, Turkey) received her BA in English Literature from Istanbul University in 1992. A literary translator since 1990, she also worked full-time for Turkish film institutes as an international relations and festival manager from 1991 to 1998. Her debut short film Poyraz (Boreas) premiered in the official competition at the 59th Cannes Film Festival. Zephyr is her first feature length film.

Poyraz/Boreas (2006, short) WATCH, Zefir/Zephyr (2010)

Rotterdam IIFR | Zephyr

2011-02-05T08:34:00.001-08:00

Zephyr BF-2011

Teenage girl Zephyr spends her youth in the house of her grandparents, in the stunningly beautiful countryside. Every day she awaits the return of her mother. A deep look into the psyche of the girl and her discoveries about love, life and nature.

This minimalistic, beautifully photographed debut tries to fathom the actions of the 11-year-old Turkish girl Zephyr. Her globe-trotting mother has been away for years and this has deeply damaged Zephyr emotionally. She lives with her grandparents in a beautiful hilly area, where she is especially interested in the dead animals that she respectfully buries.
The fact that her mother keeps leaving has made her suspicious. She does not bond, because this only leads to saying farewell. Her grandparents lead a simple, self-sufficient life, with mushrooms and berries they pick themselves and fresh milk. Snails and spiders surround them and it looks as if Zephyr feels more at home with the animals than in the world of adult people. The soundtrack meanwhile heralds the approaching disaster.
Together with Bas' short-film debut Poyraz, the film Zephyr, made with an almost entirely non-professional cast, forms the start of the film series The Heroine's Journey Beyond Winds.

Director Belma Bas
Producer Birol Akbaba, Seyhan Kaya, FC Istanbul
Sales Medit GmbH
Print source FC Istanbul
Scenario Belma Bas
Cast Seyma Uzunlar, Vahide Gordum, Sevinc Bas, O. Rustu Bas, Fatma Uzunlar, Harun Uzunlar
Photography Mehmet Y. Zengin
Editor Berke Bas
Production design Canan Cayir
Sound design Ismail Karadas
Length 93'
Website www.zephyrfilm.com

Rotterdam IIFR | Majority

2011-02-05T08:28:00.000-08:00

Majority BF-2011

A wonderful portrait of a rural family and modern city existence, told through the life (and its problems) of a teenage boy, his relatives and friends. The director tackles present day Turkish society in a subtle and attractive way.

Mertkan (21) is a passive young man who still lives with his parents and works in the office of his father’s building company. In his spare time, he hangs round with friends and visits clubs in Istanbul. His life is stable but empty, until he meets the Kurdish Gül. His dominant, uncompromising father is very negative about Kurds and opposes their contact. The question is whether Mertkan can shake off all expectations and make his own decision.
In this powerful debut, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it won the Lion of the Future, Seren Yüce examines Turkish taboos in a delicate manner, using a complex father-son relationship, growing up, and the position of women in a society dominated by men.
There’s an important role in Majority for the architecture of the city, as a metaphor for the complexities of life. Yüce regards his film drama as self-criticism, criticism of Turkish society, of which he is himself part.

Programmer Note by Ludmila Cvikova:

If you ask me for my favourite film of 2010 then I will tell you I have got two: the Turkish film Majority and the Romanian one Tuesday, After Christmas. The former because of its seemingly uncomplicated look into complicated, modernizing society in Turkey. The latter because of its virtuosity in directing and acting of a few long shots that the film consists of.
I still freshly remember the excitement of the Majority-crew in Venice, after the premiere. They were standing there, on the stage, the whole group on the background of red colour and trying to get control over their excitement while one of them was translating into English what was being said. I followed the whole discussion and was amazed once again by the excellent work of the director with the actors. You would not recognize them outside the film - as they totally amalgamated with their characters.
When we got out of the cinema I knew: this is one of the strongest Turkish films of the year. Also for its sublime reflection of the subjects like family traditions and their hierarchy, modern youth within the society, military service and more.

TURKEY 2010
Director Seren Yüce
Producer Sevil Demirci, Önder Çakar Yeni Sinemacilik
Sales The Match Factory GmbH
Print source The Match Factory GmbH
Scenario Seren Yüce
Cast Bartu Kücükcaglayan, Settar Tanriögen, Nihal Koldas, Esme Madra
Photography Baris Özbicer
Editor Mary Stephen
Production design Meral Efe
Sound design Mustafa Bölükbasi
Music Gokce Akcelik
Length 102'

Audience Award for Feo Aladag's Die Fremde

2011-02-01T19:58:00.000-08:00

Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers 2011

DIE FREMDE by Feo Aladag, Germany | AUDIENCE AWARD EUROPEAN FEATURE FILMS | 20 000 € (Ville d’Angers, Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma et Le Monde) to the French distributor for the promotion of the ﬁlm. 2 000 € offered to the director by the Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma

WHEN WE LEAVE | DIE FREMDE | Feo Aladag | 2010 - Allemagne - 99mn

Germans-born Umay flees her oppressive marriage in Istanbul, taking her young son Cem with her. She is hoping to find a better life with her family in Berlin, but her unexpected arrival creates intense conflict. Her family is trapped in their conventions, torn between their love for her and the values of their community. Ultimately they decide to return Cem to his father in Turkey. To keep her son, Umay is forced to move again. She finds the inner strength to build a new life for her and Cem, but her need for her family’s love drives her to a series of ill-fated attempts at reconciliation.

Born in 1972 in Vienna, Feo Aladag studied acting in Vienna and London and also completed studies in communication sciences and psychology at the University of Vienna. She then worked as a freelance editor for daily newspaper in Austria, writing mainly about film and TV. After having written several scripts for television, she started studying in directing at the DFFB (Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie, Berlin) in 2004. The next year she founded the film production company Independent Artists Filmproduktion, based in Berlin, together with Züli Aladag. Die Fremde is the company’s first cinema feature film.

CAST AND CREW

Interprétation : Sibel Kekilli, Settar Tanriögen, Derya Alabora, Florian Lukas, Tamer Yigit, Serhad Can, Nizam Schiller
Scénario : Feo Aladag
Image : Judith Kaufmann
Son : Jörg Kidrowski
Montage : Andrea Mertens

Production : Independant Artists Filmproduktion, Joseph-Haydn-Str.1, 10557 Berlin, Allemagne / Tel : +49 30 39 74 22 12 / Email : office@independent-artists-filmproduktion.de

Ventes internationales : Telepool, München Sonnenstrasse 21, 80331 Munich, Allemagne / Tel : 49-(0)89-55-876-0 / Email : telepool@telepool.de

Mavi Boncuk: Faith, Family, Immigration and Homicide

Jan 23, 2011

The conflict between Umay's love for her traditional family and her need to run her own modern life drives “When We Leave.” Yet the film is notable for its empathetic attention to the multiple points of view that separate Umay from her ...

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/

Mavi Boncuk: A Second Lola for Sibel Kekilli

Apr 24, 2010

But the star of the evening was Sibel Kekilli, who won the best actress Lola for Feo Aladag's "Fremde/When We Leave." Kekilli, who won the Lola for her debut in Fatih Akin's "Head-On" (2004) had nearly vanished from the German film ...

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/

Die Fremde Wins Grand Prize for Best Film on 37th Film Festival Ghent

Oct 22, 2010

The jury about Die Fremde: “This touching story about a turkish young woman (Sibel Kekilli) in Berlin is about the new neighborhoods in which we live, in the same world, at the same place, and yet not at the same time. ...

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/

Tribeca | Hat Trick for Turkish Expats

Apr 30, 2010

Best Actress in a Narrative Feature Film – Sibel Kekilli as Umay in When We Leave (Die Fremde), directed and written by Feo Aladag. (Germany). Sponsored by Delta Air Lines. Winner receives two BusinessElite ticket vouchers for anywhere ...

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/

A French Award for Majority by Seren Yüce

2011-02-01T19:55:00.000-08:00

Young European filmmakers are invited to Angers to present their first films (competition of 9 full length European films) to the audience, industry professionals, and press. More than 80 films are screened in 6 official categories: European and French short and feature films, European student films and European animated films. 200,000 Euros in awards are given out by juries and the public at the end of the festival.

Jury of Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers 2011. Left to Right from the top Claude-Eric POIROUX(Délégué général), Clémence POESY, Nater T. HOMYOUN, Wen WU, Xavier KAWA-TOPOR, Yannick RENIER. (Bottom left) Carmen MAURA, Robert GUEDIGUIAN, et Tonie MARSHALL. Mardi 25 janvier 2011. (Photo: Thierry BONNET/Ville d'Angers)

GRAND JURY PRIZE EUROPEAN FEATURE FILMS (Equal)
ÇOGUNLUK (Majority) by Seren Yuce, Turkey -and- OBRATNOE DVIZHENIE (Reverse Motion) by Andrey Stempkovsky, Russia
10 000 € (Ville d’Angers, Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma, Le Monde) to the French distributor for the promotion of the ﬁlm. 1 000 € to the director by the Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma. Free subtitling offered by LVT for the distribution of the ﬁlm in France
Mavi Boncuk |

MAJORITY | ÇOGUNLUK | Seren Yüce | 2010 - Turquie - 102mn

Twenty-one-year-old Mertkan has a stable but unfulfilling life in Istanbul: living at home with his parents, working as an office boy in his father‘s construction company, hanging out with his buddies in shopping malls and discos. When he meets Gül, a Kurdish girl from eastern Turkey, awkward Mertkan starts to become a bit more self-confident. But Mertkan‘s father opposes any association with “those people who only want to divide our country”.

Seren Yüce was born in Istanbul in 1975. He graduated from Bilkent University of Ankara, Archeology Department. Between 1999- 2005 he worked as 1st AD on television series. In 2006, he was the 1st AD in Özer Kiziltan’s Takva / A Man’s Fear of God and 1st AD in Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven. Recently, he was the 1st AD for Yesim Ustaoglu in Pandora’s Box. Çogunluk is his first feature length film.

Çogunluk is a piece of self-criticism: of myself, and of the Turkish society. […] The film is set in Istanbul, which has the typical silhouette of any developing country’s metropole, littered with a dusty mixture of yellow and grey concrete. I feel that Architecture is the clothing of a society. This “clothing” is therefore very important to me when thinking of the visual composition of the film. The way the city is clothed tells a lot about the place, its inhabitants, and affects their lifestyle, their interactions with fellow inhabitants. […] My aim is to take a look at “us” through the story of a family. It would be wrong and inadequate to generalise and summarise Turkish society by Mertkan and his family’s story. Turkey is built on many economic and cultural levels, it is composed of many diverse ethnic groups. The mentality of the ruling class is perpetuated widely into the society. Mertkan and his father are examples of this mentality and products of this perpetuation. At the moment there are numerous movements in Turkey which must be reckoned with in order to break this oppressing mentality. Through the film Çogunluk, I sincerely hope to create some awareness among today’s youth and the upcoming generations, reminding all of us that education and social change start, first and foremost, in the family.

CAST AND CREW
Cast : Bartu Küçükçaglayan, Settar Tanriögen, Nihal Koldas, Esme Madra
Scénario : Seren Yüce
Image : Bari Özbiçer
Son : Mustafa Bölükba
Montage : Mary Stephen

Production : Yeni Sinemacilik, Sevil Demirci, Önder Çakar

Ventes internationales : The Match Factory
Balthasarstr. 79 – 81
50670 Cologne Allemagne
Tel : +49 221 539 709-0 / Email : info@matchfactory.de

Turkish Film Cliche Dialogues (Humor)

2011-01-01T10:09:00.000-08:00

güzel oldugunuz kadar küstahsiniz da.
annecigim, ben bu amcayi cok sevdim. ona baba diyebilir miyim?
bana annemi tekrar anlatir misin babacigim?
senin annen bir melekti yavrum.
neden agliyorsun annecigim?
hayir yavrum aglamiyorum. gözüme toz kaçti.
benim de senin yaslarinda bir oglum vardi evladim.
seni sevmiyorum, seninle oyun oynadim, bunu anlamadin mi hala. ( aktor veya aktrist amansiz
bir hastaliga -genellikle ince hastaliga- tutuldugu zaman sevgilisine soyledigi ilk cümle.)
annen sen dogarken öldü yavrum.
nolur gerçegi söyleyin doktor yasayacak miyim?
o kizla evlenirsen, seni mirasimdan mahrum, evlatliktan menederim.
nayir necla, nolamaz.
hayir siz kovmuyorsunuz, ben vazifemden istifa ediyorum.
tanrim, bu resim... bu resim...
ben fakir bir gencim, sen ise zengin bir fabrikatorun kizisin.
biz ayri dünyalarin insaniyiz.
aman tanrim, göremiyorum... göremiyorum.. kör oldum.
görüyorum... görüyorum..
evlenince pembe pancurlu bir evimiz olacak.
aman allahim, ne kadar mesudum.
hayir.. durun.; kemal suçsuzdur.. aradiginiz suçlu benim;
bizim bu dünyada yasamaya hakkimiz yok mu be hakim bey abicim. ha?
bu ses.. bu ses.. olamaz, git.. git buradan..
vücuduma sahip olabilirsin ama ruhuma asla.
üstlendigin vazife çok mühim kemal, bu görevi layikiyla yapacagindan eminim.
ben kör bir gencim, hayatimi keman çalarak kazanirim. rica ederim duygularimla oynamayin.
sen arkadasimin askisin.
sizi ebediyete kadar bekleyecegim.
lütfen haddinizi biliniz.
metanetinizi muhafaza ediniz. tanridan ümit kesilmez.
tanrim ne kadar bedbahtim.
bana yillar önce çilgincasina sevdigim bir kadini hatirlattiniz...
babanin kanini yerde koma ogul.
iste bana yazmis oldugun ask dolu mektuplar. meger hepsi yalanmis. al bunlari.
hayir tamer... olaylar sandigin gibi degil.
fakirsin sen.. fakir.. fakir..
beni paranla satin alabilecegini mi sandin?
bu resimdeki amca kim anne
sen kaç yigidim, ben onlari oyalarim.
hayir.. hayir.. tertemiz hislerimle oynadin benim.
biliyordum.. ölmedigini biliyordum rifat.
oh ne saadet.
yaa justinyanus, iste buna osmanli tokadi derler.
yettim yigidim.
yavrum istanbul sana neler etmis?
saadet dolu yuvamiza kara bir gölge düsürdün.
bizim gibi insanlar serefleri icin yasarlar, namuslari icin ölürler. ama sen bunu anlayamazsin.
ben artik yarim bir insanim.
çocugumun ameliyat parasi icin yaptim herseyi.
aglamak istiyorum.
demek ikimiz de ayni kadini sevdik.
olmadi neriman, yapamadim.. seni unutamadim.
ben sirtimda tas tasir, yine seni okuturum yavrum.
söyleyemedim anne, babamin simitçi oldugunu yine söyleyemedim;
son nefesimde herseyi itiraf etmek istiyorum. katil benim.
demek askimiz bir yalandi.
parayla saadet olmaz evladim, bunu sakin unutma.
tanrim neden, neden ben;
allahim...sen sen ...bu ses;olamaz...

nayir nolamaz benimle nastik nop gibi oynayamassin

artik muhitime geldim.. insem diyordum

anne.. anneciğim

- vaziyet ne merkezde ?
- berkemal.
- ala, taharriye devam edin. emirlerimi bilahare alacaksınız

Süt Kardeşler:

Şener Şen: terbiyesiz herif;
Şener Şen: bu ne laubalilik heee, hülleci, çık dışarı
Hale Soygazi & Kemal Sunal: çok naziksiniz/ ıhhhı, öyleyimdir/üstelik de çok küstahsınız/ aman efendim, iltifat ediyosunuz, ıhıhhıı
Şener Şen: küçüklüğünü bilirim senin, sümüklünün tekiydin, babanı da sevmezdim zaten
Şener Şen: ne bağırıp duruyosun lan, sütoğlan
Kemal & Ayşen Gruda: emine, ne diyon? / aggaagubugu /...
Şener & Kemal: baban benim/ sahi mi?/ hıı/ yok canıım/ hııhıı/ allaalla/ hıııı
Şener & Kemal: bu sütoğlanı hiç sevmiyorum/ ben de sevmiyorum/ babasını da sevmezdim/ babamı karıştırma/ bu ne laubalilik? hülleci

Çiçek Abbas:

Şener Şen: ne bakıyosunuz lan
Şener Şen: yaktın beni lan, ulan çiçek abbaas
Minibüsçü: şu güzelliğe bak cüneyt arkın halt etmiş hey yavrum hey, şakir abiim evde mi, evde mi?
Şener Şen: müslüman mahallesi diil mi lan burası, hee?
Şener Şen: sana buralarda gözükme demedim mi lan?
Şener Şen: niye öptün lan beni? su getirin yüzümü yıkıycam
Şener Şen: allahın fordçusu

Battal Gazi:

Cüneyt Arkın:
cahille budalanın ne yapacağı belli olmaz
bu bir, onaltı yerinden daha deliciim pis gövdeni
bana delibaş alyon derler elenora/ ben öküzbaş alyon diye duymuştum şövalye, yanlış mı söylemişler
hoşçakal düşman beldenin yaman güzeli
ben senin kancık kelleni ödlek bedeninden ayırmaya geldim
ooo, bizans kargasi pelamon da burda demek
ben de senin kelleni almaya niyetliyim bizans kargası
hele davran bizans kargası

Book | Cinema in Turkey REVIEW

2010-12-14T18:39:00.000-08:00

Cinespect REVIEW
Lost in Translation
Carlos J. Segura | Dec 08, 2010 |

What makes a film American, French, German, English or, in this case, Turkish? To answer that begs the question: what defines something (or someone) as Turkish? It’s an especially interesting curiosity in this case, particularly when you take into account how young Turkey is as a country (it was founded in 1923) and how many long standing influences stand behind it due to its Ottoman past and how much it is and has been influenced by countries in the west. Savas Arslan’s “Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History” (336 pages; Oxford University Press, U.S.A.; $35.00) looks into what defines a film as Turkish, who gets to define a film as such and how Turkey’s production system, particularly in the golden age of its industry known as Yesilcam, operated and where it took inspiration from in terms of its production mode and its filmmaking styles.

Turkey’s film beginnings are relatively late; only sixty feature films were made before 1945 according to Arslan; this left Turkey to consume mainly imported cinema, namely American, Soviet and Western European films. However, once World War II began the number of films from these territories died down, leaving a void that is filled by the importation of Egyptian films. One should add that what makes these import practices notable is that while cinema was developing in Turkey the republican reformers—the elite responsible for shaping the identity of the country into something more modern, Westernized—almost completely ignored the cinema. No film schools or studios were opened by these folks.

Essentially, this means cinema in Turkey was up for grabs in terms of the way its identity was to be molded. And it is with Egyptian melodramas that the identity of Yesilcam, often operating under what Arslan refers to as a “melodramatic modality,” begins to take shape; the popularity of Egyptian films, and the direction of Yesilcam’s identity, were dictated by the very people the republican elite was looking to push by the wayside in terms of their influence on the identity of Turkey: the rural, lower-class filmgoer. With this groundwork laid Arslan establishes the identity of Yesilcam as often being tugged at from two opposing sides. One minute it is pro-Westernization and modernization and the next it’s not. It is because the cinema of Turkey began and evolved according to the spectators of Turkey rather than according to the dictates of the republican elite that Arslan’s thesis is especially interesting. The way the he creates links between Turkey’s history and cultural identity while interweaving these subjects with Turkey’s cinematic history and identity is easily the most interesting and compelling reason to read ”Cinema in Turkey.”

If you’re looking for more of a breezy guide to particular films, stars and directors then you may feel slightly shortchanged. To be clear and specific Arslan does touch on filmmakers, stars, and films. There is an entire chapter devoted to these subjects entitled “High Yesilcam II: Genres and Films.” However, it only accounts for 76 pages of the book. This chapter is more samples from across the board rather than an exhaustive and comprehensive list of examples it seems.

So where does Turkey, or rather Yesilcam, stand on the world stage at the moment? The chapter “Postmorterm for Yesilcam: Post-Yesilcam, or the New Cinema of Turkey” posits that some believe that Turkey is finally finding a filmic identity it can call its own, noting a film called “The Bandit” as the best example of this. Along with this possibility come films by art house or film festival directors like Nuri Bilge Ceylan or directors like Faith Akin (arguably the most famous director of Turkish origin) and Ferzan Ozpetek, which the books points out some have called Orientalists, men guilty of exploiting their roots for western audiences, at worst. At best, they are going past representing any one culture or nation, instead moving over to the realm of world cinema. This is due in large part to the fact that newer generations are becoming more secular, educated, global and interconnected with the rest of the world. Interestingly, the book points out that the new generation of Turkish filmgoers, students or young people for example, find in Yesilcam ironic or so-bad-it’s-good pleasures (not far off at all from how so many of the young see certain films here in America).

As you will note by the content and analysis made in “Cinema in Turkey”, along with it having been pointed out earlier in this piece, the book is not strictly a primer on Turkish films. It is a critical, occasionally challenging work, typical of the kind written with the academic minded reader in mind; the language does occasionally get in the way of the history and ideas Arslan propose. (Arslan is an associate professor of film and television at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul.) However, he fixes in and reiterates key words and ideas so often that you ultimately will not find yourself lost.

The final analysis that emerges from this book is of a cinematic identity that always seemed in flux until it came close to finding some kind of an idea of itself in the ‘60s and ‘70s; or at the very least it had the support of spectators that were unified by and validated these films by their attending them. However, due to the rise of television it soon lost support in the ‘80s and because of the rise of urban and educated spectators it is now forced to find a new identity. Filmic and cultural identities seem to be constantly searching for themselves in this instance.

Book | Cinema in Turkey

2010-12-14T18:34:00.000-08:00

Cinema in Turkey | A New Critical History by Savas Arslan

ISBN13: 9780195370058
ISBN10: 0195370058
Hardback, 336 pages
Also available: Paperback

Savas Arslan is Associate Professor of Film and Television at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, Turkey. He is the coeditor of Media, Culture and Identity in Europe and the author of Melodrama (in Turkish).

Table of Contents
Preface

1. Introduction
2. Pre-Yesilcam: Cinema in Turkey Until The Late 1940s
3. Early Yesilcam: The Advent of Yesilcam in the 1950s
4. High Yesilcam I: Industry and Dubbing
5. High Yesilcam II: Genres and Films
6. Late Yesilcam: Melting in the 1980s
7. Postmortem for Yesilcam: Post-Yesilcam, or the New Cinema of Turkey

Review | Tete de turc

2010-12-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

Tete de turc (France)
Variety Review By JORDAN MINTZER

A Warner Bros. France release of a Aliceeleo Cinema, Aliceeleo, France 2 Cinema production, in association with La Banque Postale Image 3, Sofica EuropaCorp, with participation of Canal Plus, CineCinema, France Televisions, CNC. (International sales: Other Angle Pictures, Paris.) Produced by Patrick Godeau. Executive producer, Francois Galfre. Directed, written by Pascal Elbe.
With: Roschdy Zem, Pascal Elbe, Ronit Elkabetz, Samir Makhlouf, Simon Abkarian, Forence Thomassin, Valerie Benguigui, Monique Chaumette, Laure Marsac, Stephan Guerin-Tillie, Brigitte Catillon, Gamil Ratib, Moussa Masskri, Leo Elbe.

A fast-paced network narrative that ventures into the ever-newsworthy French suburbs, "Tete de turc" (slang for "scapegoat") scores solid notes for ambition, but doesn't quite pull itself together in a satisfying manner. Centered around an explosive incident that leaves one benevolent doctor in a coma and one teenager in hiding, thesp-cum-helmer Pascal Elbe's ("Father and Sons") wide-reaching scenario shows Gaul's immigrant populations at the mercy of roaming gangs and abusive cops, living under conditions more akin to Deadwood than to Dijon. Domestic release by Warner Bros. France should yield respectable coin, with Euro and Francophone bookings a strong possibility.

Unlike other recent banlieue films, which are either pure genre exercises ("District B13," "The Horde") or pure arthouse studies ("35 Shots of Rum," "Games of Love and Chance,"), Elbe's script situates itself between the two, using a thriller framework to tackle the harsh realities currently plaguing the outskirts of Paris, Lyons and Marseilles.

Based on a 2006 incident in which a Senegalese woman was burned alive on a bus by a band of violent teens, the action here is transplanted to France's less publicized Turkish and Armenian communities, and presents several characters linked together by an attack that occurs in the pic's opening minutes.

When physician Simon (Elbe) pays a call to a menacing housing project, his vehicle is ambushed by rock-throwing youths, including high schooler Bora (Samir Makhlouf), who launches a Molotov cocktail but then rushes to save the doc before his car explodes. As Simon rests in a coma, Bora tries to avoid exposing himself to the cops and his hot-blooded seamstress mom (Ronit Elkabetz), but he's soon beaten down by drug dealers angry that the neighborhood is now filled with roving reporters and police patrols.

Meanwhile, Simon's detective bro, Atom (Roschdy Zem), is conducting his own jaw-breaking investigation to find the culprit, but he's unaware that a local nutcase (Simon Abkarian) -- who lost his wife due to Simon's attack -- is also plotting revenge. As expected from such a dramatic structure, the various plot points eventually tie together, and somebody doesn't make it out alive.

There's a swell of different themes (social injustice, family secrets, coming-of-age struggles) presented here, and pic's major flaw is its attempt to give them all equal coverage rather than concentrating on the stronger ones. Bora's tale -- marked by lively performances from newcomer Makhlouf and Israeli actress-helmer Elkabetz ("The Seven Days") -- is an engrossing depiction of an immigrant youth's fight to save his skin and reputation while doing the right thing. But the various subplots involving Simon and Atom only hamper the overall narrative flow.

Washed-out, handheld imagery by Jean-Francois Hensgens ("District 13: Ultimatum") tends to overexpose the tense atmosphere, depicting the suburbs as a virtual no man's land where walking to school in broad daylight can be a highly treacherous affair.

French title is a play on both Bora's ethnic origins and the role he serves in the eyes of his family, friends and the larger community.

Camera (color, Panavision widescreen), Jean-Francois Hensgens; editor, Luc Barnier; music, Bruno Coulais; production designer, Denis Mercier; costume designer, Jacqueline Bouchard; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS Digital), Pierre Tucat, Arnaud Rolland, Daniel Sobrino; assistant director, Olivier Coutard; casting, Nicolas Ronchi. Reviewed at UGC Cine Cite Les Halles 4, Paris, April 5, 2010. (In City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival.) Running time: 87 MIN.

Europe's LUX prize goes to When We Leave

2010-11-24T19:50:00.000-08:00

Mavi Boncuk |

Feo Aladag’s When We Leave (Die Fremde) has won the 2010 European Parliament LUX Cinema prize worth 90,000 Euros.

The film, which is this year’s German foreign-language Oscar submission, tells the story of a Turkish woman (Sibel Kekilli) [1] trying to make a new life in Berlin after escaping an abusive husband in Istanbul. The European Parliament’s president Jerzy Buzek presented the award to Aladağ at a special ceremony today (24 Nov). She is the first female director to be shortlisted since the award began in 2007.

The award carries a cash prize of 90,000 Euros towards subtitling the film in all official EU languages, adapting the original version for visually- or hearing-impaired people and producing a 35mm print per EU Member State or for the DVD release. The LUX Prize is awarded to films that illustrate the founding values of European identity, explore cultural diversity or contribute insights to the EU integration debate.

This year’s other finalists were Filippos Tsitos’ Akadimia Platonos and Olivier Masset-Depasse’s Illégal.

[1] Sibel Kekilli (born 16 June 1980 in Heilbronn, West Germany) is a German actress of Turkish origin, who gained public attention after starring in the 2004 film Gegen die Wand (Head-On). She has twice won the highest German movie award Lola.

Mavi Boncuk: A Second Lola for Sibel Kekilli

Apr 24, 2010

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/

Die Fremde Wins Grand Prize for Best Film on 37th Film Festival Ghent

Oct 22, 2010

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/

Tribeca | Hat Trick for Turkish Expats

Apr 30, 2010

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/

Cinematographer Baris Ozbicer talks about Kaplanoglu’s Honey

2010-11-17T22:57:00.000-08:00

»Bal« (Honey) is the third part of the Yusuf Trilogy, which traces the origins of a soul. Like in his previous films, Semih Kaplanoglu decides to work without music to create the emotional world of a seven-year-old Yusuf (Boras Atlas, quite simply adorable) in the film. It is also full of enduring images and soundscapes – from the jingle of the bells Yusuf wears (presumably so his family can hear where he is), to the sights and sounds of the forest.

Cinematographer Baris Ozbicer recalls Johannes Vermeer with his rich colour palette perfectly matching the rustic setting, emphasised by Kaplangoglu’s slow pacing that initially renders many scenes like intricate still life. (Amber Wilkinson San Sebastian Film Festival)

Director of photographer Baris Ozbicer joined a Q&A session after screening of Hone/Bal. Festival Advisor Erju Ackman translated Q&A from and into Turkish/English.

Baris studied film both in Turkey and England. After finishing film school in Fine Arts, Film and Television Marmara University, he came to London Film School and had diploma in the Art and Technique of Filmmaking.

He worked in commercials, short films, documentaries and music videos since 1998. He also worked as a camera opertor with Sahwin Kumar, Atif Yilmaz and Gigi Rocatti. In 2004, he started to work as a director of photography: Toos up (2004), Happy New Year London (2007), Honey (2010) and Majority (2010). The films and himself as cinematographer had received many awards at major festivals such as Venice, Berlin, Istanbul, Antalya, Adana. He’s been recently nominated Best European Cinematographer.

Baris Ozbicer’s Website

Montreal Turquaze by Kadir Balci

2010-11-17T19:38:00.000-08:00

Reviewed in Montreal By RONNIE SCHEIB
Turquaze (Belgium-Turkey)

A Kinepolis Film (in Belgium) release of a Menuet production in co-production with GU-Film. Produced by Dirk Impens. Co-producer, Gulin Ustun. Directed, written by Kadir Balci.
With: Burak Balci, Charlotte Vandermeersch, Nihat Alptug Altinkaya, Tilbe Saran, Sinan Vanden Eynde, Hilal Sonmez, Maaike Cafmeyer. (Flemish, Turkish, French dialogue)

With his luminously lensed first feature, "Turquaze," Kadir Balci joins the roster of talented helmers of Turkish descent working abroad. A pensively joyous romance with a dash of ethnic angst, the pic introduces a trio of Turkish brothers living in Belgium who redefine family dynamics after their father's death. While two of the siblings embody the opposite poles of assimilation, Balci concentrates on the middle son and his love affair with a perky Flemish blonde, charting a search for cultural equilibrium. Skedded for late September release in Belgium, "Turquaze" might shine as a modest European sleeper.

Pic has a symmetry Goldilocks could appreciate: Eldest brother Ediz (Nihat Alptug Altinkaya) reps his Turkish father's authoritarian old ways, discouraging his wife (Hilal Sonmez) from learning Flemish while he himself revives an affair with a Flemish former flame (Maaike Cafmeyer). The youngest brother, 18-year-old Bora (Sinan Vanden Eynde), is too ready to conform -- technologically addicted, and prone to whatever mischief his assorted delinquent pals dream up. Timur (the helmer's brother Borak Balci), on the other hand, strikes a perfect balance between honoring his heritage and opening his mind to his adoptive country.

Timur works as a guard in an art museum, which suits his contemplative nature well, the museum's painted landscapes recalling his grandfather's descriptions of the Turkish countryside. But he's a musician by training and inclination, and he experiences his epiphany of perfect integration when he auditions for a brass band, fulfilling his father's never-attempted dream. Despite some casual cultural insensitivity about his name ("I'll just call you Tim"), the bandleader readily grants him a tryout, during which the other members spontaneously pick up the unfamiliar melody as he plays.

In "Turquaze," music proves an infectious universal language, a notion made more than just a quaint sentiment by Bert Ostyn's dazzling original score, which incorporates everything from string quartets to Turkish marches, his track intermingling rock orchestrations and folk tunes.

This interactive harmony also reigns in Timur's relationship with Belgian girlfriend Sarah (Charlotte Vandermeersch) -- but only as long as the couple keep their relationship to themselves. Once their prejudiced, opinionated relatives intrude, discord holds sway, and the couple broods, breaks up and must cross borders and continents for the chance to reunite.

Balci's young protagonists, though perfectly capable of stupidity and shortsightedness, mostly come off as patient, caring and intelligent, displaying a level of sanity both welcome and rare in a domestic drama. It's a spirit consistent with the casual symmetry of director Balci's script and the intimacy achieved by Ruben Impens' free-flowing photography.

Camera (color, widescreen), Ruben Impens; editor, Nico Leunen; music, Bert Ostyn; production designer, Kurt Rigolle; costume designer, Tine Verbeurgt; sound (Dolby SRD), Jan Deca. Reviewed at Montreal World Film Festival (Focus on World Cinema), Aug. 30, 2010. Running time: 95 MIN.

65 countries vie for 2010 Foreign Language Film Oscar®

2010-10-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

“Bal” (“Honey”) is among the films from sixty-five countries, including first-time entrants Ethiopia and Greenland, have submitted films for consideration in the Foreign Language Film category for the 83rd Academy Awards®.

The 2010 submissions are:

Albania, “East, West, East,” Gjergj Xhuvani, director;
Algeria, “Hors la Loi” (“Outside the Law”), Rachid Bouchareb, director;
Argentina, “Carancho,” Pablo Trapero, director;
Austria, “La Pivellina,” Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, directors;
Azerbaijan, “The Precinct,” Ilgar Safat, director;
Bangladesh, “Third Person Singular Number,” Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, director;
Belgium, “Illegal,” Olivier Masset-Depasse, director;
Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Circus Columbia,” Danis Tanovic, director;
Brazil, “Lula, the Son of Brazil,” Fabio Barreto, director;
Bulgaria, “Eastern Plays,” Kamen Kalev, director;
Canada, “Incendies,” Denis Villeneuve, director;
Chile, “The Life of Fish,” Matias Bize, director;
China, “Aftershock,” Feng Xiaogang, director;
Colombia, “Crab Trap,” Oscar Ruiz Navia, director;
Costa Rica, “Of Love and Other Demons,” Hilda Hidalgo, director;
Croatia, “The Blacks,” Goran Devic and Zvonimir Juric, directors;
Czech Republic, “Kawasaki’s Rose,” Jan Hrebejk, director;
Denmark, “In a Better World,” Susanne Bier, director;
Egypt, “Messages from the Sea,” Daoud Abdel Sayed, director;
Estonia, “The Temptation of St. Tony,” Veiko Ounpuu, director;
Ethiopia, “The Athlete,” Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew, directors;
Finland, “Steam of Life,” Joonas Berghall and Mika Hotakainen, directors;
France, “Of Gods and Men,” Xavier Beauvois, director;
Georgia, “Street Days,” Levan Koguashvili, director;
Germany, “When We Leave,” Feo Aladag, director;
Greece, “Dogtooth,” Yorgos Lanthimos, director;
Greenland, “Nuummioq,” Otto Rosing and Torben Bech, directors;
Hong Kong, “Echoes of the Rainbow,” Alex Law, director;
Hungary, “Bibliotheque Pascal,” Szabolcs Hajdu, director;
Iceland, “Mamma Gogo,” Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, director;
India, “Peepli [Live],” Anusha Rizvi, director;
Indonesia, “How Funny (Our Country Is),” Deddy Mizwar, director;
Iran, “Farewell Baghdad,” Mehdi Naderi, director;
Iraq, “Son of Babylon,” Mohamed Al-Daradji, director;
Israel, “The Human Resources Manager,” Eran Riklis, director;
Italy, “La Prima Cosa Bella” (“The First Beautiful Thing”), Paolo Virzi, director;
Japan, “Confessions,” Tetsuya Nakashima, director;
Kazakhstan, “Strayed,” Akan Satayev, director;
Korea, “A Barefoot Dream,” Tae-kyun Kim, director;
Kyrgyzstan, “The Light Thief,” Aktan Arym Kubat, director;
Latvia, “Hong Kong Confidential,” Maris Martinsons, director;
Macedonia, “Mothers,” Milcho Manchevski, director;
Mexico, “Biutiful,” Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, director;
Netherlands, “Tirza,” Rudolf van den Berg, director;
Nicaragua, “La Yuma,” Florence Jaugey, director;
Norway, “The Angel,” Margreth Olin, director;
Peru, “Undertow” (“Contracorriente”), Javier Fuentes-Leon, director;
Philippines, “Noy,” Dondon S. Santos and Rodel Nacianceno, directors;
Poland, “All That I Love,” Jacek Borcuch, director;
Portugal, “To Die Like a Man,” Joao Pedro Rodrigues, director;
Puerto Rico, “Miente” (“Lie”), Rafael Mercado, director;
Romania, “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle,” Florin Serban, director;
Russia, “The Edge,” Alexey Uchitel, director;
Serbia, “Besa,” Srdjan Karanovic, director;
Slovakia, “Hranica” (“The Border”), Jaroslav Vojtek, director;
Slovenia, “9:06,” Igor Sterk, director;
South Africa, “Life, above All,” Oliver Schmitz, director;
Spain, “Tambien la Lluvia” (“Even the Rain”), Iciar Bollain, director;
Sweden, “Simple Simon,” Andreas Ohman, director;
Switzerland, “La Petite Chambre,” Stephanie Chuat and Veronique Reymond, directors;
Taiwan, “Monga,” Chen-zer Niu, director;
Thailand, “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul, director;
Turkey, “Bal” (“Honey”), Semih Kaplanoglu, director;
Uruguay, “La Vida Util,” Federico Veiroj, director;
Venezuela, “Hermano,” Marcel Rasquin, director.

The 83rd Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Tuesday, January 25, 2011, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2010 will be presented on Sunday, February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.

2010 Antalya Golden Orange Awards

2010-10-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

2010 47th Antalya Golden Orange Awards

Best Feature Film: “Çoğunluk”
Best Debut Feature Film:”Gişe Memuru” (Tolga Karaçelik)
Best Director: “Çoğunluk” Seren Yüce
Best Screenplay: “Atlıkarınca” Mert Fırat , İlksen Başarır
Best Cinematographyi: “Saç” and “Gişe Memuru” Ercan Özcan
Best Film Music: “Kar Beyaz” Mircan
Best Female Performance: “Sinyora Enrica ile İtalyan Olmak” Claudia Cardinale
Best Male Performance: “Gişe Memuru” Serkan Ercan and “Çoğunluk” Bartu Küçükçağlayan
Best Supporting Female Performance:”Kağıt” filmi ile Ayşen Grude
Best Supporting Male Performance:”Kavşak” Cengiz Bozkurt and “Saç” Rıza Akın
Best Editing: “Gölgeler ve Suretler” Aylin Zoi
Best Art Direction: “Haydi Bre” Nihat Düşko
Antalya City Jury Prize: “Kavşak”
Best Short Film: Berf (Erol Mintaş)
Best Documentary Film:”Anadolu’nun Son Göçerleri” (Yüksel Aksu)
Best Debut Documentary: “Ofsayt” and “Herkes Uyurken”
Film Writers SİYAD NationalAward: “Sineklik”

Film Writers SİYAD International Award: “Gölgeler ve Suretler” (Derviş Zaim)
Best Male Performance International Film: Nik Jelila
Best Female Performance International Film:: Emma Suarez
Jury Award for best Documentary: “Ordu’da Bir Argonot”
Public Golden Orange Award: “Son Helva”
Documentary Jury Award:”Dönüşü Olmayan Yol”
Digital Film Academy Award: “Bisiklet”
Behlül Dal Special Jury Award: “Press” Aram Dildar and “Atlı Karınca” Zeynep Oral
Dr. Avni Tolunay Special Jury Award: “Sinyora Enrica ile İtalya Olmak” Elvan Albayrak

Çoğunluk/Majority (2010) by Seren Yüce

2010-10-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

“Çoğunluk” (Majority), a film directed by Seren Yüce, was among the 12 films featured in this year’s Venice Film Festival’s Venice Days program. The film tells of the son of a working class family in present-day İstanbul. Starring Bartu Küçükçağlayan and Settar Tanrıöğen, Seren Yüce worked as an assistant to Özer Kiziltan on Takva: A Man’s Fear of God (04) and to Fatih Akin on The Edge of Heaven (07). The Majority (10) is his feature directorial debut.

full credits
Principal Cast: Bartu Kucukcaglayan, Settar Tanriogen, Nihal Koldas, Esme Madra
Producer: Sevil Demirci, Onder Cakar, Seren Yuce
Cinematographer: Baris Ozbicer
Editor: Mary Stephen
Sound: Mustafa Bolukbasi
Music: Gokce Akcelik
Production Designer: Ozkan Yilmaz

synopsis

Mertkan leads a simple life in Istanbul until he meets Gül, a Kurdish girl from Eastern Turkey who has run away from her family. But their relationship is obstructed by Mertkan’s father Kemal, and the chauvinist culture in which Mertkan is imbued.
“Humanity’s complicated structure, which is disguised under the veil of technology, is always affected by the power of masculinity. Majority is a critique of myself and Turkish society, of which I am a member. My aim is to look at ‘us’ through a family, which is the core of society.” (Seren Yüce)

Will it be possible one day for a character of a Turkish movie to look back at his youth and get to understand his tyrannical father as did the liberated character of Padre padrone? Nowadays, we hear a great deal about the oppression suffered by women in many traditional societies, but Seren Yüce shows us an oppressed young man. The son is subdued to his father. Fear of his father proves more powerful for him than his love for an “alien” girl. Is this passive character aware of this oppression? This film makes us face a paradox: In a patriarchal society a woman may find it easier to emancipate herself than a man. (Tadeusz Sobolewski)

world sales The Match Factory
Balthasarstrasse 79-81, 50670 Cologne, Germany
Tel. +49 221 53970 90
Fax +49 221 53970910
info@matchfactory.de - festivals@matchfactory.de
www.the-match-factory.com
Production Company: Yeni Sinemacilik

TIFF Notes
Sometimes a debut feature startles by virtue of the simple clarity of the story it tells. Such is the case with first-time feature director Seren Yüce’s The Majority, which transforms a sober account of family life into a trenchant social critique.
The film revolves around Mertkan, the shiftless scion of a middle-class family and the heir apparent to his autocratic father’s construction company. Mertkan works so hard at upholding his image as a freewheeling young man with no responsibilities that he has lost interest in pretty much everything: cruising the malls with his friends, smoking in his dad’s SUV or working for his father’s business all bore him equally. He feels no need to plumb for any meaning in life or any inkling of a professional calling.
When he meets Gül, a young woman putting herself through university by working as a waitress, Mertkan seems poised to break out of his empty routine. However, his family disapproves of his new girlfriend on the grounds of her being a minority from the Eastern city of Van; their values are too imposing for Mertkan to challenge. He is, after all, unaccustomed to doing anything that requires real effort.

While setting out along the arc of a coming-of-age narrative, The Majority builds to much more. Through Yüce’s examination of one man’s choices – or perhaps his lack thereof – the film offers an alarmingly realistic study of a stratum of Turkish society that nurtures nationalism and militarism through the seemingly innocuous relationships of parents and their children. The fact that the film is set within a liberal and modernized Istanbul makes Mertkan’s inability to shun tradition all the more ironic. The Majority emerges as a study of the inertia of private values that can co-exist with a fast-changing public sphere.

Cameron Bailey

Seren Yüce’s slow-paced, feature debut Majority is a critique of Turkey’s misogynistic culture, in which the victim of social oppression is a young man who doesn’t have the courage to get out from under his father’s thumb and be with the woman he loves (Esme Madra).

Mertkan (Bartu Küçükçağlayan, in his film debut) is a non-ambitious slacker in his early 20s who has little desire to do anything but hang out with his friends, much less work for his father’s construction company. The only person who sparks life in him is Gül (Madra), a Kurdish student who has run away from her family to attend university in Istanbul. Their relationship, however, is immediately opposed by Mertkan’s father Kemal (Settar Tanrıöğen).

The slow pace that Yüce sets in the film further conveys the endlessly oppressive setting. The story’s men are either overbearing, like Kemal, or submissive. Moreover, they control everything in the macho society but are emotionally inept for the fact that they never really have to interact with the other half of the population.

At the Q&A following the film’s official Venice Days screening, the director said the story, which he also wrote, “comes from myself and my neighbourhood and the friends I remember from when I was [the characters’] age. Unfortunately, not much has changed, the cycle continues today.” Küçükçağlayan, a theatre actor who had to tone down his performance for first film role, and Madra spoke of the nurturing, friendly atmosphere created on set by Yüce, who held few rehearsals and asked only of his actors that they be “real.”

For his part, Tanrıöğen admitted that playing Kemal was easy. “There are so many men like him in Turkey that it was easy for me to recognize the character and portray him,” said the veteran actor of his standout performance. Majority was produced for approximately €250,000 by Turkish company Yeni Sinemacilar and will be released domestically at the end of October by Özen Film. International sales are handled by The Match Factory.

Natasha Senjanovic – Cineuropa.org

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Review | Slow-Moving But Visually Potent

REVIEW:

Nuri Bilge Ceylan Builds a Slow-Moving But Visually Potent Once Upon a Time in Anatolia by Michelle Orange

MOVIELINE SCORE: 8½

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Running time: 157 minutes

Rating:

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