Heart of Two Nations: Hrant Dink
Turkey
2007, 40min.
Prod./Dir.: Nouritza Matossian, Dir. of Phot.: Tolga Aksac, Garo Berberian, Nouritza Matossian, Levent Kurumlu, Compos.: Mannik Grigorian, Hagop Matossian, Rolf Gehlhaar, MEG Recordings, Edit.: Levent Kurumlu, Jonathan Stokes.
Production Company
Tarmak Films
Address: Unit 2002, Spitfire Studios, 63-71 Collier Street, London, N1 9BE, UK
Tel/Fax: +44(0)20 7713 0070
www.tarmakfilms.com
Nouritza Matossian (born 1945) is an Armenian writer, actress, broadcaster and human rights activist. She writes on the arts, contemporary music, history and Armenia.
Matossian published the first biography and critical study of the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, the source book on his life, architecture and music based on ten years' collaboration with him. She later adapted it into a 50-minute documentary for BBC2, entitled Something Rich and Strange.
Matossian's 1998 book Black Angel, A Life of Arshile Gorky was written after twenty years' research. Ararat, the award-winning film by Atom Egoyan and Miramax, was partly inspired by Black Angel. She acted as consultant to Egoyan who modelled the female lead role Ani on her. Matossian also wrote and performs a solo show on Gorky's life from the viewpoint of his four beloved women with images and music. It has been produced worldwide over 80 times at venues including the Barbican, Tate Modern, London, New York, Los Angeles, the Edinburgh Festival, Cyprus, Paris, Lebanon, Iran, Romania and Georgia. In Armenia she performed it simultaneously in two languages.
Matossian broadcasts on the BBC and contributes to several newspapers and magazines, including The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist, and The Observer. She was Honorary Cultural Attache for the Armenian Embassy in London from 1991-2000.
She spent her childhood in Cyprus with her Armenian family. Educated in England, she graduated with Honours in Philosophy (B.Phil) from Bedford College, University of London, then studied music, theatre and mime in Dartington and Paris; she has a command of nine languages.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Azize Tan in Golden Apricot 2008 Jury
Jury of the Golden Apricot 2008 Feature Section
Dariush Mehrjui (Iran)
As an Iranian New Wave cinema icon, Mehrjui is regarded to be one of the intellectual directors. Dariush Mehrjui was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1939. As an adult, he moved to the United States and entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Cinema. He switched his major to philosophy and graduated from UCLA in 1964. Returning to Iran in 1965, he almost immediately embarked on a filmmaking career. He made his debut in 1966 with Diamond 33. His second featured film, Cow (1969), brought him national and international recognition. In 1971, the film was smuggled out of Iran and submitted to the Venice IFF, where, without programming or subtitles, it became the largest event of that year's festival. The film was a turning point in the history of Iranian cinema. The public received it with great enthusiasm, despite the fact that it had ignored all the traditional elements of box office attraction. In 1973 Mehrjui began directing what was to be his most acclaimed film. The Cycle was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Culture but encountered opposition from the Iranian medical establishment and was banned from release until 1977. It was universally admired abroad. The film won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin IFF in 1978. In 1981, he traveled to Paris and remained there for several years, during which time he made a feature-length semi-documentary for French TV, Voyage au Pays de Rimbaud (1983). Feeling homesick, he returned to Iran to film The Tenants (1986), a comedy of conflict between apartment tenants and a realtor seeking to throw them out. In Hamoun (1989), a portrait of an intellectual whose life is falling apart, Mehrjui sought to depict his generation's post-revolutionary turn from politics to mysticism. The '90s also found Mehrjui releasing films dealing with women's issues. Banoo (1991, released in 1998) more or less brought Luis Buñuel's Viridiana to Iran. Sara (1993) did the same for Ibsen's A Doll's House. Pari (1995), a transplanting of Salinger's Franny and Zooey, attracted the attention - and the threat of a lawsuit - from the reclusive author. Leila (1996) was all Mehrjui's own and the first to receive any sort of wide theatrical release in the West. The story of a marriage undone by infertility and a meddling mother-in-law, it earned Mehrjui raves. Outside of festivals and a career-spanning retrospective by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in late 1998, his films remain largely unseen outside Iran, an oversight that will hopefully be corrected with the passing of time.
Ulrich Seidl (Austria)
Born November 24, 1952 in Vienna. Ulrich Seidl is the director of numerous award-winning documentaries such as Jesus, You Know, Models and Animal Love. His work methods, achieving the greatest possible authenticity and showing people in the most solitary and personal moments, has aroused intense debate. His first fiction feature, Dog Days, won the Grand Jury Special Prize at the 2001 Venice IFF. Seidl’s second feature film Import/Export has been sold to 20 countries. The film has won three prizes (Bangkok, Golden Apricot – Yerevan (Armenia) and Palic Tower (for the best acting ensemble Palic (Serbien). The film has been invited to about 80 festivals so far: for example Munique, Moscow, Karlovy Vary, Jerusalem, Sarajevo, Toronto, London, Kopenhagen, Sao Paolo, Seoul. Two retrospetives (in La Rochelle and Sarajevo) have shown Ulrich Seidls previous work, two further retros in Belgium and Sweden.
Goran Paskalevic (Serbia)
Born in 1947 in Belgrade, one of the most distinguished directors from the former Yugoslavia, is a member of the so-called “Prague school” of FAMU graduates. He became known for his short documentaries, but it was his feature films which classed him among leading European directors, whose style, themes and tragicomic aura bore traces of the influence of the Czech New Wave. He received international recognition particularly for his films Beach Guard in Winter (1976), Special Treatment (1980 – Golden Globe nomination), Twilight Time (1983 – Main Prize at the Chicago IFF), The Elusive Summer of ‘68 (1984), Guardian Angel (1987), Time of Miracles (1989), The Powder Keg (1998 – FIPRESCI prize at the Venice IFF), How Harry Became a Tree (2001) and Midwinter Night’s Dream (2004 – Grand Jury Prize at the San Sebastian IFF). His new film The Optimists was premiered in the autumn of 2006.
Azize Tan (Turkey)
Born in 1971 in Istanbul. She received her MA degree from Bosphorus University in Istanbul. She works for the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts organizing five international festivals (Film, Theatre, Music, Jazz and Biennial) since 1993. She worked as the coordinator of the 5th, 6th and 7th Istanbul Biennials and became the deputy director of the Istanbul IFF in 2003. She is the director of the Istanbul IFF since 2006. She also organizes the Istanbul Autumn Film Week for the last seven years. She is a member of NETPAC and Asia Pacific Screen Awards Nominations Council.
Ashot Adamyan (Armenia)
Born in 1953 in Yerevan. Adamyan studied at the Department of Architecture, the Vocational School after Alexander Tamanyan in 1968-1972. In 1972-1974 Adamyan served in the Soviet Army. He graduated from the Department of Direction, School of Culture, the Yerevan Pedagogical University (class of Henrik Malyan) in 1979. Adamyan worked as an actor, stage director and artistic manager in the Theater after Henrik Malyan from 1981 to 1998. In 1988-1991 Adamyan took the Advanced Courses for Film Directors in Moscow (the class of Rolan Bykov). Adamyan is a cinema actor beginning 1978 having played in more than two dozens of films including characters as noticeable as that of Torik (in A Piece of the Sky [Ktor my yerkinq] directed by Henrik Malyan), Oberon (The Song of the Old Days [Hin oreri yergy] by Albert Mkrtchyan) and the Driver ( Calendar by Atom Egoyan).
Dariush Mehrjui (Iran)
As an Iranian New Wave cinema icon, Mehrjui is regarded to be one of the intellectual directors. Dariush Mehrjui was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1939. As an adult, he moved to the United States and entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Cinema. He switched his major to philosophy and graduated from UCLA in 1964. Returning to Iran in 1965, he almost immediately embarked on a filmmaking career. He made his debut in 1966 with Diamond 33. His second featured film, Cow (1969), brought him national and international recognition. In 1971, the film was smuggled out of Iran and submitted to the Venice IFF, where, without programming or subtitles, it became the largest event of that year's festival. The film was a turning point in the history of Iranian cinema. The public received it with great enthusiasm, despite the fact that it had ignored all the traditional elements of box office attraction. In 1973 Mehrjui began directing what was to be his most acclaimed film. The Cycle was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Culture but encountered opposition from the Iranian medical establishment and was banned from release until 1977. It was universally admired abroad. The film won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin IFF in 1978. In 1981, he traveled to Paris and remained there for several years, during which time he made a feature-length semi-documentary for French TV, Voyage au Pays de Rimbaud (1983). Feeling homesick, he returned to Iran to film The Tenants (1986), a comedy of conflict between apartment tenants and a realtor seeking to throw them out. In Hamoun (1989), a portrait of an intellectual whose life is falling apart, Mehrjui sought to depict his generation's post-revolutionary turn from politics to mysticism. The '90s also found Mehrjui releasing films dealing with women's issues. Banoo (1991, released in 1998) more or less brought Luis Buñuel's Viridiana to Iran. Sara (1993) did the same for Ibsen's A Doll's House. Pari (1995), a transplanting of Salinger's Franny and Zooey, attracted the attention - and the threat of a lawsuit - from the reclusive author. Leila (1996) was all Mehrjui's own and the first to receive any sort of wide theatrical release in the West. The story of a marriage undone by infertility and a meddling mother-in-law, it earned Mehrjui raves. Outside of festivals and a career-spanning retrospective by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in late 1998, his films remain largely unseen outside Iran, an oversight that will hopefully be corrected with the passing of time.
Ulrich Seidl (Austria)
Born November 24, 1952 in Vienna. Ulrich Seidl is the director of numerous award-winning documentaries such as Jesus, You Know, Models and Animal Love. His work methods, achieving the greatest possible authenticity and showing people in the most solitary and personal moments, has aroused intense debate. His first fiction feature, Dog Days, won the Grand Jury Special Prize at the 2001 Venice IFF. Seidl’s second feature film Import/Export has been sold to 20 countries. The film has won three prizes (Bangkok, Golden Apricot – Yerevan (Armenia) and Palic Tower (for the best acting ensemble Palic (Serbien). The film has been invited to about 80 festivals so far: for example Munique, Moscow, Karlovy Vary, Jerusalem, Sarajevo, Toronto, London, Kopenhagen, Sao Paolo, Seoul. Two retrospetives (in La Rochelle and Sarajevo) have shown Ulrich Seidls previous work, two further retros in Belgium and Sweden.
Goran Paskalevic (Serbia)
Born in 1947 in Belgrade, one of the most distinguished directors from the former Yugoslavia, is a member of the so-called “Prague school” of FAMU graduates. He became known for his short documentaries, but it was his feature films which classed him among leading European directors, whose style, themes and tragicomic aura bore traces of the influence of the Czech New Wave. He received international recognition particularly for his films Beach Guard in Winter (1976), Special Treatment (1980 – Golden Globe nomination), Twilight Time (1983 – Main Prize at the Chicago IFF), The Elusive Summer of ‘68 (1984), Guardian Angel (1987), Time of Miracles (1989), The Powder Keg (1998 – FIPRESCI prize at the Venice IFF), How Harry Became a Tree (2001) and Midwinter Night’s Dream (2004 – Grand Jury Prize at the San Sebastian IFF). His new film The Optimists was premiered in the autumn of 2006.
Azize Tan (Turkey)
Born in 1971 in Istanbul. She received her MA degree from Bosphorus University in Istanbul. She works for the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts organizing five international festivals (Film, Theatre, Music, Jazz and Biennial) since 1993. She worked as the coordinator of the 5th, 6th and 7th Istanbul Biennials and became the deputy director of the Istanbul IFF in 2003. She is the director of the Istanbul IFF since 2006. She also organizes the Istanbul Autumn Film Week for the last seven years. She is a member of NETPAC and Asia Pacific Screen Awards Nominations Council.
Ashot Adamyan (Armenia)
Born in 1953 in Yerevan. Adamyan studied at the Department of Architecture, the Vocational School after Alexander Tamanyan in 1968-1972. In 1972-1974 Adamyan served in the Soviet Army. He graduated from the Department of Direction, School of Culture, the Yerevan Pedagogical University (class of Henrik Malyan) in 1979. Adamyan worked as an actor, stage director and artistic manager in the Theater after Henrik Malyan from 1981 to 1998. In 1988-1991 Adamyan took the Advanced Courses for Film Directors in Moscow (the class of Rolan Bykov). Adamyan is a cinema actor beginning 1978 having played in more than two dozens of films including characters as noticeable as that of Torik (in A Piece of the Sky [Ktor my yerkinq] directed by Henrik Malyan), Oberon (The Song of the Old Days [Hin oreri yergy] by Albert Mkrtchyan) and the Driver ( Calendar by Atom Egoyan).
Monday, July 21, 2008
Best Director Awart to N.B.Ceylan at Cinefan 2008
Best Director
"Nuri Bilge Ceylan For the film Three Monkeys For his cinematic treatment of intense internal human conflicts in difficult situations and for his deep understanding of human nature and excellent handling of actors."
"Nuri Bilge Ceylan For the film Three Monkeys For his cinematic treatment of intense internal human conflicts in difficult situations and for his deep understanding of human nature and excellent handling of actors."
In-Tolerance Award to Handan Ipekci
Cinefan 2008 In-Tolerance Award
Best Film Award
Hidden Faces by Handan Ipekci from Turkey. For dealing with the pressing issue of 'honour killings' with a well-crafted and profound cinematic language that can reach large audiences
Best Film Award
Hidden Faces by Handan Ipekci from Turkey. For dealing with the pressing issue of 'honour killings' with a well-crafted and profound cinematic language that can reach large audiences
Gönül Dönmez-Colin in Cinefan 2008 Jury
The festival this year comprises a large number of electric and innovative sections. The Asian competition has been broadened to include Arab cinema. The Indian Competition consists of films made in the last one year in the country, while a new competition has been introduced for First Films. The regular sections include Cross-Cultural Encounters (films that tackle cross-cultural themes), Frescoes (recent films from Asian and Arab countries), Indian Mosaic (the best of the previous year�s productions in India but not in competition) and In-Tolerance (films that reflect on the intolerance of our times and hold a mirror to the past and present)
In-Tolerance Jury Members:
Saeed Ebrahimifar - Actor, director, producer and screenwriter Saeed Ebrahimifar was born in Tehran in 1956. He studied civil engineering and communication in the US. His cinematic career began in 1984 and he made his first feature, Pomogranates and Cane, in 1989. A poet of cinema, his film Lonesome Trees shared the Special Jury Award with Making Of at Osian’s-Cinefan last year.
Bappaditya Bandopadhyay - Born in 1969, award-winning filmmaker Bappaditya Bandopadhyay graduated in Sociology from Calcutta University. In 2003, he received the Most Prominent Director Award from the Bengal Film Journalists Association, while his leading actress, Debashree Roy won the Kalakar Award in Bengal for her performance in Colours of Hunger. He writes regularly on cinema and is also a poet of repute. His award-winning films, Barbed Wire, Devaki and Our Time have had their world premieres in Osian’s-Cinefan.
Gonul Donmez-Colin - Writer, critic, researcher and lecturer, Gönül Dönmez-Colin studied at the Universities of Istanbul, Concordia and McGill. She has taught in Montreal and Hong Kong, having done field research in Iran, Turkey, India and Central Asia. She is the author of Women, Islam and Cinema, Cinemas of North Africa and Central Asia (ed.), and Turkish Cinema and Politics of Identity. She has written widely on the cinemas of Central Asia and Greece, been on juries, curated programmes on national cinemas, and is the Artistic Advisor of Mannheim-Heidelberg and the Kerala International Film Festivals.
In-Tolerance Jury Members:
Saeed Ebrahimifar - Actor, director, producer and screenwriter Saeed Ebrahimifar was born in Tehran in 1956. He studied civil engineering and communication in the US. His cinematic career began in 1984 and he made his first feature, Pomogranates and Cane, in 1989. A poet of cinema, his film Lonesome Trees shared the Special Jury Award with Making Of at Osian’s-Cinefan last year.
Bappaditya Bandopadhyay - Born in 1969, award-winning filmmaker Bappaditya Bandopadhyay graduated in Sociology from Calcutta University. In 2003, he received the Most Prominent Director Award from the Bengal Film Journalists Association, while his leading actress, Debashree Roy won the Kalakar Award in Bengal for her performance in Colours of Hunger. He writes regularly on cinema and is also a poet of repute. His award-winning films, Barbed Wire, Devaki and Our Time have had their world premieres in Osian’s-Cinefan.
Gonul Donmez-Colin - Writer, critic, researcher and lecturer, Gönül Dönmez-Colin studied at the Universities of Istanbul, Concordia and McGill. She has taught in Montreal and Hong Kong, having done field research in Iran, Turkey, India and Central Asia. She is the author of Women, Islam and Cinema, Cinemas of North Africa and Central Asia (ed.), and Turkish Cinema and Politics of Identity. She has written widely on the cinemas of Central Asia and Greece, been on juries, curated programmes on national cinemas, and is the Artistic Advisor of Mannheim-Heidelberg and the Kerala International Film Festivals.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
N.B.Ceylan to head Sarajevo 14 Jury
Nuri Bilge Ceylan President of the Jury
30.5.2008
The 14th Sarajevo Film Festival (Aug 15-23) has announced that Cannes Critics Week Grand Prix winner Snow by Bosnian Aida Begic will officially open the festival at the Heineken Open Air with capacity of 3,000 seats.
Other films to screen at the prestigious venue include Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir and Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys. Ceylan will also serve as the president of the jury which will also be comprised of British director Hugh Hudson, Croatian actress Marija Skaricic (Das Fraulein, the best film of Sarajevo 2006 and best actress in Sarajevo 2004 for That Beautiful Night In Split), founder and director of Match Factory Michael Weber, and Deborah Young, the artistic director of Taormina Film Festival. Ceylan, Leigh, Terry George and Slavoj Zizek, influential Slovenian phylosopher, sociologist and critic, will be among the lecturers at the second Sarajevo Talent Campus.
In its 14th edition and within its Competition Programme – Features, the Sarajevo Film Festival will present the best films from the region. This year again, the Competition Programme Jury will include some of the leading, internationally recognised filmmakers and film professionals, who will decide on the following awards:
• Heart of Sarajevo for Best Film
• Special Jury Award
• Heart of Sarajevo for Best Actress
• Heart of Sarajevo for Best Actor
NURI BILGE CEYLAN, DIRECTOR, WRITER, TURKEY
Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the most relevant film authors of our time. He is a versatile author who selects his topics most carefully. Critics usually describe his films as realistic images of our world today, particularly because his characters are almost always the ‘ordinary people’ whose lives and stories the audience finds easy to identify with. His work has received numerous prestigious awards from leading festivals across the world – Berlin, Cannes, Chicago, San Sebastian... His first short film KOZA was screened at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, and two years later his feature debut KASABA was received with considerable success, leading Ceylan to numerous film festivals. His next film, CLOUDS OF MAY, received the FIPRESCI European Film Award, and success continued with his film UZAK. The awards this film won included the Jury Grand Prix and the France Culture Award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. He also won the FIPRESCI award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival for his film CLIMATES, which also won the international film critics and film professionals’ award, as well as five awards at the Antalya Film Festival the same year. At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, his latest feature, THREE MONKEYS, won him the Best Director Award.
HUGH HUDSON,DIRECTOR, UK
Hugh Hudson is the director of the cult film CHARIOTS OF FIRE which won as many as four Academy Awards. Before this extraordinary success with his debut feature, Hudson had directed numerous outstanding documentaries. After that, in 1970 he teamed up with Ridley Scott, with whom he directed a host of TV commercials. Hugh Hudson’s work includes titles such as REVOLUTION, which starred Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland and Nastassja Kinski, LOST ANGELS with Donald Sutherland, and I DREAMED OF AMERICA with Kim Basinger, Vincent Perez, Daniel Craig, MY LIFE SO FAR with Colin Firth...
MARIJA ŠKARIČIĆ, ACTRESS, CROATIA
Marija Škaričić is one of the most successful Croatian actresses of the younger generation. His role in Arsen Ostojić’s film THAT BEAUTIFUL NIGHT IN SPLIT won her the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Actress at the 10th SFF. Two years later she was again the winner of the Best Actress Award, and the Heart of Sarajevo was won with her role in Andrea Staka’s FRAULEIN. She delivered notable roles in a number of films produced in Croatia – SALESLADY WANTS TO GO TO THE COAST, WHAT’S A MAN WITHOUT A MOUSTACHE, ALBERT EINSTEIN’S GREATEST MISTAKE, SOCIETY OF JESUS, 100 MINUTES OF GLORY, IT’S NOT BAD...
MICHAEL WEBER, FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF MATCH FACTORY, GERMANY
Michael Weber is the founder and director of one of the most successful world sales companies in Europe - Match Factory. Match Factory represents established authors as well as the new names in this form of art. Films represented by this renown company include some of the most highly awarded titles of the past two years: GRBAVICA by Jasmila Žbanić, THE EDGE OF HEAVEN by Fatih Akin, TAKVA by Ozer Kizilatan, YELLA by Christian Petzold, EL CUSTODIO by Rodrigo Moreno, MADEINUSA by Claudia Llose, TOUGH ENOUGH by Detlev Bucka, LOVE AND OTHER CRIMES by Stefan Arsenijević... At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Match Factory presented five films: WALTZ WITH BASHIR by Ari Folman, CLOUD 9 by Andreas Dresen, O'HORTEN by Bent Hamer, LIVERPOOL by Lisandro Alonso and TULIPAN by Sergey Dvortsevoy, which also won the Un Certain Regard award.
DEBORAH YOUNG,TAORMINA FILM FESTIVAL ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, USA / ITALY
Deborah Young is Taormina Film Festival artistic director. Since 1980, she wrote film reviews for the Variety. Deborah Young is an American citizen, although she has been living in Rome for several years now. Presently she is the editor for Italy of New York magazine “Cineaste”. And since 2005 she has been an advisor for Tribeca Film Festival also in New York. She’s the artistic director of New Italian Cinema Events (N.I.C.E.), a showcase for new indie Italian cinema in New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam and Moscow. In 1988 she collaborated at the Venice Film Festival selections.
Dorsay to head Fipresci Jury in Sarajevo 14
FIPRESCI Prize at the 14th Sarajevo Film Festival
12.6.2008
Along with the Heart of Sarajevo Awards for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Special Jury Award and CICAE Prize, films of the Competition Programme – Feature Film of the 14th Sarajevo Film Festival, will also compete for the prestigious FIPRESCI Prize (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique).
The FIPRESCI Jury at the 14th SFF will include renowned film critics: Atilla Dorsay from Turkey (Sabah), Mike Goodridge from USA (Screen International) and László Kriston from Hungary (Magyar Hirlap, Vox Mozimagazin, Magyar Marancs, Mozinet).
The organisations of professional film critics and film journalists, established in different countries for the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests, constitute the International Federation of the Cinematographic Press (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique - FIPRESCI) - an institution founded on the 6th of June 1930.
The purpose of the International Film Critics Awards (the FIPRESCI Prize) is to promote film-art and to encourage new and young cinema.
The FIPRESCI Prize is awarded at international film festivals or at film festivals of particular importance including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Karlovy Vary, San Sebastian, Pusan, Montreal, Toronto, London…
This year Sarajevo Film Festival joins this family of festivals that host the FIPRESCI Prize, presented by the renowned film critics.
12.6.2008
Along with the Heart of Sarajevo Awards for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Special Jury Award and CICAE Prize, films of the Competition Programme – Feature Film of the 14th Sarajevo Film Festival, will also compete for the prestigious FIPRESCI Prize (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique).
The FIPRESCI Jury at the 14th SFF will include renowned film critics: Atilla Dorsay from Turkey (Sabah), Mike Goodridge from USA (Screen International) and László Kriston from Hungary (Magyar Hirlap, Vox Mozimagazin, Magyar Marancs, Mozinet).
The organisations of professional film critics and film journalists, established in different countries for the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests, constitute the International Federation of the Cinematographic Press (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique - FIPRESCI) - an institution founded on the 6th of June 1930.
The purpose of the International Film Critics Awards (the FIPRESCI Prize) is to promote film-art and to encourage new and young cinema.
The FIPRESCI Prize is awarded at international film festivals or at film festivals of particular importance including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Karlovy Vary, San Sebastian, Pusan, Montreal, Toronto, London…
This year Sarajevo Film Festival joins this family of festivals that host the FIPRESCI Prize, presented by the renowned film critics.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Turkish Director Fêted in Cannes, Ignored at Home
Turkish director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, poses after winning Best Director prize at the Closing Ceremony of the 61st Cannes International Film Festival on May 25, 2008. ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT / AFP / Getty Images
Tuesday, May. 27, 2008
Turkish Director Fêted in Cannes, Ignored at Home
By PELIN TURGUT/ISTANBUL
Celebrated Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan was awarded Best Director in Cannes on Sunday. Perhaps now Turks will finally go see his movies. Despite being heralded globally for his movie magic, Ceylan's films — slow-paced, poetic tales of individuals struggling against the bleak backdrop of modern Turkey — routinely flop back home. Distant, a previous Cannes competitor, was seen by just 20,000 people in Turkey — only one-fourth as many as saw it in France. His current Cannes winner, Three Monkeys, has yet to sell to Turkish TV, which has deemed it too arty.
It is true that Ceylan's films are never easy going, but in a country of 70 million, 20,000 viewers seems, well, a little pathetic. Are Turks a nation of cultural philistines? Critics bemoaning the dearth of interest in cultural fare (book sales are shrinking along with art-house film audiences) point to a brutal 1980 military coup as the start of this malaise. The generals ushered in an era of economic liberalization and anything-goes cowboy capitalism that rapidly transformed the country into a consumerist McHeaven. Turgut Ozal, who served as prime minister from 1983 to 1989 and as president from 1989 to 1993, famously declared that his dream was for Turkey to become "a little America." And he wasn't talking about liberty. Today, Turkey is home to Europe's youngest population, and one of the world's fastest growing consumer markets with brands like Starbucks, Topshop and Ikea booming. One brand manager told me that in his view, the country's shopping malls (60 new ones opening this year) are "paved with gold."
The buying binge is, of course, a worldwide phenomenon. But in Turkey, unlike similar developing countries like Brazil or India, it is underpinned by a deep distaste for the arts. After the 1980 coup, tens of thousands of leftists were imprisoned and often tortured. Newspapers and magazines were banned, politics was forbidden in schools and universities and free speech stifled by draconian laws, some of which are still on the books. With intellectualism effectively quashed, the end result was a cultural vacuum. Recovering has not been easy.
Then again, to give Turkish audiences their credit, maybe Ceylan's previous films were just really, really slow. "Viewers have become used to the fast-paced style of ads, music videos and news shows that jump from scene to scene; this manifests itself in an impatience towards films which tease their stories out slowly," says Firat Yucel, editor of the film magazine Altyazi.
If that's the case, they can take heart: Cannes award winner Three Monkeys is an engrossing tale of an Istanbul family torn apart by their secrets. In tone, if not style, it is a departure for Ceylan and has even been described as a thriller, albeit a meditative one. "Hopefully the Cannes charm might coax viewers into giving Ceylan a chance," says film critic Emrah Guler. And if that's not enough to get Turkish moviegoers to the theaters, the director stands in good company, with the likes of Woody Allen, of filmmakers embraced by the arty French but neglected at home.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Cannes |Three Monkeys (Uc Maymun) by Jonathan Romney
Three Monkeys (Uc Maymun) by Jonathan Romney in London
16 May 2008 07:15
Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Turkey-France-Italy. 2008. 109 mins.
An ostensibly routine noir-style psychological thriller vaults into the realms of high art in competition contender Three Monkeys. Cannes has been kind to Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan in the past, with Uzak and Climates establishing his auteur credentials here in 2003 and 2006. His new film represents a bold departure from his past style: it's best described as introspective melodrama, yet both visually and tonally, it's still quintessential Ceylan.
For the first time, Ceylan really involves himself in narrative complexity, spinning a subtly-twisty yarn with echoes of such crime writers as Simenon and James M. Cain. Three Monkeys will consolidate Ceylan's reputation among art-house cognoscenti, but should win him new fans too. Its genre bent should give it a niche crossover appeal for export, in ways that Uzak and Climates never quite reached.
The film's theme, as with so much prime noir, is guilt, and the people who either accept it or try to slough it off: the title allusion is to the proverbial apes of 'see/hear/speak no evil' fame. The story starts in moody, night-soaked fashion, with a middle-aged man dozing at the wheel of his car before causing a hit-and-run accident (it's typical of the film's elliptical approach that the victim remains unknown).
The perpetrator is Servet (Kesal), a politician who fears that the accident will affect his election chances. He therefore persuades his driver Eyüp (Bingöl, best known in Turkey as a folk singer) to take the rap, in exchange for a payoff that will keep his family financially secure. Eyüp goes to prison, while his teenage son Ismael (Sungar) strays into undefined bad company - presumably the reason for him coming home bloodied one night.
Hoping to help out her son, Eyüp's wife Hacer (Aslan) approaches Servet for a handout, and ends up getting more involved with him than she, or we, expected.
Some standard pulp-thriller tropes are tantalisingly spun out for the first hour, but the slyness of the narrative approach only becomes fully apparent after that. It's only then, for example, that Eyüp, newly released, fully enters the action as a player, the emphasis of the drama shifting disorientingly to him. And it's only after an hour that we discover that the couple have had another son, long dead, who haunts the story in a couple of enigmatic images, one a dream with vaguely Tarkovskian overtones.
Throughout, Ceylan and his co-writers - his wife Ebru Ceylan and actor Kesal - systematically withhold key information, keeping us as much out of the loop as his characters often are. Much of the film, crucially, revolves round the suspicions and anxieties of both father and son. Like previous Ceylan films, this one looks long and hard into the mysteries and self-destructive contradictions of the human heart, but the film's sombre, arguably pessimistic bent also finds room for Ceylan's blackly sardonic humour, embodied here by a running gag about an unintentionally eloquent cellphone ringtone.
Using HD video in steely, washed-out hues, Ceylan and DoP Tiryaki provide the beautifully composed cityscapes that have become the director's trademark, as well as facial studies that speak more eloquently about characters' conflicting emotions than the common run of close-ups. A gorgeous, digitally-manipulated final shot gives the film a troubling open ending that can only stir debate and send intrigued viewers back for a second viewing.
The only cavil is that the pacing gets a little slack in the final stretches, and - while it's the nature of a Ceylan film to be slow-burning - the smallest amount of trimming could well turn an exceptional film into a near-perfect one.
16 May 2008 07:15
Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Turkey-France-Italy. 2008. 109 mins.
An ostensibly routine noir-style psychological thriller vaults into the realms of high art in competition contender Three Monkeys. Cannes has been kind to Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan in the past, with Uzak and Climates establishing his auteur credentials here in 2003 and 2006. His new film represents a bold departure from his past style: it's best described as introspective melodrama, yet both visually and tonally, it's still quintessential Ceylan.
For the first time, Ceylan really involves himself in narrative complexity, spinning a subtly-twisty yarn with echoes of such crime writers as Simenon and James M. Cain. Three Monkeys will consolidate Ceylan's reputation among art-house cognoscenti, but should win him new fans too. Its genre bent should give it a niche crossover appeal for export, in ways that Uzak and Climates never quite reached.
The film's theme, as with so much prime noir, is guilt, and the people who either accept it or try to slough it off: the title allusion is to the proverbial apes of 'see/hear/speak no evil' fame. The story starts in moody, night-soaked fashion, with a middle-aged man dozing at the wheel of his car before causing a hit-and-run accident (it's typical of the film's elliptical approach that the victim remains unknown).
The perpetrator is Servet (Kesal), a politician who fears that the accident will affect his election chances. He therefore persuades his driver Eyüp (Bingöl, best known in Turkey as a folk singer) to take the rap, in exchange for a payoff that will keep his family financially secure. Eyüp goes to prison, while his teenage son Ismael (Sungar) strays into undefined bad company - presumably the reason for him coming home bloodied one night.
Hoping to help out her son, Eyüp's wife Hacer (Aslan) approaches Servet for a handout, and ends up getting more involved with him than she, or we, expected.
Some standard pulp-thriller tropes are tantalisingly spun out for the first hour, but the slyness of the narrative approach only becomes fully apparent after that. It's only then, for example, that Eyüp, newly released, fully enters the action as a player, the emphasis of the drama shifting disorientingly to him. And it's only after an hour that we discover that the couple have had another son, long dead, who haunts the story in a couple of enigmatic images, one a dream with vaguely Tarkovskian overtones.
Throughout, Ceylan and his co-writers - his wife Ebru Ceylan and actor Kesal - systematically withhold key information, keeping us as much out of the loop as his characters often are. Much of the film, crucially, revolves round the suspicions and anxieties of both father and son. Like previous Ceylan films, this one looks long and hard into the mysteries and self-destructive contradictions of the human heart, but the film's sombre, arguably pessimistic bent also finds room for Ceylan's blackly sardonic humour, embodied here by a running gag about an unintentionally eloquent cellphone ringtone.
Using HD video in steely, washed-out hues, Ceylan and DoP Tiryaki provide the beautifully composed cityscapes that have become the director's trademark, as well as facial studies that speak more eloquently about characters' conflicting emotions than the common run of close-ups. A gorgeous, digitally-manipulated final shot gives the film a troubling open ending that can only stir debate and send intrigued viewers back for a second viewing.
The only cavil is that the pacing gets a little slack in the final stretches, and - while it's the nature of a Ceylan film to be slow-burning - the smallest amount of trimming could well turn an exceptional film into a near-perfect one.
Cannes | From Turkey with love: return of one of Cannes favourite sons
From Turkey with love: return of one of Cannes favourite sons
CANNES, France (AFP) — One of Cannes' favourite film-makers, Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan, returned to the film festival offering a breather from hard-hitting movies on social themes with a highly personal family drama.
Ceylan, almost 40 and already winner of a batch of awards for his first four features, is regarded as one of the most distinctive film-makers of the last decade.
His latest offering, "Three Monkeys", a searing family tragedy revolving around jealousy, is his third appearance in competition at Cannes, where the movie is tipped as a front-runner among the 22 vying for the festival's prestigious Palme d'Or award.
"The film is about life, about many things, about the inner world," he said Thursday. "I don't make films on this or that as that is too didactic. And by the time I've ended a film the idea may have changed."
After running over a man at night, a politician running for election bribes his driver to claim responsibility for the accident. But while the man is in prison, the politician seduces the driver's wife, and her son , a young adult, sees it all.
Ceylan, maker of "Uzak" and "Climates", is a master of psychological subtlety and intimacy, shooting meticulously beautiful images helped by his use of high-definition digital video.
"Digital is easier to edit, cheaper and gives you more control over the level of acting," he told AFP. "My style is to have lots of material, I like to shoot the same scene several times, with an actor perhaps crying in one scene and then laughing in the next. Then I decide which I like best."
In "Three Monkeys", Ceylan focuses his camera strictly on the four characters, showing how the family opts to stick together by playing blind, deaf and dumb to problems that should in all logic split them apart.
"I find the family quite tragic in life, it's one of the most tragic things in life," he told AFP. "I suffered a lot from that. I feel that in a family what they live is a summary of society, of life.
"In life people often behave as if they didn't see, didn't hear, didn't say. That is how we protect ourselves so as not to suffer."
After two days of hard-hitting films focussing on global issues and social problems, Ceylan, along with France's first entry "A Christmas Tale", struck a different note, at the festival.
CANNES, France (AFP) — One of Cannes' favourite film-makers, Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan, returned to the film festival offering a breather from hard-hitting movies on social themes with a highly personal family drama.
Ceylan, almost 40 and already winner of a batch of awards for his first four features, is regarded as one of the most distinctive film-makers of the last decade.
His latest offering, "Three Monkeys", a searing family tragedy revolving around jealousy, is his third appearance in competition at Cannes, where the movie is tipped as a front-runner among the 22 vying for the festival's prestigious Palme d'Or award.
"The film is about life, about many things, about the inner world," he said Thursday. "I don't make films on this or that as that is too didactic. And by the time I've ended a film the idea may have changed."
After running over a man at night, a politician running for election bribes his driver to claim responsibility for the accident. But while the man is in prison, the politician seduces the driver's wife, and her son , a young adult, sees it all.
Ceylan, maker of "Uzak" and "Climates", is a master of psychological subtlety and intimacy, shooting meticulously beautiful images helped by his use of high-definition digital video.
"Digital is easier to edit, cheaper and gives you more control over the level of acting," he told AFP. "My style is to have lots of material, I like to shoot the same scene several times, with an actor perhaps crying in one scene and then laughing in the next. Then I decide which I like best."
In "Three Monkeys", Ceylan focuses his camera strictly on the four characters, showing how the family opts to stick together by playing blind, deaf and dumb to problems that should in all logic split them apart.
"I find the family quite tragic in life, it's one of the most tragic things in life," he told AFP. "I suffered a lot from that. I feel that in a family what they live is a summary of society, of life.
"In life people often behave as if they didn't see, didn't hear, didn't say. That is how we protect ourselves so as not to suffer."
After two days of hard-hitting films focussing on global issues and social problems, Ceylan, along with France's first entry "A Christmas Tale", struck a different note, at the festival.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Article | 'Three Monkeys' at present is toast of Cannes
I saw another picture today, "Three Monkeys" from the Turkish writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose "Climates" remains one of the few masterworks I've seen in world cinema this new century. Ceylan's latest is visually extraordinary and often arresting, a simple tale of a blackmail arrangement that leads to adultery and horrific recriminations. I'm talking to Ceylan tomorrow, so more on this one later. With its exquisite sense of composition and color, to be sure, "Three Monkeys" proves that Ceylan is leading the vanguard when it comes to high-def digital video's expressive possibilities.
'Three Monkeys' at present is toast of Cannes by Michael Phillips
CANNES, France—The Cannes Film Festival is an international bazaar, and no single aspect of this cinematic kaleidoscope by the Mediterranean exemplifies its globalism better than the pavilions lining the beach behind the Palais. The Irish pavilion sits at one end, Portugal’s a few steps down. The Icelandic commission has its own releases and locations to promote, as does Brazil.
On Friday, under the sort of threatening skies the director himself favors on screen, I’m sitting in the Turkish Pavilion, drinking Turkish coffee with the Turkish writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. His fifth feature, the stunning “Three Monkeys,” is one of the widely acknowledged favorites in the opening days of the 61st Cannes.
The title chosen by Ceylan (pronounced JEY-lahn) refers to evils about which his characters choose not to hear, see or speak. Late one night, a politician falls asleep behind the wheel of his car on a country road. He strikes and kills a pedestrian and then coolly coerces one of his employers to take the rap for him and serve a nine-month prison sentence.
This arrangement initiates a string of deceptions, including a tryst between the politico (Ercan Kesal) and the wife, Hacer, (Hatice Aslan) of the fall guy (Yavuz Bingol). Their son (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) learns of the affair. When the son’s father comes home from prison, the turmoil so long buried in his family—another son has drowned years earlier—rises to the surface.
Growing up, Ceylan says, “my family life was really complicated. Fights, things like that. I lived for a long time, for instance, several families together. Very complicated, and many tragic and very painful memories.” Making films, he says, has its “consoling” side. It is a way of “trying to understand the dark side of my soul. I use all my memories; that’s my primary material. They make life more…standable? Tolerable, I think you say.”
Ceylan’s previous film, “Climates,” traced the dissolution of a relationship. Ceylan and his wife, Ebru, played the central couple, and Ceylan shot it on high-definition digital video. When “Climates” premiered two years ago at Cannes, the film’s astounding vibrancy struck many in attendance as the medium’s first masterwork shot in that format.
“Three Monkeys” clearly comes from the same director’s eye, but its palette—virtually denuded of color, except for splashes and blotches of dark red—is very different, placing the characters in what Ceylan calls “a specific, separate world of their own.”
“‘Climates’ was my first film in digital, so I was a bit afraid of trying certain things,” he says. “I was interested in protecting the values of the digital resolution and things like that. Which is nonsense. I don’t care about resolution anymore…I know now that after you shoot you can change your lighting completely, and in a very cheap studio, with the cinematographer, I modified colors and the lighting in the post-production. [When filming] I only want to concentrate on the actors and the story.”
There are moments in his latest picture where you sense Ceylan’s inability to let go of a particularly rich image, in which the characters, placed just so in an exquisitely realized frame, are dwarfed or suffocated by storm clouds, or an interior darkness. The director acknowledges he shot several different endings toying with different fates of the major characters.
Narrative lurches notwithstanding, “Three Monkeys” offers the kind of artistry rare in contemporary cinema. Little details linger in the mind, such as a knife on a cutting board, tipping slightly in the breeze. Ceylan gets wonderful suspense out of everyday things, such as a telltale cell phone ring-tone that wails to the tune of a vengeful Turkish pop ballad.
Most indelibly, the film’s brief but brilliant depictions of the dead son grip the audience like nothing else so far in this year’s Cannes festival.
Ceylan’s web site showcases his photography along with his filmmaking. Despite courting far-flung comparisons to director Michelangelo Antonioni, “Three Monkeys” suggests that a more apt comparison regarding Ceylan’s compositional leanings involves another photographer turned director, Stanley Kubrick. Ceylan, says actress Hatice Aslan, a fierce marvel as Hacer, “is like his photos; he’s very calm.” But there is a great deal roiling underneath the surface.
This quality distinguishes the texture of Anton Chekhov, Ceylan’s favorite writer. For his next project he may adapt Chekhov’s “My Wife” to a Turkish setting and, if so, the film will star his wife, Ebru.
That’s a maybe, mind. “I’m not the kind of director who has lots of projects waiting,” Ceylan says, with a laugh. “Making a film changes you, and after struggling with a film, I just…wait. I go through hating cinema for some time. And then, under the load of the images and ideas, I slowly begin to work.”
“Three Monkeys” will receive limited U.S. distribution sometime in 2008 or 2009.
'Three Monkeys' at present is toast of Cannes by Michael Phillips
CANNES, France—The Cannes Film Festival is an international bazaar, and no single aspect of this cinematic kaleidoscope by the Mediterranean exemplifies its globalism better than the pavilions lining the beach behind the Palais. The Irish pavilion sits at one end, Portugal’s a few steps down. The Icelandic commission has its own releases and locations to promote, as does Brazil.
On Friday, under the sort of threatening skies the director himself favors on screen, I’m sitting in the Turkish Pavilion, drinking Turkish coffee with the Turkish writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. His fifth feature, the stunning “Three Monkeys,” is one of the widely acknowledged favorites in the opening days of the 61st Cannes.
The title chosen by Ceylan (pronounced JEY-lahn) refers to evils about which his characters choose not to hear, see or speak. Late one night, a politician falls asleep behind the wheel of his car on a country road. He strikes and kills a pedestrian and then coolly coerces one of his employers to take the rap for him and serve a nine-month prison sentence.
This arrangement initiates a string of deceptions, including a tryst between the politico (Ercan Kesal) and the wife, Hacer, (Hatice Aslan) of the fall guy (Yavuz Bingol). Their son (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) learns of the affair. When the son’s father comes home from prison, the turmoil so long buried in his family—another son has drowned years earlier—rises to the surface.
Growing up, Ceylan says, “my family life was really complicated. Fights, things like that. I lived for a long time, for instance, several families together. Very complicated, and many tragic and very painful memories.” Making films, he says, has its “consoling” side. It is a way of “trying to understand the dark side of my soul. I use all my memories; that’s my primary material. They make life more…standable? Tolerable, I think you say.”
Ceylan’s previous film, “Climates,” traced the dissolution of a relationship. Ceylan and his wife, Ebru, played the central couple, and Ceylan shot it on high-definition digital video. When “Climates” premiered two years ago at Cannes, the film’s astounding vibrancy struck many in attendance as the medium’s first masterwork shot in that format.
“Three Monkeys” clearly comes from the same director’s eye, but its palette—virtually denuded of color, except for splashes and blotches of dark red—is very different, placing the characters in what Ceylan calls “a specific, separate world of their own.”
“‘Climates’ was my first film in digital, so I was a bit afraid of trying certain things,” he says. “I was interested in protecting the values of the digital resolution and things like that. Which is nonsense. I don’t care about resolution anymore…I know now that after you shoot you can change your lighting completely, and in a very cheap studio, with the cinematographer, I modified colors and the lighting in the post-production. [When filming] I only want to concentrate on the actors and the story.”
There are moments in his latest picture where you sense Ceylan’s inability to let go of a particularly rich image, in which the characters, placed just so in an exquisitely realized frame, are dwarfed or suffocated by storm clouds, or an interior darkness. The director acknowledges he shot several different endings toying with different fates of the major characters.
Narrative lurches notwithstanding, “Three Monkeys” offers the kind of artistry rare in contemporary cinema. Little details linger in the mind, such as a knife on a cutting board, tipping slightly in the breeze. Ceylan gets wonderful suspense out of everyday things, such as a telltale cell phone ring-tone that wails to the tune of a vengeful Turkish pop ballad.
Most indelibly, the film’s brief but brilliant depictions of the dead son grip the audience like nothing else so far in this year’s Cannes festival.
Ceylan’s web site showcases his photography along with his filmmaking. Despite courting far-flung comparisons to director Michelangelo Antonioni, “Three Monkeys” suggests that a more apt comparison regarding Ceylan’s compositional leanings involves another photographer turned director, Stanley Kubrick. Ceylan, says actress Hatice Aslan, a fierce marvel as Hacer, “is like his photos; he’s very calm.” But there is a great deal roiling underneath the surface.
This quality distinguishes the texture of Anton Chekhov, Ceylan’s favorite writer. For his next project he may adapt Chekhov’s “My Wife” to a Turkish setting and, if so, the film will star his wife, Ebru.
That’s a maybe, mind. “I’m not the kind of director who has lots of projects waiting,” Ceylan says, with a laugh. “Making a film changes you, and after struggling with a film, I just…wait. I go through hating cinema for some time. And then, under the load of the images and ideas, I slowly begin to work.”
“Three Monkeys” will receive limited U.S. distribution sometime in 2008 or 2009.
Variety Review | Three Monkeys
Cannes
Three Monkeys
Uc maymun (Turkey-France-Italy)
By JUSTIN CHANG
Dark drama 'Three Monkeys' offers adultery, murder and gloom.
A Pyramide Distribution (in France) release of a Zeynofilm, NBC Film (Turkey)/Pyramide Prods. (France)/Bim Distribuzione (Italy) production, in association with Imaj, with the participation of Ministere de la Culture et du Tourisme Turc, Eurimages, CNC. (International sales: Pyramide Intl., Paris.) Produced by Zeynep Ozbatur. Co-producers, Fabienne Vonier, Valerio de Paolis, Cemal Noyan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Screenplay, Ebru Ceylan, Ercan Kesal, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. With: Yavuz Bingol, Hatice Aslan, Ahmet Rifat Sungar, Ercan Kesal.(Turkish dialogue)
Seeing, hearing and speaking no evil comes all too easily to the tortured trio in "Three Monkeys," a powerfully bleak family drama that leaves its characters' offenses largely offscreen but lingers with agonizing, drawn-out deliberation on the consequences. Bad faith, simmering resentment, adultery and murder all figure into Nuri Bilge Ceylan's darkly burnished fifth feature, giving it a stronger narrative undertow than his previous Cannes competition entries, "Distant" and "Climates." But gripping as the film often is, its unrelenting doom and gloom offers fewer lasting rewards, making it unlikely to draw sizable arthouse crowds beyond the Turkish helmer's fanbase.
Opening shot of aging Turkish politician Servet (Ercan Kesal), falling asleep at the wheel as he drives through the woods at night, not only foreshadows the monochrome misery to come but also establishes the film's dramatic m.o. Rather than showing the subsequent collision, Ceylan cuts to a forest clearing where a pedestrian lies dead in the background and Servet, trembling with fear in the foreground, determines to hide his guilt.
Emphasis on aftermath rather than action is significant: The one who ends up paying for Servet's crime is his longtime personal driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), who takes the rap after Servet's promise of a hefty lump sum upon his release. As Eyup's prison term drags on for months, his beautiful wife Hacer (Hatice Aslan) and aimless teenage son Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) grow impatient and restless in their seaside flat, prompting Hacer to ask Servet for an advance.
Servet, who's just lost an important election, makes good on his promise, though the indelicate nature of his agreement with Hacer -- again, made clear to the audience with no explicit imagery -- can't be kept hidden for long from Ismail. The troubled youth, in turn, has a hard time concealing the truth from Eyup when the latter re-enters the picture, creating a pressure-cooker scenario that Ceylan plays out for maximum emotional tension at an achingly measured tempo.
Though he eventually serves up an entire potboiler's worth of past tragedies and festering secrets, Ceylan takes a characteristically oblique approach. Screenplay (credited to the helmer, his wife Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Kesal) dwells mainly on the characters' inability to communicate -- the film offers lots of awkward silences and angsty brooding, but precious little eye contact -- making the inevitable angry outbursts all the more affecting.
Primary thesps are superbly convincing as a dysfunctional unit. Absent for most of the first half, Bingol dominates the second with his volatile fits of temper. Aslan is both maddening and sympathetic as the frustrated seductress, and handsome Sungar has heartbreaking moments as a son who, it's suggested, has borne more than his fair share of the emotional burdens.
While Servet's selfish actions impel the drama forward, the political content and latent class tensions never distract from the core dynamic. But "Three Monkeys" reaches the point of diminishing returns in its final reels, as the tale relaxes its vise-like grip and its machinations begin to seem transparent and overdetermined in retrospect. And aside from a darkly comic cell-phone ringtone that steals every scene it's in, the wry humor that made "Distant" so memorable is mostly absent here.
Reteaming with "Climates" d.p. Gokhan Tiryaki, Ceylan again offers beautifully composed HD images of exceptional depth and texture. In keeping with the angst-ridden tenor, however, his color palette seems deliberately murkier and more constrained than usual, occasionally drifting past sepia into the realms of puke-green. In some ways, the extraordinarily crisp and detailed soundscape is even more impressive, making audible the scrape of tires on gravel and the unyielding rhythms of the sea.
Camera (color, HD, widescreen), Gokhan Tiryaki; editors, Ayhan Ergursel, Bora Goksingol, Nuri Bilge Ceylan; art director, Ebru Ceylan; sound (Dolby Digital), Olivier Goinard; sound editor, Umut Senyol; assistant director, Ayla Karli Tezgoren. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 15, 2008. Running time: 109 MIN
Three Monkeys
Uc maymun (Turkey-France-Italy)
By JUSTIN CHANG
Dark drama 'Three Monkeys' offers adultery, murder and gloom.
A Pyramide Distribution (in France) release of a Zeynofilm, NBC Film (Turkey)/Pyramide Prods. (France)/Bim Distribuzione (Italy) production, in association with Imaj, with the participation of Ministere de la Culture et du Tourisme Turc, Eurimages, CNC. (International sales: Pyramide Intl., Paris.) Produced by Zeynep Ozbatur. Co-producers, Fabienne Vonier, Valerio de Paolis, Cemal Noyan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Screenplay, Ebru Ceylan, Ercan Kesal, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. With: Yavuz Bingol, Hatice Aslan, Ahmet Rifat Sungar, Ercan Kesal.(Turkish dialogue)
Seeing, hearing and speaking no evil comes all too easily to the tortured trio in "Three Monkeys," a powerfully bleak family drama that leaves its characters' offenses largely offscreen but lingers with agonizing, drawn-out deliberation on the consequences. Bad faith, simmering resentment, adultery and murder all figure into Nuri Bilge Ceylan's darkly burnished fifth feature, giving it a stronger narrative undertow than his previous Cannes competition entries, "Distant" and "Climates." But gripping as the film often is, its unrelenting doom and gloom offers fewer lasting rewards, making it unlikely to draw sizable arthouse crowds beyond the Turkish helmer's fanbase.
Opening shot of aging Turkish politician Servet (Ercan Kesal), falling asleep at the wheel as he drives through the woods at night, not only foreshadows the monochrome misery to come but also establishes the film's dramatic m.o. Rather than showing the subsequent collision, Ceylan cuts to a forest clearing where a pedestrian lies dead in the background and Servet, trembling with fear in the foreground, determines to hide his guilt.
Emphasis on aftermath rather than action is significant: The one who ends up paying for Servet's crime is his longtime personal driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), who takes the rap after Servet's promise of a hefty lump sum upon his release. As Eyup's prison term drags on for months, his beautiful wife Hacer (Hatice Aslan) and aimless teenage son Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) grow impatient and restless in their seaside flat, prompting Hacer to ask Servet for an advance.
Servet, who's just lost an important election, makes good on his promise, though the indelicate nature of his agreement with Hacer -- again, made clear to the audience with no explicit imagery -- can't be kept hidden for long from Ismail. The troubled youth, in turn, has a hard time concealing the truth from Eyup when the latter re-enters the picture, creating a pressure-cooker scenario that Ceylan plays out for maximum emotional tension at an achingly measured tempo.
Though he eventually serves up an entire potboiler's worth of past tragedies and festering secrets, Ceylan takes a characteristically oblique approach. Screenplay (credited to the helmer, his wife Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Kesal) dwells mainly on the characters' inability to communicate -- the film offers lots of awkward silences and angsty brooding, but precious little eye contact -- making the inevitable angry outbursts all the more affecting.
Primary thesps are superbly convincing as a dysfunctional unit. Absent for most of the first half, Bingol dominates the second with his volatile fits of temper. Aslan is both maddening and sympathetic as the frustrated seductress, and handsome Sungar has heartbreaking moments as a son who, it's suggested, has borne more than his fair share of the emotional burdens.
While Servet's selfish actions impel the drama forward, the political content and latent class tensions never distract from the core dynamic. But "Three Monkeys" reaches the point of diminishing returns in its final reels, as the tale relaxes its vise-like grip and its machinations begin to seem transparent and overdetermined in retrospect. And aside from a darkly comic cell-phone ringtone that steals every scene it's in, the wry humor that made "Distant" so memorable is mostly absent here.
Reteaming with "Climates" d.p. Gokhan Tiryaki, Ceylan again offers beautifully composed HD images of exceptional depth and texture. In keeping with the angst-ridden tenor, however, his color palette seems deliberately murkier and more constrained than usual, occasionally drifting past sepia into the realms of puke-green. In some ways, the extraordinarily crisp and detailed soundscape is even more impressive, making audible the scrape of tires on gravel and the unyielding rhythms of the sea.
Camera (color, HD, widescreen), Gokhan Tiryaki; editors, Ayhan Ergursel, Bora Goksingol, Nuri Bilge Ceylan; art director, Ebru Ceylan; sound (Dolby Digital), Olivier Goinard; sound editor, Umut Senyol; assistant director, Ayla Karli Tezgoren. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 15, 2008. Running time: 109 MIN
Cannes 2008 diary: ‘Lion’s Den’ and 'Three Monkeys'
Cannes 2008 diary: ‘Lion’s Den’ and 'Three Monkeys'
Geoff Andrew likes Pablo Trapero's 'Lion's Den', but loves 'Nuri Bilge Ceylan's 'Three Monkeys', both of which screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival
(.............)
On the surface, the best film here so far for me – Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ‘Three Monkeys’ – is only very superficially about incarceration, in that the story is quickly kick-started when a local politician facing elections persuades his driver to take the rap for him after the former knocks over a man with his car; in return he’ll pay his employee’s salary to his teenage son, and hand over a large lump sum when he emerges from prison after six months or so.
But if we actually see only a couple of prison-set scenes, when the son visits his father, that doesn’t mean that imprisonment isn’t a central, almost Dostoievskian metaphor for what happens to the driver, his wife and son, and the the politician. For that lie told to the cops is merely the first – and indeed the fount – of many more deceits that shape the increasingly twisted and dangerous interactions between the four protagonists, all of whom soon find themselves trapped like rats by their own fears, desires, doubts and suspicions.
This fifth feature is arguably the most ambitious film yet from the maker of ‘Uzak’ and ‘Climates’. It has the dry humour, assured pacing, astute psychological insights and sharp sense of moral and dramatic irony that has been conspicuous in all his work, but in many respects the film feels like an expansion upon ‘Climates’, not only in extending that film’s clear-eyed, unsentimental assessment of male-female relationships from a couple to a whole family and its acquaintances, but in exploring the rich potential afforded by digital technology; if you thought Ceylan’s photographer’s eye produced stunning images in ‘Climates’, ‘Three Monkeys’ pushes the envelope still further. It’s been bought for the UK, so when it turns up, see it – and marvel!
Geoff Andrew likes Pablo Trapero's 'Lion's Den', but loves 'Nuri Bilge Ceylan's 'Three Monkeys', both of which screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival
(.............)
On the surface, the best film here so far for me – Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ‘Three Monkeys’ – is only very superficially about incarceration, in that the story is quickly kick-started when a local politician facing elections persuades his driver to take the rap for him after the former knocks over a man with his car; in return he’ll pay his employee’s salary to his teenage son, and hand over a large lump sum when he emerges from prison after six months or so.
But if we actually see only a couple of prison-set scenes, when the son visits his father, that doesn’t mean that imprisonment isn’t a central, almost Dostoievskian metaphor for what happens to the driver, his wife and son, and the the politician. For that lie told to the cops is merely the first – and indeed the fount – of many more deceits that shape the increasingly twisted and dangerous interactions between the four protagonists, all of whom soon find themselves trapped like rats by their own fears, desires, doubts and suspicions.
This fifth feature is arguably the most ambitious film yet from the maker of ‘Uzak’ and ‘Climates’. It has the dry humour, assured pacing, astute psychological insights and sharp sense of moral and dramatic irony that has been conspicuous in all his work, but in many respects the film feels like an expansion upon ‘Climates’, not only in extending that film’s clear-eyed, unsentimental assessment of male-female relationships from a couple to a whole family and its acquaintances, but in exploring the rich potential afforded by digital technology; if you thought Ceylan’s photographer’s eye produced stunning images in ‘Climates’, ‘Three Monkeys’ pushes the envelope still further. It’s been bought for the UK, so when it turns up, see it – and marvel!
Cannes 2008 | Thunder rolls in Three Monkeys
Cannes 2008: Thunder rolls in Three Monkeys
Uc Maymun (Three Monkeys)In competition at the Cannes Film Festival for the third time in six years, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan presented Three Monkeys to the press yesterday evening. The work explores in greater depth the aesthetic and social issues that inspired his four previous features.
With his dazzling settings, sense of framing and direction, the director – whose film was co-produced by France and Italy – has delved even deeper in his analysis of the contradictions of human feelings.
Punctuated by four series of thunder rolls which turn the characters’ lives upside down, Three Monkeys unravels the story of a family destroyed by power and money. A chauffeur agrees to go to prison – in return for money – instead of his boss, a communist politician who runs over a passer-by the day before an election (which he loses).
The chauffeur’s wife demands an advance on the sum of money for her 20-year-old son who takes refuge in sleep. But this move leads her straight into the arms of the boss, who then abandons her. The adultery is discovered by her son and then suspected by the father upon his release from prison, creating a stormy and passionate atmosphere in which the protagonists choose not to see, speak or listen, just like the three monkeys in the well-known fable.
The dramatic spiral of love and hate is haunted by fatality, the ghost of a child, and the enslavement of social, sentimental and family ties. This cursed (and very human) situation is examined in fine detail by a director who uses the brilliance of his art to explore darkness.
The film was produced on a budget of €1.8m by Turkish companies Zeynofilm and NBC Film (65%), and co-produced by French-based Pyramide (25%) and Italy’s Bim (10%). The latter two companies will release the film in their respective countries.
Three Monkeys received backing from Eurimages and the National Film Centre (CNC).
The title has been pre-bought by UK company New Wave from Pyramide, who are also handling international sales.
(Fabien Lemercier for cineuropa)
Uc Maymun (Three Monkeys)In competition at the Cannes Film Festival for the third time in six years, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan presented Three Monkeys to the press yesterday evening. The work explores in greater depth the aesthetic and social issues that inspired his four previous features.
With his dazzling settings, sense of framing and direction, the director – whose film was co-produced by France and Italy – has delved even deeper in his analysis of the contradictions of human feelings.
Punctuated by four series of thunder rolls which turn the characters’ lives upside down, Three Monkeys unravels the story of a family destroyed by power and money. A chauffeur agrees to go to prison – in return for money – instead of his boss, a communist politician who runs over a passer-by the day before an election (which he loses).
The chauffeur’s wife demands an advance on the sum of money for her 20-year-old son who takes refuge in sleep. But this move leads her straight into the arms of the boss, who then abandons her. The adultery is discovered by her son and then suspected by the father upon his release from prison, creating a stormy and passionate atmosphere in which the protagonists choose not to see, speak or listen, just like the three monkeys in the well-known fable.
The dramatic spiral of love and hate is haunted by fatality, the ghost of a child, and the enslavement of social, sentimental and family ties. This cursed (and very human) situation is examined in fine detail by a director who uses the brilliance of his art to explore darkness.
The film was produced on a budget of €1.8m by Turkish companies Zeynofilm and NBC Film (65%), and co-produced by French-based Pyramide (25%) and Italy’s Bim (10%). The latter two companies will release the film in their respective countries.
Three Monkeys received backing from Eurimages and the National Film Centre (CNC).
The title has been pre-bought by UK company New Wave from Pyramide, who are also handling international sales.
(Fabien Lemercier for cineuropa)
Cannes 2008 | Three Monkeys
May 16, 2008
Cannes. Three Monkeys.
"An ostensibly routine noir-style psychological thriller vaults into the realms of high art in competition contender Three Monkeys" writes Jonathan Romney in Screen Daily.
"Cannes has been kind to Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan in the past, with Uzak and Climates establishing his auteur credentials here in 2003 and 2006. His new film represents a bold departure from his past style: it's best described as introspective melodrama, yet both visually and tonally, it's still quintessential Ceylan."
"Seeing, hearing and speaking no evil comes all too easily to the tortured trio in Three Monkeys, a powerfully bleak family drama that leaves its characters' offenses largely offscreen but lingers with agonizing, drawn-out deliberation on the consequences," writes Justin Chang in Variety. "Bad faith, simmering resentment, adultery and murder all figure into Nuri Bilge Ceylan's darkly burnished fifth feature, giving it a stronger narrative undertow than his previous Cannes competition entries, Distant and Climates."
"I was hooked from the get-go - gripped, fascinated," writes Jeffrey Wells. "I was in a fairly excited state because I knew - I absolutely knew - I was seeing the first major film of the festival.... It's a very dark and austere film that unfolds at a purposeful but meditative (which absolutely doesn't mean "slow") pace, taking its time and saying to the audience, 'Don't worry, this is going somewhere... we're not jerking around so pay attention to the steps.'"
Updates: "On the surface, the best film here so far for me - Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys - is only very superficially about incarceration, in that the story is quickly kick-started when a local politician facing elections persuades his driver to take the rap for him after the former knocks over a man with his car; in return he'll pay his employee's salary to his teenage son, and hand over a large lump sum when he emerges from prison after six months or so," writes Geoff Andrew for Time Out. "But if we actually see only a couple of prison-set scenes, when the son visits his father, that doesn't mean that imprisonment isn't a central, almost Dostoievskian metaphor for what happens to the driver, his wife and son, and the the politician.... It's been bought for the UK, so when it turns up, see it - and marvel!"
"[I]t's largely commonplace, drear, and claustrophobic," writes Glenn Kenny. "One finds oneself frustrated by the stories Ceylan chooses not to tell - the would-be politician who sets the film's plot into motion seems a more interesting character than anybody in the family whose lives he effects - and by his too-insistent emphases, e.g., a bit involving an idiosyncratic ring tone that's funny and wrenching the first time, still effective the second, and stale the third. The movie's not bad, but it's not terribly special, either."
"[L]eft me cold," writes the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. "It's a familial melodrama of infidelity and incrimination that James M Cain could have made hay with but that gets slowed down to a portentous Antonioni crawl by the director."
Cannes. Three Monkeys.
"An ostensibly routine noir-style psychological thriller vaults into the realms of high art in competition contender Three Monkeys" writes Jonathan Romney in Screen Daily.
"Cannes has been kind to Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan in the past, with Uzak and Climates establishing his auteur credentials here in 2003 and 2006. His new film represents a bold departure from his past style: it's best described as introspective melodrama, yet both visually and tonally, it's still quintessential Ceylan."
"Seeing, hearing and speaking no evil comes all too easily to the tortured trio in Three Monkeys, a powerfully bleak family drama that leaves its characters' offenses largely offscreen but lingers with agonizing, drawn-out deliberation on the consequences," writes Justin Chang in Variety. "Bad faith, simmering resentment, adultery and murder all figure into Nuri Bilge Ceylan's darkly burnished fifth feature, giving it a stronger narrative undertow than his previous Cannes competition entries, Distant and Climates."
"I was hooked from the get-go - gripped, fascinated," writes Jeffrey Wells. "I was in a fairly excited state because I knew - I absolutely knew - I was seeing the first major film of the festival.... It's a very dark and austere film that unfolds at a purposeful but meditative (which absolutely doesn't mean "slow") pace, taking its time and saying to the audience, 'Don't worry, this is going somewhere... we're not jerking around so pay attention to the steps.'"
Updates: "On the surface, the best film here so far for me - Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys - is only very superficially about incarceration, in that the story is quickly kick-started when a local politician facing elections persuades his driver to take the rap for him after the former knocks over a man with his car; in return he'll pay his employee's salary to his teenage son, and hand over a large lump sum when he emerges from prison after six months or so," writes Geoff Andrew for Time Out. "But if we actually see only a couple of prison-set scenes, when the son visits his father, that doesn't mean that imprisonment isn't a central, almost Dostoievskian metaphor for what happens to the driver, his wife and son, and the the politician.... It's been bought for the UK, so when it turns up, see it - and marvel!"
"[I]t's largely commonplace, drear, and claustrophobic," writes Glenn Kenny. "One finds oneself frustrated by the stories Ceylan chooses not to tell - the would-be politician who sets the film's plot into motion seems a more interesting character than anybody in the family whose lives he effects - and by his too-insistent emphases, e.g., a bit involving an idiosyncratic ring tone that's funny and wrenching the first time, still effective the second, and stale the third. The movie's not bad, but it's not terribly special, either."
"[L]eft me cold," writes the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. "It's a familial melodrama of infidelity and incrimination that James M Cain could have made hay with but that gets slowed down to a portentous Antonioni crawl by the director."
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
2008 Altin Koza/Golden Cocoon
Altın Koza'da 12 film yarışacak (English text in progress)
06 Mayıs 2008 AA
Bu yıl 2-8 Haziran arasında yapılacak ''15. Altın Koza Uluslararası Film Festivali''nde 12 Türk filminin yarışacağı bildirildi.
''Ulusal Uzun Metraj Film Yarışması''nda yarışacak filmler belli oldu. Toplam 29 filmin sunulduğu yarışmada, sinema yazarları ve festival sinema etkinlikleri koordinatörlerinden oluşan Festival Kurulu tarafından belirlenen 12 filmin, Altın Koza ödülüne sahip olabilmek için aday seçildiği bildirildi.
6 kişilik kurul ön değerlendirme sonucunda, yönetmenliğini Ümit Ünal'ın yaptığı ''Ara'', Hüseyin Karabek'in ''Gitmek'', Mehmet Güreli'nin ''Gölge'', Mehmet Yılmaz'ın ''Hazan Mevsimi: Bir Panayır Hikayesi'', Reis Çelik'in ''Mülteci'', Derviş Zaim'in ''Nokta'', Handan İpekçi'nin ''Saklı Yüzler'', Özcan Alperler'in ''Sonbahar'', Seyfi Teoman'ın ''Tatil Kitabı'', Çağan Irmak'ın ''Ulak'', Mahsun Kırmızıgül'ün ''Beyaz Melek'' ve İnan Temelkuran'ın ''Made in Europe'' filmlerinin ''Halk Jürisi'' ve ''Büyük Jüri''nin önüne çıkmasına karar verdi.
Festival Kurulu ayrıca, Tayfun Pirselimoğlu'nun ''Rıza'', Semih Kaplanoğlu'nun ''Yumurta'' ve Fatih Akın'ın ''Yaşamın Kıyısında'' isimli filmlerinin yarışma dışı gösterim için önerilmesini de kararlaştırdı. Yarışmada ödül alacak filmlerin, 7 Haziran Cumartesi günü yapılacak ödül töreni ile sahiplerini bulacağı bildirildi.
En İyi Film Ödülü 250 bin YTL, Büyük Jüri Yılmaz Güney Ödülü 75 bin YTL, Halk Jürisi En İyi Film ve En İyi Yönetmen Ödülü de 50'şer bin YTL olarak belirlenmişti.
Size bu kadar ödül yeter!
Altın Koza'nın yarışma bölümüne Tayfun Pirselimoğlu imzalı 'Rıza' da kabul edilmedi.
21/05/2008 ERKAN AKTUĞ
'Yumurta', 'Yaşamın Kıyısında' ve 'Rıza', çok ödül kazandıklarından olsa gerek haziran ayında Adana Altın Koza Film Festivali'nin yarışma bölümüne kabul edilmedi. Yarışma yönetmeliğinde ödüllü filmler katılamaz şartı yok. Semih Kaplanoğlu 'Neye göre karar veriyorlar bilmiyoruz', Tayfun Pirselimoğlu 'Bu garipliğin ‘artistik’ bir nedene bağlı olmadığı belli' diyor
İSTANBUL - "Film festivallerin, şartnamelerinin gereklerini yerine getirmeyip kerameti kendinden menkul gizli mahfil kararlarla bir yerlere gidilemeyeceğini artık anlamaları gerekiyor" diyor 'Rıza'nın yönetmeni Tayfun Pirselimoğlu. Son gelişme 15. Adana Altın Koza Film Festivali'nde yaşandı. 'Yumurta', 'Yaşamın Kıyısında' ve 'Rıza' gibi yılın bol ödüllü filmleri 2-8 Haziran tarihleri arasında yapılacak festivalin yarışma bölümüne kabul edilmedi. Çok festival dolaştıkları ve çok ödül aldıklarından olsa gerek her üç film de 'ödüllü filmler' başlığı altında yarışma dışı gösterilecek. Ancak festivalin yarışma yönetmeliğinde de başka festivalde ödül alan filmler katılamaz şartı yok. Peki o zaman, sinema yazarları Alin Taşçıyan, Esin Küçüktepepınar, Aslı Selçuk ile Altın Koza ekibinden Kadir Beycioğlu, Ahmet Boyacıoğlu ve Başak Emre'den oluşan ön seçici kurul, bu filmleri beğenmediği için mi yarışmaya almadı?
'Artistik bir nedene dayanmıyor'
Yönetmen Pirselimoğlu, filminin yarışma dışı gösterilmesinin artistik bir nedene dayandığına inanmıyor. Benzer bir durumun İstanbul Film Festivali'nde de yaşandığını hatırlatan Pirselimoğlu, "Rıza’nın herhangi akla uygun, makul, doyurucu bir açıklama yapılamadan yarışma dışı gösterilmesi önerildi. Bu garipliğin ‘artistik’ bir nedene bağlı olmadığı bu özel gösterim önerisinden belli. Bu ve benzeri filmlerin yarışmaların bağlı oldukları şartnameler yerine kişisel, muğlak ve en önemlisi ‘gizli’ şartlarla yarışma dışında bırakılması tehlikeli bir gidişin işareti olarak görünüyor. Bir festivalin filmin artistik nitelikleri nedeniyle yarışmaya almaması tartışılacak bir konu değildir. Buradaki mesele bu niteliği haiz ama ‘bilinmeyen başka niteliklerden’ yoksun olmakla ilgili. Filmlerin ‘estetik’, ‘teknik’ kriterlerin dışında bilinmeyen, açıklanmayan, saklanan şartlarla ‘dışarıda bırakılması’ huzursuz edici bir hal ve ister istemez yaratılabilecek polemiklere zemin hazırlıyor" diye konuşuyor.
'Yumurta'nın yönetmeni Semih Kaplanoğlu da Altın Koza'nın kararından dolayı şaşkın: "Ne diyebilirim ki? Türkiye'de böyle bu iler. Neye göre karar veriliyor bilmiyorum. Yarışma yönetmeliğinde yazması lazım bunların. Ön seçici kurulun da önceden açıklanması lazım."
Aklın yolu bir, 'Yaşamın Kıyısında'nın yapımcısı Ali Akdeniz de benzer şeylerden yakınıyor. "Kararların neye göre alınıyor, yönetmelikte kurallar yazsın ki bilelim. Katılırız, katılmayız ayrı konu. Aman katılın, filminizi gönderin diye bir telaş arıyorlar, gönderiyoruz, diyorlar ki 'yarışma dışı'. Israrla çağırıp bir sürü film toplayıp sonra da onları elemek ayrı bir tatmin mi veriyor anlamıyorum. İstanbul da almadı bizim filmi. Siyad yerli film olarak kabul etmedi. Herkes ayrı bir telden çalıyor. Keşke tüzüklerde yazsa da bilsek" diyen Ali Akdeniz, diğer taraftan da bu tür meselelerin fazla büyütülmemesi gerektiğine inanıyor. Akdeniz, "Sonuçta festivaller, ödüller filmleri yüceltmek için var ve yaşatılmalı" diyor.
'Festivaller dedikodu platformuna dönüşüyor'
Altın Koza'ya seçilmeyen filmlerden gösterimdeki 'Münferit'in yönetmeni Dersu Yavuz Altun da Türkiye'deki festivallerin, sağlıklı bir değerlendirme sisteminin olmayışından dolayı tam bir spekülasyon ve dedikodu platformuna dönüştüğünü düşünüyor. Altun, "Nesnel, şeffaf, gerekçeli karar metni kamuoyuna açık, herkesin bilgi sahibi olabileceği bir sistem kurmak, ne yazık ki ne festival yöneticilerinin, ne de onlarla kafa kol ilişkileri içinde olan sinemacıların istediği bir şey değil. Çünkü böyle bir sistem kendisini tanrı yerine koyan festival yöneticilerinin iktidarını sarsacaktır. Çözüm bu alanda çalışan sinema örgütleriyle mümkündür" diye konuşuyor.
Bundan dört beş sene öncesine kadar yılda ortalama 15 film çekildiği için festivallerde bu tür sorunlar çıkmazdı. son yıllarda ise film sayısı 50'ye yaklaşıyor. 'Artistik' nedenler dışında, festival yönetmeliklerinde yer almayan çeşitli bahanelerle filmlerin yarışmalardan elenmesi sinema sektöründe sürekli bir polemik yaşanmasına neden oluyor. Eleştirmenlerin övgüyle bahsettiği Ümit Ünal'ın 'Ara' ile Mehmet Eryılmaz'ın 'Hazan Mevsimi' filmlerini Altın Portakal'a seçilmemesi ve ön seçici kurulunun gizli tutulması tartışma yaratmıştı. Yine İstanbul'a kabul edilmeyen 'Rıza', Ankara'da en iyi film dahil üç ödül almıştı. Artistik nedenler dışında bahaneler üretmekten, polemik yaratmaktan ne zaman bıkacağız? Türkiye'deki film festivallerinin yarışma yönetmeliklerinin yenilemenin zamanı gelmedi mi artık?
Altın Koza'da yarışanlar
Toplam 29 filmin başvurduğu Adana Altın Koza Film Festivali'nin yarışma bölümüne 12 film seçildi. Alin Taşçıyan, Esin Küçüktepepınar, Aslı Selçuk, Kadir Beycioğlu, Ahmet Boyacıoğlu ve Başak Emre'den oluşan ön seçici kurul 'Ara' (Ümit Ünal), 'Gitmek' (Hüseyin Karabey), 'Gölge' (Mehmet Güreli), 'Hazan Mevsimi' (Mehmet Eryılmaz), 'Mülteci' (Reis Çelik), 'Nokta' (Derviş Zaim), 'Saklı Yüzler' (Handan İpekçi), 'Sonbahar' (Özcan Alper), 'Tatil Kitabı' (Seyfi Teoman), 'Ulak' (Çağan Irmak), 'Beyaz Melek' (Mahsun Kırmızıgül), 'Made in Europe'u (İnan Temelkuran) yarışmaya uygun buldu. En iyi filme 250 bin YTL para ödülünün verileceği festivalin yarışma jürisi ise Ezel Akay (başkan), Sırrı Süreyya Önder, sinema sanatçıları Derya Alabora, Başak Köklükaya, Lale Mansur, Cahit Berkay, Hayk Kirakosyan, Murat Özer ve Sadık Deveci'den oluşuyor.
'Bu vodvillerden daha çok göreceğiz'
Yönetmen Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, festivallerle ilgili konuşurken sinemamızdaki bir başka tuhaf halin de Kültür Bakanlığı Sinema Destekleme Kurul’nun aldığı son kararlar olduğunu söyledi. "Kararlara bakınca ister istemez kurulun taşıdığı adın tuhaf bir ironiyi barındırdığı akla geliyor. Bir ‘destek’ olduğu aşikar. Her ‘ortalama’ vatandaş, birçok konuda olduğu gibi bu ironiyi üretmede de alicenap davranan kurulun değerli üyelerinin sinema için yarattıkları desteğin -ve de kösteğin- kriterleri konusunda kuşkuya bir mahal olmadığını bilir! Dost, ahbap, akraba, nefret ilişkileri ile sarmalanmış, paketlenmiş, adrese gönderilmiş bir tuhaf halin ‘sinemamıza’ olan katkısı, gönülleri en azından bu yönden gani olan üyeleri tarafından muhakak ki şiddetle savunulacaktır. Seçimlerin son derece objektif şekilde gerçekleştiğini söyleyen bir üyenin bunun kanıtı olarak da ‘oylama’ yapılarak sonuca ulaşıldığını ifade etmesi bir başka feraset örneği. Bu 'en demokratik seçimden’, ‘puanlama yoluyla’ yeğen, kardeş, enişte sonuçları çıkması da şaşırtıcı değil doğal ki. Bu vodvillerden daha çok göreceğimiz anlaşılıyor."
06 Mayıs 2008 AA
Bu yıl 2-8 Haziran arasında yapılacak ''15. Altın Koza Uluslararası Film Festivali''nde 12 Türk filminin yarışacağı bildirildi.
''Ulusal Uzun Metraj Film Yarışması''nda yarışacak filmler belli oldu. Toplam 29 filmin sunulduğu yarışmada, sinema yazarları ve festival sinema etkinlikleri koordinatörlerinden oluşan Festival Kurulu tarafından belirlenen 12 filmin, Altın Koza ödülüne sahip olabilmek için aday seçildiği bildirildi.
6 kişilik kurul ön değerlendirme sonucunda, yönetmenliğini Ümit Ünal'ın yaptığı ''Ara'', Hüseyin Karabek'in ''Gitmek'', Mehmet Güreli'nin ''Gölge'', Mehmet Yılmaz'ın ''Hazan Mevsimi: Bir Panayır Hikayesi'', Reis Çelik'in ''Mülteci'', Derviş Zaim'in ''Nokta'', Handan İpekçi'nin ''Saklı Yüzler'', Özcan Alperler'in ''Sonbahar'', Seyfi Teoman'ın ''Tatil Kitabı'', Çağan Irmak'ın ''Ulak'', Mahsun Kırmızıgül'ün ''Beyaz Melek'' ve İnan Temelkuran'ın ''Made in Europe'' filmlerinin ''Halk Jürisi'' ve ''Büyük Jüri''nin önüne çıkmasına karar verdi.
Festival Kurulu ayrıca, Tayfun Pirselimoğlu'nun ''Rıza'', Semih Kaplanoğlu'nun ''Yumurta'' ve Fatih Akın'ın ''Yaşamın Kıyısında'' isimli filmlerinin yarışma dışı gösterim için önerilmesini de kararlaştırdı. Yarışmada ödül alacak filmlerin, 7 Haziran Cumartesi günü yapılacak ödül töreni ile sahiplerini bulacağı bildirildi.
En İyi Film Ödülü 250 bin YTL, Büyük Jüri Yılmaz Güney Ödülü 75 bin YTL, Halk Jürisi En İyi Film ve En İyi Yönetmen Ödülü de 50'şer bin YTL olarak belirlenmişti.
Size bu kadar ödül yeter!
Altın Koza'nın yarışma bölümüne Tayfun Pirselimoğlu imzalı 'Rıza' da kabul edilmedi.
21/05/2008 ERKAN AKTUĞ
'Yumurta', 'Yaşamın Kıyısında' ve 'Rıza', çok ödül kazandıklarından olsa gerek haziran ayında Adana Altın Koza Film Festivali'nin yarışma bölümüne kabul edilmedi. Yarışma yönetmeliğinde ödüllü filmler katılamaz şartı yok. Semih Kaplanoğlu 'Neye göre karar veriyorlar bilmiyoruz', Tayfun Pirselimoğlu 'Bu garipliğin ‘artistik’ bir nedene bağlı olmadığı belli' diyor
İSTANBUL - "Film festivallerin, şartnamelerinin gereklerini yerine getirmeyip kerameti kendinden menkul gizli mahfil kararlarla bir yerlere gidilemeyeceğini artık anlamaları gerekiyor" diyor 'Rıza'nın yönetmeni Tayfun Pirselimoğlu. Son gelişme 15. Adana Altın Koza Film Festivali'nde yaşandı. 'Yumurta', 'Yaşamın Kıyısında' ve 'Rıza' gibi yılın bol ödüllü filmleri 2-8 Haziran tarihleri arasında yapılacak festivalin yarışma bölümüne kabul edilmedi. Çok festival dolaştıkları ve çok ödül aldıklarından olsa gerek her üç film de 'ödüllü filmler' başlığı altında yarışma dışı gösterilecek. Ancak festivalin yarışma yönetmeliğinde de başka festivalde ödül alan filmler katılamaz şartı yok. Peki o zaman, sinema yazarları Alin Taşçıyan, Esin Küçüktepepınar, Aslı Selçuk ile Altın Koza ekibinden Kadir Beycioğlu, Ahmet Boyacıoğlu ve Başak Emre'den oluşan ön seçici kurul, bu filmleri beğenmediği için mi yarışmaya almadı?
'Artistik bir nedene dayanmıyor'
Yönetmen Pirselimoğlu, filminin yarışma dışı gösterilmesinin artistik bir nedene dayandığına inanmıyor. Benzer bir durumun İstanbul Film Festivali'nde de yaşandığını hatırlatan Pirselimoğlu, "Rıza’nın herhangi akla uygun, makul, doyurucu bir açıklama yapılamadan yarışma dışı gösterilmesi önerildi. Bu garipliğin ‘artistik’ bir nedene bağlı olmadığı bu özel gösterim önerisinden belli. Bu ve benzeri filmlerin yarışmaların bağlı oldukları şartnameler yerine kişisel, muğlak ve en önemlisi ‘gizli’ şartlarla yarışma dışında bırakılması tehlikeli bir gidişin işareti olarak görünüyor. Bir festivalin filmin artistik nitelikleri nedeniyle yarışmaya almaması tartışılacak bir konu değildir. Buradaki mesele bu niteliği haiz ama ‘bilinmeyen başka niteliklerden’ yoksun olmakla ilgili. Filmlerin ‘estetik’, ‘teknik’ kriterlerin dışında bilinmeyen, açıklanmayan, saklanan şartlarla ‘dışarıda bırakılması’ huzursuz edici bir hal ve ister istemez yaratılabilecek polemiklere zemin hazırlıyor" diye konuşuyor.
'Yumurta'nın yönetmeni Semih Kaplanoğlu da Altın Koza'nın kararından dolayı şaşkın: "Ne diyebilirim ki? Türkiye'de böyle bu iler. Neye göre karar veriliyor bilmiyorum. Yarışma yönetmeliğinde yazması lazım bunların. Ön seçici kurulun da önceden açıklanması lazım."
Aklın yolu bir, 'Yaşamın Kıyısında'nın yapımcısı Ali Akdeniz de benzer şeylerden yakınıyor. "Kararların neye göre alınıyor, yönetmelikte kurallar yazsın ki bilelim. Katılırız, katılmayız ayrı konu. Aman katılın, filminizi gönderin diye bir telaş arıyorlar, gönderiyoruz, diyorlar ki 'yarışma dışı'. Israrla çağırıp bir sürü film toplayıp sonra da onları elemek ayrı bir tatmin mi veriyor anlamıyorum. İstanbul da almadı bizim filmi. Siyad yerli film olarak kabul etmedi. Herkes ayrı bir telden çalıyor. Keşke tüzüklerde yazsa da bilsek" diyen Ali Akdeniz, diğer taraftan da bu tür meselelerin fazla büyütülmemesi gerektiğine inanıyor. Akdeniz, "Sonuçta festivaller, ödüller filmleri yüceltmek için var ve yaşatılmalı" diyor.
'Festivaller dedikodu platformuna dönüşüyor'
Altın Koza'ya seçilmeyen filmlerden gösterimdeki 'Münferit'in yönetmeni Dersu Yavuz Altun da Türkiye'deki festivallerin, sağlıklı bir değerlendirme sisteminin olmayışından dolayı tam bir spekülasyon ve dedikodu platformuna dönüştüğünü düşünüyor. Altun, "Nesnel, şeffaf, gerekçeli karar metni kamuoyuna açık, herkesin bilgi sahibi olabileceği bir sistem kurmak, ne yazık ki ne festival yöneticilerinin, ne de onlarla kafa kol ilişkileri içinde olan sinemacıların istediği bir şey değil. Çünkü böyle bir sistem kendisini tanrı yerine koyan festival yöneticilerinin iktidarını sarsacaktır. Çözüm bu alanda çalışan sinema örgütleriyle mümkündür" diye konuşuyor.
Bundan dört beş sene öncesine kadar yılda ortalama 15 film çekildiği için festivallerde bu tür sorunlar çıkmazdı. son yıllarda ise film sayısı 50'ye yaklaşıyor. 'Artistik' nedenler dışında, festival yönetmeliklerinde yer almayan çeşitli bahanelerle filmlerin yarışmalardan elenmesi sinema sektöründe sürekli bir polemik yaşanmasına neden oluyor. Eleştirmenlerin övgüyle bahsettiği Ümit Ünal'ın 'Ara' ile Mehmet Eryılmaz'ın 'Hazan Mevsimi' filmlerini Altın Portakal'a seçilmemesi ve ön seçici kurulunun gizli tutulması tartışma yaratmıştı. Yine İstanbul'a kabul edilmeyen 'Rıza', Ankara'da en iyi film dahil üç ödül almıştı. Artistik nedenler dışında bahaneler üretmekten, polemik yaratmaktan ne zaman bıkacağız? Türkiye'deki film festivallerinin yarışma yönetmeliklerinin yenilemenin zamanı gelmedi mi artık?
Altın Koza'da yarışanlar
Toplam 29 filmin başvurduğu Adana Altın Koza Film Festivali'nin yarışma bölümüne 12 film seçildi. Alin Taşçıyan, Esin Küçüktepepınar, Aslı Selçuk, Kadir Beycioğlu, Ahmet Boyacıoğlu ve Başak Emre'den oluşan ön seçici kurul 'Ara' (Ümit Ünal), 'Gitmek' (Hüseyin Karabey), 'Gölge' (Mehmet Güreli), 'Hazan Mevsimi' (Mehmet Eryılmaz), 'Mülteci' (Reis Çelik), 'Nokta' (Derviş Zaim), 'Saklı Yüzler' (Handan İpekçi), 'Sonbahar' (Özcan Alper), 'Tatil Kitabı' (Seyfi Teoman), 'Ulak' (Çağan Irmak), 'Beyaz Melek' (Mahsun Kırmızıgül), 'Made in Europe'u (İnan Temelkuran) yarışmaya uygun buldu. En iyi filme 250 bin YTL para ödülünün verileceği festivalin yarışma jürisi ise Ezel Akay (başkan), Sırrı Süreyya Önder, sinema sanatçıları Derya Alabora, Başak Köklükaya, Lale Mansur, Cahit Berkay, Hayk Kirakosyan, Murat Özer ve Sadık Deveci'den oluşuyor.
'Bu vodvillerden daha çok göreceğiz'
Yönetmen Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, festivallerle ilgili konuşurken sinemamızdaki bir başka tuhaf halin de Kültür Bakanlığı Sinema Destekleme Kurul’nun aldığı son kararlar olduğunu söyledi. "Kararlara bakınca ister istemez kurulun taşıdığı adın tuhaf bir ironiyi barındırdığı akla geliyor. Bir ‘destek’ olduğu aşikar. Her ‘ortalama’ vatandaş, birçok konuda olduğu gibi bu ironiyi üretmede de alicenap davranan kurulun değerli üyelerinin sinema için yarattıkları desteğin -ve de kösteğin- kriterleri konusunda kuşkuya bir mahal olmadığını bilir! Dost, ahbap, akraba, nefret ilişkileri ile sarmalanmış, paketlenmiş, adrese gönderilmiş bir tuhaf halin ‘sinemamıza’ olan katkısı, gönülleri en azından bu yönden gani olan üyeleri tarafından muhakak ki şiddetle savunulacaktır. Seçimlerin son derece objektif şekilde gerçekleştiğini söyleyen bir üyenin bunun kanıtı olarak da ‘oylama’ yapılarak sonuca ulaşıldığını ifade etmesi bir başka feraset örneği. Bu 'en demokratik seçimden’, ‘puanlama yoluyla’ yeğen, kardeş, enişte sonuçları çıkması da şaşırtıcı değil doğal ki. Bu vodvillerden daha çok göreceğimiz anlaşılıyor."
Monday, April 28, 2008
Critique | "Yumurta" Cine Live
Un poète devenu par la force des choses simple bouquiniste à Istanbul revient dans son village natal. Ayla, autrefois secrètement amoureuse de lui, l’invite à s’acquitter du rituel que la mort à empêcher sa mère d’accomplir. Sur ces riens, ces non-dits, ces émotions refoulées et ces sentiments avortés, le cinéaste construit un scénario en demi-teinte et prouve, à travers une mise en scène pudique, un superbe sens du détail palliant un dialogue volontairement épuré. Il compose avec cette histoire simple et ces sentiments universels une mélopée mélancolique d’une belle puissance émotionnelle. Et confirme aux côtes de Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Les climats) le renouveau du cinéma turc.
Xavier Leherpeur
Xavier Leherpeur
Critique | "Yumurta" LE MONDE
Critique
"Yumurta" : après la mort de la mère, parcours élégiaque vers la sérénité
LE MONDE | 22.04.08
Il y a d'abord ce plan d'une vieille femme qui marche dans une brume de campagne, sur fond sonore d'aboiements de chien, de chants d'oiseau. Elle sort du champ, définitivement. Et voilà maintenant Yusuf, libraire à Istanbul, poète. Voilà des informations distillées au fil d'images apparemment anodines, mais qui recèlent un sens caché : la voiture de Yusuf dans un long tunnel qui débouche sur la lumière, Yusuf assis près d'un corps recouvert d'un linceul, Yusuf devant une tombe et suivi comme son ombre par un petit garçon, Yusuf couché dans une forêt et réveillé par une nuée d'oiseaux.
L'avis du "Monde"
EXCELLENT
Bel exposé, au lyrisme discret et aux visions psychanalytiques, de ce que vient de vivre le héros, la mort de sa mère, son enterrement dans le village natal de Yusuf, un défilé d'émotions, chaos de sensations, qui le ramènent à sa petite enfance, remontent le temps, mélangent vie et songes.
Yusuf n'a de cesse de repartir au plus vite. Mais il y a quelque chose qui le retient, ou plutôt quelqu'un, qui l'aide à s'accomplir et à honorer le voeu de la défunte, quelqu'un qui le réconcilie avec ses souvenirs et lui ouvre les portes de l'avenir. Une jeune cousine, Ayla, dévouée à la mère dans ses derniers instants, garante de la tradition et de la survivance spirituelle des morts, humble servante, fille pure et désirable.
UN ÉTRANGE COMA
Humblement, comme dans un film d'Ozu ou de Satyajit Ray, Yumurta égrène de petits gestes anodins et isole des objets qui ont valeur de symbole. Une fleur plantée dans un pot un jour d'enterrement, un bol de lait, une brosse à dents, un pilier de bois en forme de crucifix, un puits envahi d'herbes, cet oeuf qui donne son titre au film et dont on guette l'apparition, signe du lien avec la mère, tardivement assumé.
Car Yusuf l'athée va mettre du temps à ressentir et à extérioriser son chagrin. Il faudra qu'Ayla insiste pour qu'il accomplisse le rite promis par sa mère avant de mourir : sacrifier un bélier dans la montagne. Il faudra cet étrange coma dans la cour du notaire et l'irrationnel écho d'une prière des obsèques, l'odeur d'un oignon, un cauchemar, des rencontres avec des fantômes du passé, l'exorcisme d'une déception amoureuse, et la découverte, au fil des heures et des jours, qu'Ayla est la discrète messagère de sa sérénité.
La nuque d'Ayla brûlant des feuilles mortes, une couleur de tricot, une panne d'électricité, un chant du coq : Semih Kaplanoglu ne cesse d'égrener des symptômes, de faire parler l'inconscient par le déroulement des gestes quotidiens, le départ sans cesse différé de Yusuf, le taciturne. Le cinéaste compose des cadres amples, des plans rigoureux, un rythme lent et harmonieux, pour épier ce qu'il y a d'admirable chez un homme ou une femme : la dignité, la fidélité, la grandeur d'âme, le regard, la patience, le doute et le tourment aussi.
La vieille amnésique qui, voyant Yusuf et Ayla ensemble, les prend pour de jeunes mariés, ne se trompe pas de beaucoup. Il y a quelque chose qui va illuminer ce couple, à tout jamais, quand la poule aura pondu. Semih Kaplanoglu maîtrise parfaitement son style élégiaque, limpide et poétique, ténébreux et radieux. Dans l'ombre de Nuri Bilge Ceylan, la Turquie vient de se découvrir un grand cinéaste.
Film turc de Semih Kaplanoglu. Avec Nejat Isler, Saadet Isil Aksoy. (1 h 37.)
Jean-Luc Douin
"Yumurta" : après la mort de la mère, parcours élégiaque vers la sérénité
LE MONDE | 22.04.08
Il y a d'abord ce plan d'une vieille femme qui marche dans une brume de campagne, sur fond sonore d'aboiements de chien, de chants d'oiseau. Elle sort du champ, définitivement. Et voilà maintenant Yusuf, libraire à Istanbul, poète. Voilà des informations distillées au fil d'images apparemment anodines, mais qui recèlent un sens caché : la voiture de Yusuf dans un long tunnel qui débouche sur la lumière, Yusuf assis près d'un corps recouvert d'un linceul, Yusuf devant une tombe et suivi comme son ombre par un petit garçon, Yusuf couché dans une forêt et réveillé par une nuée d'oiseaux.
L'avis du "Monde"
EXCELLENT
Bel exposé, au lyrisme discret et aux visions psychanalytiques, de ce que vient de vivre le héros, la mort de sa mère, son enterrement dans le village natal de Yusuf, un défilé d'émotions, chaos de sensations, qui le ramènent à sa petite enfance, remontent le temps, mélangent vie et songes.
Yusuf n'a de cesse de repartir au plus vite. Mais il y a quelque chose qui le retient, ou plutôt quelqu'un, qui l'aide à s'accomplir et à honorer le voeu de la défunte, quelqu'un qui le réconcilie avec ses souvenirs et lui ouvre les portes de l'avenir. Une jeune cousine, Ayla, dévouée à la mère dans ses derniers instants, garante de la tradition et de la survivance spirituelle des morts, humble servante, fille pure et désirable.
UN ÉTRANGE COMA
Humblement, comme dans un film d'Ozu ou de Satyajit Ray, Yumurta égrène de petits gestes anodins et isole des objets qui ont valeur de symbole. Une fleur plantée dans un pot un jour d'enterrement, un bol de lait, une brosse à dents, un pilier de bois en forme de crucifix, un puits envahi d'herbes, cet oeuf qui donne son titre au film et dont on guette l'apparition, signe du lien avec la mère, tardivement assumé.
Car Yusuf l'athée va mettre du temps à ressentir et à extérioriser son chagrin. Il faudra qu'Ayla insiste pour qu'il accomplisse le rite promis par sa mère avant de mourir : sacrifier un bélier dans la montagne. Il faudra cet étrange coma dans la cour du notaire et l'irrationnel écho d'une prière des obsèques, l'odeur d'un oignon, un cauchemar, des rencontres avec des fantômes du passé, l'exorcisme d'une déception amoureuse, et la découverte, au fil des heures et des jours, qu'Ayla est la discrète messagère de sa sérénité.
La nuque d'Ayla brûlant des feuilles mortes, une couleur de tricot, une panne d'électricité, un chant du coq : Semih Kaplanoglu ne cesse d'égrener des symptômes, de faire parler l'inconscient par le déroulement des gestes quotidiens, le départ sans cesse différé de Yusuf, le taciturne. Le cinéaste compose des cadres amples, des plans rigoureux, un rythme lent et harmonieux, pour épier ce qu'il y a d'admirable chez un homme ou une femme : la dignité, la fidélité, la grandeur d'âme, le regard, la patience, le doute et le tourment aussi.
La vieille amnésique qui, voyant Yusuf et Ayla ensemble, les prend pour de jeunes mariés, ne se trompe pas de beaucoup. Il y a quelque chose qui va illuminer ce couple, à tout jamais, quand la poule aura pondu. Semih Kaplanoglu maîtrise parfaitement son style élégiaque, limpide et poétique, ténébreux et radieux. Dans l'ombre de Nuri Bilge Ceylan, la Turquie vient de se découvrir un grand cinéaste.
Film turc de Semih Kaplanoglu. Avec Nejat Isler, Saadet Isil Aksoy. (1 h 37.)
Jean-Luc Douin
Friday, April 25, 2008
"Eternal Flight: Hrant Dink"
"Eternal Flight: Hrant Dink" Film To Be Ready By July 10
Yerevan, June 28, Armenpress: A film dedicated to the Turkish-Armenian journalist, chief editor of "Agos" newspaper Hrant Dink "Eternal Flight: Hrant Dink" will be ready by July 10.Director of the film Hrant Hakobian [1] told Armenpress that at present film editing works are being carried out. The film was to be ready by late May but it was postponed as the brother of the chief editor Yervand Dink promised the film director to provide additional materials.Thirty-minute long film is being shot in "Hayk" film studio on state funds. The shootings were particularly made in "Agos" newspaper's office, at Hrant Dink's home, in his birthplace Malatia."It is difficult to say to what genre the film belongs but it is like a close conversation between me and Hrant," the film director said.The idea to shot a film occurred to the director when H. Dink was alive, in November 2006.The film will be translated into English and Turkish and will be shown in Turkey as well.
[1] Hrant Hakobyan (Armenia) was born on May 30, in 1950 in Yerevan. In 1970 entered Armenian Pedagogical Institute after Khachatur Abovyan, the faculty of culture, department of directoring (master: Laert Vagharshyan). In 1974 graduated from the institute and left for the city Ijevan, where between 1974-1979 has organized 14 performances. Between 1979-1988 he worked at “Haykfilm” studio, first as a director assistant, then as a second director. In 1982 he left for Moscow for a probation period at director Ilya Frez. Since 1988 works at “Hayk” film studio. Has shot more than 30 documentary films: “Armenia in occupation”, “Monte”, “Without comments”, “My motherland Armenia”, “The people of the forgotthen Island” etc. He is the authour of a number of TV programs. In 2006 at “Golden Apricot” International Film Festival competition program “Armenian Panorama” his film “The people of the forgotten Island” won the first prize. In the same year at “Kinoshok” International Film Festival of the city Anapa the same film was awarded the first prize in the “Films without Prints” program. In 2006 Romania’s ECO-ETNO-FOLK FILM festival the film “Syunik” from the “My motherland Armenia” film-series won a diplom. Now at “Hayk” film studio is being shot the film “Eternal flight, Hrant Dink”.
Yerevan, June 28, Armenpress: A film dedicated to the Turkish-Armenian journalist, chief editor of "Agos" newspaper Hrant Dink "Eternal Flight: Hrant Dink" will be ready by July 10.Director of the film Hrant Hakobian [1] told Armenpress that at present film editing works are being carried out. The film was to be ready by late May but it was postponed as the brother of the chief editor Yervand Dink promised the film director to provide additional materials.Thirty-minute long film is being shot in "Hayk" film studio on state funds. The shootings were particularly made in "Agos" newspaper's office, at Hrant Dink's home, in his birthplace Malatia."It is difficult to say to what genre the film belongs but it is like a close conversation between me and Hrant," the film director said.The idea to shot a film occurred to the director when H. Dink was alive, in November 2006.The film will be translated into English and Turkish and will be shown in Turkey as well.
[1] Hrant Hakobyan (Armenia) was born on May 30, in 1950 in Yerevan. In 1970 entered Armenian Pedagogical Institute after Khachatur Abovyan, the faculty of culture, department of directoring (master: Laert Vagharshyan). In 1974 graduated from the institute and left for the city Ijevan, where between 1974-1979 has organized 14 performances. Between 1979-1988 he worked at “Haykfilm” studio, first as a director assistant, then as a second director. In 1982 he left for Moscow for a probation period at director Ilya Frez. Since 1988 works at “Hayk” film studio. Has shot more than 30 documentary films: “Armenia in occupation”, “Monte”, “Without comments”, “My motherland Armenia”, “The people of the forgotthen Island” etc. He is the authour of a number of TV programs. In 2006 at “Golden Apricot” International Film Festival competition program “Armenian Panorama” his film “The people of the forgotten Island” won the first prize. In the same year at “Kinoshok” International Film Festival of the city Anapa the same film was awarded the first prize in the “Films without Prints” program. In 2006 Romania’s ECO-ETNO-FOLK FILM festival the film “Syunik” from the “My motherland Armenia” film-series won a diplom. Now at “Hayk” film studio is being shot the film “Eternal flight, Hrant Dink”.
Tribeca | Hüseyin Karabey
Hüseyin Karabey
Hüseyin Karabey is regarded as one of Turkey's new directing talents at a time when the independent film scene in Turkey is beginning to gain global attention. Karabey developed My Marlon and Brando with Ayça Damgaci, whose true story it tells. Karabey's previous work includes Boran, a short film that explores the disappearances of 5,000 political activists in Turkey during the '90s by merging fact and dramatic treatment, and the feature-length docudrama Silent Death. His documentary Breath was an exclusive look at Pina Bausch, the world-famous German choreographer. Karabey lectures at universities and cultural organizations in Turkey, and his films have won numerous awards.
Director Statement (My Marlon and Brando)
My Marlon and Brando is not a story that we’re used to seeing on screen. It is a story that moves from West to East, against the common current, in a quest for happiness. It is also the true powerful love story of Hama Ali and Ayça. I hope it can shatter some perceptions of the region and introduce audiences to some real, passionate characters. My Marlon and Brando is a personal story that echoes both my own experiences and those of Ayça, whose story it tells. Ayça plays herself in the film. Despite the emotional challenge, she was determined to take audiences on the journey she made herself five years ago.
I passionately believe that if we all had the chance to hear someone else’s story every day of our lives, there would be much deeper cultural understanding. Ayça and I developed the script together with reality intercepting throughout the production period. Ultimately My Marlon and Brando is a love story set against a violent political landscape that is the tragic reality. To me, as challenges in the region continue, it is so important that we do not forget the individuals who inhabit this landscape.
This film blends the real and the fictitious, exposing the interpretive channels shaped by broadcasting policy and national interest, through which we are usually presented life in Iran and Iraq. In the end, our unlikely hero Hama Ali is no longer a faceless refugee from the news but a man who we have come to really know through his charming video love letters.
Ayça’s journey through Iran, Iraq, and Turkey also helps us to witness the meaninglessness of the borders between these countries. We hear the same music and the same jokes across the official borders that provide such a barrier between Ayça and her love.
Hüseyin Karabey is regarded as one of Turkey's new directing talents at a time when the independent film scene in Turkey is beginning to gain global attention. Karabey developed My Marlon and Brando with Ayça Damgaci, whose true story it tells. Karabey's previous work includes Boran, a short film that explores the disappearances of 5,000 political activists in Turkey during the '90s by merging fact and dramatic treatment, and the feature-length docudrama Silent Death. His documentary Breath was an exclusive look at Pina Bausch, the world-famous German choreographer. Karabey lectures at universities and cultural organizations in Turkey, and his films have won numerous awards.
Director Statement (My Marlon and Brando)
My Marlon and Brando is not a story that we’re used to seeing on screen. It is a story that moves from West to East, against the common current, in a quest for happiness. It is also the true powerful love story of Hama Ali and Ayça. I hope it can shatter some perceptions of the region and introduce audiences to some real, passionate characters. My Marlon and Brando is a personal story that echoes both my own experiences and those of Ayça, whose story it tells. Ayça plays herself in the film. Despite the emotional challenge, she was determined to take audiences on the journey she made herself five years ago.
I passionately believe that if we all had the chance to hear someone else’s story every day of our lives, there would be much deeper cultural understanding. Ayça and I developed the script together with reality intercepting throughout the production period. Ultimately My Marlon and Brando is a love story set against a violent political landscape that is the tragic reality. To me, as challenges in the region continue, it is so important that we do not forget the individuals who inhabit this landscape.
This film blends the real and the fictitious, exposing the interpretive channels shaped by broadcasting policy and national interest, through which we are usually presented life in Iran and Iraq. In the end, our unlikely hero Hama Ali is no longer a faceless refugee from the news but a man who we have come to really know through his charming video love letters.
Ayça’s journey through Iran, Iraq, and Turkey also helps us to witness the meaninglessness of the borders between these countries. We hear the same music and the same jokes across the official borders that provide such a barrier between Ayça and her love.
Tribeca | My Marlon and Brando (Gitmek)
My Marlon and Brando(Gitmek)
In English, Kurdish, Turkish with English subtitles.
2008 92 min Feature Narrative
Directed by: Hüseyin Karabey North American Premiere
www.asifilm.com
Director: Hüseyin Karabey
Principal Cast: Ayça Damgaci, Hama Ali Khan, Savas Emrah Ozdemir, Cengiz Bozkurt, Ani Pekkaya, Volga Sorgu Tekinoglu
Screenwriters: Hüseyin Karabey, Ayça Damgaci
Producers: Lucinda Englehart, Hüseyin Karabey, Sophie Lorant
Editor: Mary Stephen
Co-Producers: Jeroen Beker, Frans van Gestel, Harry Sutherland, Dennis Tal
Director of Photography: A. Emre Tanyildiz
Composers: Kemal S. Gurel, Erdal Guney, Huseyin Yildiz
Program Notes
In March 2003, as American bombs began falling on Baghdad, Turkish actress Ayça Damgaci left her flat in Istanbul and headed for the Iraq border. Behind that cordon was Kurdish actor Hama Ali Khan, the love of Damgaci's life-her moon and stars, her Marlon and her Brando, her everything. Hüseyin Karabey makes his narrative debut retelling the tale of Damgaci's quixotic road trip to the war zone, with Damgaci playing herself and Khan appearing in the actual video love notes he sent to her during their time apart. My Marlon and Brando is a piece of rough magic, a film with a soul as light, a heart as heavy, and a will as steely as its heroine's own.
Karabey's experience as a director of documentaries shines through in his devotion to ethnographic detail-he's eager to let the camera stray, vérité-style, and this helps to bring home Damgaci's growing sense of dislocation. Borders may be porous, but it is still possible to feel a stranger in a strange land. Really, though, the movie is Damgaci's-a brave, tender, and frequently very funny tribute to her love for Khan. Read aloud, her letters to him make for something wonderful and new in the history of lovers beseeching. Communicating in English, their shared tongue, Damgaci's clumsy grasp of the language elevates into rhetoric all the more moving for being flawed. Likewise, through Khan's ham-fistedly hilarious videos, you miss him on Dagmaci's behalf. Politics may turn this comedy about unlikely lovers into a tragedy, but even in its fleeting ungainliness, My Marlon and Brando is a fitting homage to Damgaci and Khan, two matched souls that no impassable border could ever tear asunder. Co-hosted with The American Turkish Society and Moon and Stars Project.
– Peter Scarlet
Print Source, Sales Contact
Luc Ntonga
INSOMNIA World Sales
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Paris 75020
Phone: +33 1 4358 0804
Email: luc@insomnia-sales.com
Press Contact
Nancy van Oorschot
Tribeca Film Festival
375 Greenwich Street
New York City, NY 10003
Phone: 2129412364
Email: nvanoorschot@tribecafilmfestival.org
Available Territories: All rights and territories available except Turkey, Iran, Netherlands, South Africa, Canada, China
Crossing Borders: A Cinematic Journey from the West to the East
An In-Depth Conversation on My Marlon and Brando, a film by Huseyin Karabey, competing in the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival
Date: May 2, 2008
Time: 7:00 PM-8:30 PM
Location: NYU Tisch School of the Arts, 721 Broadway (corner of Waverly), Screening Room 109, New York, NY 10003
The American Turkish Society and Moon and Stars Project Present Crossing Borders: A Cinematic Journey from the West to the East
An In-Depth Conversation on GITMEK / MY MARLON AND BRANDO
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Huseyin Karabey’s feature debut Gitmek / My Marlon and Brando makes its North American Premiere in 2008 Tribeca Film Festival’s World Narrative Feature Competition . Three years ago, in real-life, Hama Ali, a charismatic B movie actor from Iraq, and Ayca,a fiery actress from Turkey, met on a film-set. Their love affair continued across borders through video love letters until the war in Iraq. As people fled from East to West seeking safety, Ayca decided to make the journey from West to East, seeking her lover. My Marlon and Brando, a feature film in which Ayca plays herself, is based on her extraordinary and, ultimately unexpected, experiences in such sad, mad times….
PANELISTS:
Having studied Dramaturgy and Theater Science at Istanbul University, Ayca Damgaci began her professional acting career at Tiyatro Oyunevi (Theater Playhouse) in 1998. She won the Best Actress Award for her performance in My Marlon and Brando at the 27th International Istanbul Film Festival. She is the founder and one of the lead vocals for “Gocebe Sarkilar” (The Nomadic Songs), a music band singing Sephardic, Roman, Armenian, Andalucian, Balkan, and Anatolian songs. Damgaci is currently rehearsing day and night for two theater productions by Bilsak Theater Atelier and Garaj Istanbul.
Bilge Ebiri is a Turkish American film critic and filmmaker. He writes about film for New York Magazine, Bookforum, and Nerve.com. His first feature film, a comedy thriller entitled New Guy, was released in 2004, and he is currently at work on his second.
Film producer, Lucinda Englehart, is based in London but works on co-productions around the world. Having studied Political Science at Cambridge University, she moved to Cape Town. Here, she wrote extensively on the experience of documentary subjects telling their stories of apartheid memory and produced a number of South African feature films and documentaries. She met Huseyin Karabey at the Venice Film Festival and having heard the extraordinary true story told in My Marlon and Brando, came on board to produce this feature film with him.
Regarded as one of the new directing talents in Turkey’s growing independent film scene, Huseyin Karabey developed My Marlon and Brando with Ayça Damgaci. His previous work includes Boran, a short film that explores the disappearance of 5,000 Turkish political activists in the 1990s by bringing together actual facts and dramatic elements, and the feature-length docudrama Silent Death. His documentary Breath was an exclusive look at Pina Bausch, the world-famous German choreographer. Karabey lectures at universities and cultural organizations in Turkey, and his films have won numerous awards.
Review | My Marlon and Brando (2008)
Rotterdam
My Marlon and Brando Gitmek (Turkey - Netherlands - U.K.)
By JAY WEISSBERGAn
A-si Film Yapim (Turkey)/Motel Films (Netherlands)/Spier Films (U.K.) production, in association with Mechant Loup Prods., Ajans 21. (International sales: Insomnia World Sales, Paris.) Produced by Huseyin Karabey, Lucinda Englehart, Sophie Lorant. Executive producer, Lucinda Englehart. Co-producers, Jeroen Beker, Frans van Gestel, Dennis Tal, Harry Sutherland. Directed by Huseyin Karabey. Screenplay, Karabey, Ayca Damgaci.
With: Ayca Damgaci, Hama Ali Khan, Mahir Gunsiray, Volga Sorgu Tekinoglu, Savas Emrah Ozdemir, Cengiz Bozkurt, Ani Ipekkaya, Nesrin Cavadzade, Hakan Milli, Saadet Ciraci, Claude Leon, Serkan Salman, Ferdiye Bolu, Ahmet Yuksel Or, Omer Sahin, Riza Bas, Rahim Simsek, Sibel Ince, Sabri Mucairet. (Turkish, English, Kurdish, and Farsi dialogue)
The true-life border-crossing romance between a Turkish actress and her Kurdish lover gets a semi-fictional work-up when the real thesp takes on her own role in docu helmer Huseyin Karabey's fiction-feature debut, "My Marlon and Brando." Though there's something oddly masochistic about watching someone play herself in a tragedy, star Ayca Damgaci isn't aiming for the therapeutic route, and while Karabey works best when sticking close to his docu roots, he's crafted a moving statement on war and the confining artificiality of borders. Euro arthouses and fests should join in the journey.
Amid the growing paranoia created by constant news reports of the U.S.' imminent invasion of Baghdad, thesp Damgaci tries to stay in close contact with Hama Ali Khan, an actor in Iraqi Kurdistan she fell in love with some months before. With English as their sole common language, they exchange letters and video diaries (Hama Ali's real vids are used) full of the hyperbole of new love.
But as war breaks out, Damgaci becomes increasingly frustrated by the distance between her home in Istanbul and his in Suleymaniye, near the Iranian frontier. Appeals to Kurds for advice to get across the border are met with discouragement, so she finally makes the cross-country trip by bus and cab, arriving at the town of Habur, only to find that she can't get through to Iraq.
Damgaci is both naive and brave -- she understands what she wants and is determined to get it, but Hama Ali's constant delays make her question whether he really wants to be with her after a year and a half apart. When she finally gets him on the phone, they agree it'll be easier to meet in Iran, so north she goes, into an unknown country where she feels more isolated than ever.
It's painful at times, watching Damgaci go through her story as if it's happening all over again, especially as weariness, fear and despair take control. Her letters are achingly honest, full of deep yearning and insecurity, and this added authenticity unquestionably makes for a more poignant film. Counter to expectations, she's a baby-faced, zaftig woman, Hama Ali an older, jovial fellow: This touch of the everyman strengthens the sense of commonality.
Helming is best when approaching the subject from a docu viewpoint; Karabey ("Silent Death") has an appropriately curious eye for the details around his characters in the form of emotionally focused reportage. An extended scene where Damgaci and her cab driver stumble on a rural wedding inserts both a sense of joy and a warmly ethnographic aspect, but Karabey's style as a fiction helmer isn't fully formed.
Music uses melodies from the various nations, including the unmistakable, riveting voice of Kurdish singer Aynur Dogan, in ways that often increase the sense of melancholic longing. As a title, "My Marlon and Brando" sounds less jokey when heard among a list of endearments ("You are my everything," etc.), and a literal translation of the Turkish "Gitmek," approximately "take oneself away to a place," doesn't work well in English.
Camera (HDV-to-35mm), A. Emre Tanyildiz; editor, Mary Stephen; music, Kemal S. Gurel, Huseyin Yildiz, Erdal Guney; production designer, Alper Yanar; costume designer, Yasemin Taskin; sound (Dolby), Mohammed Mokhtari, Denis Kologlu, Arwin Bakker; line producer, Ozcan Alper; assistant director, Guliz Saglam; casting, Banu Ozturk. Reviewed at Rotterdam Film Festival (Time & Tide), Jan. 25, 2008. Running time: 93 MIN.
Review | Fighter (2008)
Helmer Natasha Arthy's martial arts drama about a student torn between her Turkish family and her kung fu dreams.
Fighter (Denmark)
A Sandrew Metronome release of a Nimbus Film production, in co-production with Angel Film, Filmgear, Nordisk Film Shortcut, Blixt Kamera. (International sales: Delphis Films, Montreal.) Produced by Johnny Andersen. Executive producers, Brigitte Hald, Bo Ehrhardt. Directed by Natasha Arthy. Screenplay, Arthy, Nikolaj Arcel, Rasmus Heisterberg.
With Semra Turan, Cyron Melville, Xian Gao, Nima Nabipour, Molly Blixt Egelind, Behruz Banissi, Sadi Tekelioglu, Ozlem Saglanmak.
(Danish, Turkish, English dialogue)
By ALISSA SIMON
The headstrong daughter of conservative Turkish immigrants in Copenhagen tries to meet her uneducated parents' high expectations while remaining true to her private passion -- kung fu -- in "Fighter." Quality teen drama boasts an appealingly feisty heroine and high-energy martial arts action choreographed by Xian Gao ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"). Fresh spin on cross-cultural romance and coming-of-age plotlines will compel fests to enter the ring. The first Danish action pic to employ international stunt and wire specialists, "Fighter" garnered enthusiastic reviews and healthy box office on Dec. 12 local release. Niche arthouse play, particularly in Europe and Asia, is conceivable.
High school student Aicha (engaging nonpro Semra Turan) is constantly on the run, literally and figuratively. Between familial duties and devotion to her sport, she has little time for schoolwork, and certainly none for a boyfriend. Although her traditional father forbids it, Aicha joins an elite kung fu club run by a strict Chinese sifu (Gao) who secretly admires her spunk. Males and females fight together, making Aicha slightly uncomfortable.
After advanced student Emil (agile heartthrob Cyron Melville) is ordered to practice with Aicha, the two gradually develop deeper feelings. An exhilarating extended montage of them training together, running and across roof tops, features breathtaking wire- and stuntwork.
Meanwhile, Aicha's older brother Ali (Nima Nabipour), a physician, hopes to marry Jasmin (Ozlem Saglanmak), a woman from a higher-status family; they're anxious that Aicha's immodest behavior not jeopardize the wedding. When Omar (Behruz Banissi), a friend of Jasmin's family, joins Aicha's class, the stage is set for disaster until Aicha learns to claim responsibility for her own choices.
Fine fight choreography furthers the emotional and dramatic development of the plot. The intensity of Aicha and Emil's feelings is convincingly portrayed through the physicality of their stylized matches, something more sensual than another awkward teen sex scene.
The graceful young actors, many nonpro with martial-arts experience, lend the story extra credibility. Gao has a commanding presence, despite very little dialogue.
Standout production design and cinematography convey apt visual corollaries for the heroine's lack of private time and space, surrounding her with constantly ticking watches, clocks and alarms. Aicha's recurring nightmare of fighting a masked ninja gets a sleek fantasy look that contrasts with the rest of the pic's grainy urban atmosphere.
Camera (color, 16mm-to-35mm, widescreen), Sebastian Wintero; editor, Kaspar Leick; music, Saqib, Frithjof Toksvig; production designer, Peter de Neergaard; costume designer, Susie Bjornvad; sound (Dolby SR); sound designer, Hans Moller; martial arts choreographer, Xian Gao; casting, Anja Phillip, Lena Paaske. Reviewed at Gothenburg Film Festival (Nordic competition), Jan. 31, 2008. (Also in Berlin Film Festival -- Generation 14plus). Running time: 97 MIN.
A Sandrew Metronome release of a Nimbus Film production, in co-production with Angel Film, Filmgear, Nordisk Film Shortcut, Blixt Kamera. (International sales: Delphis Films, Montreal.) Produced by Johnny Andersen. Executive producers, Brigitte Hald, Bo Ehrhardt. Directed by Natasha Arthy. Screenplay, Arthy, Nikolaj Arcel, Rasmus Heisterberg.
With Semra Turan, Cyron Melville, Xian Gao, Nima Nabipour, Molly Blixt Egelind, Behruz Banissi, Sadi Tekelioglu, Ozlem Saglanmak.
(Danish, Turkish, English dialogue)
By ALISSA SIMON
The headstrong daughter of conservative Turkish immigrants in Copenhagen tries to meet her uneducated parents' high expectations while remaining true to her private passion -- kung fu -- in "Fighter." Quality teen drama boasts an appealingly feisty heroine and high-energy martial arts action choreographed by Xian Gao ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"). Fresh spin on cross-cultural romance and coming-of-age plotlines will compel fests to enter the ring. The first Danish action pic to employ international stunt and wire specialists, "Fighter" garnered enthusiastic reviews and healthy box office on Dec. 12 local release. Niche arthouse play, particularly in Europe and Asia, is conceivable.
High school student Aicha (engaging nonpro Semra Turan) is constantly on the run, literally and figuratively. Between familial duties and devotion to her sport, she has little time for schoolwork, and certainly none for a boyfriend. Although her traditional father forbids it, Aicha joins an elite kung fu club run by a strict Chinese sifu (Gao) who secretly admires her spunk. Males and females fight together, making Aicha slightly uncomfortable.
After advanced student Emil (agile heartthrob Cyron Melville) is ordered to practice with Aicha, the two gradually develop deeper feelings. An exhilarating extended montage of them training together, running and across roof tops, features breathtaking wire- and stuntwork.
Meanwhile, Aicha's older brother Ali (Nima Nabipour), a physician, hopes to marry Jasmin (Ozlem Saglanmak), a woman from a higher-status family; they're anxious that Aicha's immodest behavior not jeopardize the wedding. When Omar (Behruz Banissi), a friend of Jasmin's family, joins Aicha's class, the stage is set for disaster until Aicha learns to claim responsibility for her own choices.
Fine fight choreography furthers the emotional and dramatic development of the plot. The intensity of Aicha and Emil's feelings is convincingly portrayed through the physicality of their stylized matches, something more sensual than another awkward teen sex scene.
The graceful young actors, many nonpro with martial-arts experience, lend the story extra credibility. Gao has a commanding presence, despite very little dialogue.
Standout production design and cinematography convey apt visual corollaries for the heroine's lack of private time and space, surrounding her with constantly ticking watches, clocks and alarms. Aicha's recurring nightmare of fighting a masked ninja gets a sleek fantasy look that contrasts with the rest of the pic's grainy urban atmosphere.
Camera (color, 16mm-to-35mm, widescreen), Sebastian Wintero; editor, Kaspar Leick; music, Saqib, Frithjof Toksvig; production designer, Peter de Neergaard; costume designer, Susie Bjornvad; sound (Dolby SR); sound designer, Hans Moller; martial arts choreographer, Xian Gao; casting, Anja Phillip, Lena Paaske. Reviewed at Gothenburg Film Festival (Nordic competition), Jan. 31, 2008. (Also in Berlin Film Festival -- Generation 14plus). Running time: 97 MIN.
Review | The Other Side of Istanbul (2008)
The Other Side of Istanbul
(Documentary -- Germany)
By JAY WEISSBERG
A Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie Berlin, Dondu Kilic Filmproduktion production. (International sales: Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie Berlin, Berlin.) Produced by Anna de Paoli, Erdem Murat Celikler. Executive producers, Dondu Kilic, Hartmut Bitomsky. Directed by Dondu Kilic. Written by Andreas Hug, Kilic.
With: Mehmet Tarhan, Mustafa Cagrici.
Like much in Turkey, and Istanbul in particular, the gay scene sits uncomfortably between East and West, making it a ripe topic that receives only superficial treatment in Dondu Kilic's well-meaning but formless "The Other Side of Istanbul." Meant to explore the difficulties faced by gay men in Turkish society, docu loads up on pointless scenes offering no insight, while a larger perspective beyond the few subjects interviewed remains either elusive or unaddressed. Pic will work best for auds coming to the material for the first time, though even they'll wonder at the narrow focus.
Part of the frustration derives from the wasted opportunity: Articulate activist Mehmet Tarhan is immersed in the discourse and, along with his supportive Kurdish family, cries out for more screen time. Young Mustafa speaks of machismo and class hierarchy in the gay scene, but more on these key topics, along with the subject of honor killings, would expand docu's limited horizons. Generic shots of the city, plus an overlong wedding sequence, add nothing, while Kilic fails to provide any background on a transsexual demonstration in Bursa. Handheld lensing is standard; arrangement of scenes feels random.
Camera (color, HD), Vojtech Pokorny; editor, Kilic, Mariejosephin Schneider; music, Niclas Ramdohr. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Panorama Documentaries), Feb. 9, 2008. Original title: Das andere Istanbul. Turkish, English, Dutch dialogue. Running time: 82 MIN.
(Documentary -- Germany)
By JAY WEISSBERG
A Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie Berlin, Dondu Kilic Filmproduktion production. (International sales: Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie Berlin, Berlin.) Produced by Anna de Paoli, Erdem Murat Celikler. Executive producers, Dondu Kilic, Hartmut Bitomsky. Directed by Dondu Kilic. Written by Andreas Hug, Kilic.
With: Mehmet Tarhan, Mustafa Cagrici.
Like much in Turkey, and Istanbul in particular, the gay scene sits uncomfortably between East and West, making it a ripe topic that receives only superficial treatment in Dondu Kilic's well-meaning but formless "The Other Side of Istanbul." Meant to explore the difficulties faced by gay men in Turkish society, docu loads up on pointless scenes offering no insight, while a larger perspective beyond the few subjects interviewed remains either elusive or unaddressed. Pic will work best for auds coming to the material for the first time, though even they'll wonder at the narrow focus.
Part of the frustration derives from the wasted opportunity: Articulate activist Mehmet Tarhan is immersed in the discourse and, along with his supportive Kurdish family, cries out for more screen time. Young Mustafa speaks of machismo and class hierarchy in the gay scene, but more on these key topics, along with the subject of honor killings, would expand docu's limited horizons. Generic shots of the city, plus an overlong wedding sequence, add nothing, while Kilic fails to provide any background on a transsexual demonstration in Bursa. Handheld lensing is standard; arrangement of scenes feels random.
Camera (color, HD), Vojtech Pokorny; editor, Kilic, Mariejosephin Schneider; music, Niclas Ramdohr. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Panorama Documentaries), Feb. 9, 2008. Original title: Das andere Istanbul. Turkish, English, Dutch dialogue. Running time: 82 MIN.
Review | The Edge of Heaven
The Edge of Heaven
Bottom Line: Intricate and moving drama about life's struggles and near misses.
By Ray Bennett
May 24, 2007
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN
The Match Factory presents a Corazon International Production in co-production with Anka Film in association with NDR and Dorje Film
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Fatih Akin
Producers: Andreas Thiel, Klaus Maeck, Fatih Akin
Director of photography: Rainer Klausmann
Production designers: Tamo Kunz, Sirma Bradley
Music: Shantel
Costume designer: Katrin Aschendorf
Editor: Andrew Bird
Co-producers: Erhan Ozogul, Funda Odemis, Ali Akdeniz
Cast:
Nejat Aksu: Baki Davrak
Yeter Ozturk: Nursel Kose
Susanne Staub: Hanna Schygulla
Ali Aksu: Tungel Kurtiz
Ayten Ozturk: Nurgul Yesilgay
Lotte Staub: Patriycia Ziolkowska
Running time -- 122 minutes
No MPAA rating
CANNES -- Director Fatih Akin continues his insightful exploration of the things that divide and bridge different cultures and generations in his absorbing In Competition film "The Edge of Heaven." Like his 2004 Berlin Golden Bear winner "Head-On," the film deals with Turkish folk living in Germany but this time he brings his story back to Istanbul.
Love was his topic in the earlier film, and now Akin turns his attention to death. It may not be a wise thing to label the major chapters announcing the deaths of key characters, but he tells their stories with flair and compassion. Audiences that responded to "Head-On" will be pleased with "Heaven," and festival and art house prospects look good.
The director, who also wrote the script, achieves a keen-eyed view of the Turkish expatriates in this film while sustaining his remarkable ability to make them universal. His tale is about two families whose fate becomes entwined in ways they don't discover within the time frame of the film.
It starts in Germany with Turkish immigrant Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz), a crusty retired widower whose son Nejat (Baki Davrak) is a successful academic. Uncouth but charismatic, Ali still seeks pleasures of the flesh, which is how he meets Yeter (Nursel Kose), a severely beautiful Turkish woman who works in a brothel. Taken with her charms and pleased to be speaking his native tongue, Ali proposes that he become her sole customer and asks her to move in with him.
Having been threatened by Muslim men who tell her she must give up her way of life, Yeter accepts Ali's offer. Nejat is tolerantly amused by this turn of events but contentment is brief as there is darkness in his father's character that leads to a fatal confrontation.
Meanwhile, Yeter's daughter has gone missing in Istanbul and Nejat tries to find her. On a visit to the city, he falls in love with a German bookshop that is up for sale and, being a professor of the language, he buys it. So now he's a very German Turk back in Turkey.
The film then moves to introduce Yeter's daughter Ayten (Nurgel Yesilgay) who is involved with an underground group in Turkey. When she winds up with a gun in her possession following a street protest, she hides the gun and flees to Germany seeking asylum. There, she meets Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) and they become lovers to the disapproval of Lotte's mother, Susanne (Hanna Schygulla).
When Ayten's appeal is rejected, she is returned to Turkey and imprisoned for offences against the state. Lotte becomes a German ex-patriot in Turkey, and the very human dilemma is viewed from another angle. Attracted by the German books, Lotte goes to the bookstore and meets Najet, who offers her a room. As she has been warned never to mention Aynet's name, the two never learn that they are seeking the same person. When Lotte visits her lover in jail, Aynet asks her to find the hidden gun and fate takes another turn.
Akin weaves their stories with clarity even as it becomes apparent that he has time-shifted certain scenes, and he makes observant sense about the fragility of human connections. Rainer Klausmann's cinematography captures the contrasting cities of Hamburg and Istanbul vividly. The acting is fine throughout, with Kose and Schygulla especially effective as mothers who see themselves all too clearly in their daughters. It is only late in the film that the German professor sees his father in him and the final scenes speak profoundly of acceptance and forgiveness.
Bottom Line: Intricate and moving drama about life's struggles and near misses.
By Ray Bennett
May 24, 2007
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN
The Match Factory presents a Corazon International Production in co-production with Anka Film in association with NDR and Dorje Film
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Fatih Akin
Producers: Andreas Thiel, Klaus Maeck, Fatih Akin
Director of photography: Rainer Klausmann
Production designers: Tamo Kunz, Sirma Bradley
Music: Shantel
Costume designer: Katrin Aschendorf
Editor: Andrew Bird
Co-producers: Erhan Ozogul, Funda Odemis, Ali Akdeniz
Cast:
Nejat Aksu: Baki Davrak
Yeter Ozturk: Nursel Kose
Susanne Staub: Hanna Schygulla
Ali Aksu: Tungel Kurtiz
Ayten Ozturk: Nurgul Yesilgay
Lotte Staub: Patriycia Ziolkowska
Running time -- 122 minutes
No MPAA rating
CANNES -- Director Fatih Akin continues his insightful exploration of the things that divide and bridge different cultures and generations in his absorbing In Competition film "The Edge of Heaven." Like his 2004 Berlin Golden Bear winner "Head-On," the film deals with Turkish folk living in Germany but this time he brings his story back to Istanbul.
Love was his topic in the earlier film, and now Akin turns his attention to death. It may not be a wise thing to label the major chapters announcing the deaths of key characters, but he tells their stories with flair and compassion. Audiences that responded to "Head-On" will be pleased with "Heaven," and festival and art house prospects look good.
The director, who also wrote the script, achieves a keen-eyed view of the Turkish expatriates in this film while sustaining his remarkable ability to make them universal. His tale is about two families whose fate becomes entwined in ways they don't discover within the time frame of the film.
It starts in Germany with Turkish immigrant Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz), a crusty retired widower whose son Nejat (Baki Davrak) is a successful academic. Uncouth but charismatic, Ali still seeks pleasures of the flesh, which is how he meets Yeter (Nursel Kose), a severely beautiful Turkish woman who works in a brothel. Taken with her charms and pleased to be speaking his native tongue, Ali proposes that he become her sole customer and asks her to move in with him.
Having been threatened by Muslim men who tell her she must give up her way of life, Yeter accepts Ali's offer. Nejat is tolerantly amused by this turn of events but contentment is brief as there is darkness in his father's character that leads to a fatal confrontation.
Meanwhile, Yeter's daughter has gone missing in Istanbul and Nejat tries to find her. On a visit to the city, he falls in love with a German bookshop that is up for sale and, being a professor of the language, he buys it. So now he's a very German Turk back in Turkey.
The film then moves to introduce Yeter's daughter Ayten (Nurgel Yesilgay) who is involved with an underground group in Turkey. When she winds up with a gun in her possession following a street protest, she hides the gun and flees to Germany seeking asylum. There, she meets Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) and they become lovers to the disapproval of Lotte's mother, Susanne (Hanna Schygulla).
When Ayten's appeal is rejected, she is returned to Turkey and imprisoned for offences against the state. Lotte becomes a German ex-patriot in Turkey, and the very human dilemma is viewed from another angle. Attracted by the German books, Lotte goes to the bookstore and meets Najet, who offers her a room. As she has been warned never to mention Aynet's name, the two never learn that they are seeking the same person. When Lotte visits her lover in jail, Aynet asks her to find the hidden gun and fate takes another turn.
Akin weaves their stories with clarity even as it becomes apparent that he has time-shifted certain scenes, and he makes observant sense about the fragility of human connections. Rainer Klausmann's cinematography captures the contrasting cities of Hamburg and Istanbul vividly. The acting is fine throughout, with Kose and Schygulla especially effective as mothers who see themselves all too clearly in their daughters. It is only late in the film that the German professor sees his father in him and the final scenes speak profoundly of acceptance and forgiveness.
Fatih Akin's 'Heaven' tops Germany's Lolas
Fatih Akin's ensemble drama "The Edge of Heaven" took the top Lolas at the 58th German Film Awards [1] Friday, including best pic, director and screenplay, beating favorite "Cherry Blossoms," which won three prizes including the runner-up Silver Lola for pic. "The Edge of Heaven," a Turkish-German production about two deaths that bring strangers together, also picked up a Lola for editing.
Akin's "Auf der anderen Seite" (The Edge of Heaven) is a story of loss, mourning and forgiveness set in both Germany and Turkey [2]. "Danke, danke, danke," said a grateful Akin, a Hamburg-based director of Turkish descent whose hard-hitting films about the struggles and confusion of Turkish immigrants in Germany have won also honors at the Berlin and Cannes film festivals. "It's extraordinarily difficult to measure art in any way," said Akin, 34, whose 2003 film "Gegen die Wand" (Head-On) also drew international accolades. "So I'm delighted. We don't make films for prizes but rather for life," It is the second best film Lola for Akin, whose international breakthrough "Head-On" swept the awards in 2004. This year's victory is particularly sweet, however. Akin has repeatedly butted heads with the German Film Academy, criticizing the way the academy selects its Lola nominees. Hoisting his golden statue Friday night, he made reference to the public spat, addressing star Til Schweiger, who recently resigned from the German academy after his boxoffice smash "Rabbit Without Ears" was snubbed in the Lola nominations."Just watch, Til, we're going to join (the academy) again!" Akin said.
Some 1,500 guests attended the glitzy event, held at Berlin's Palais am Funkturm. Presented by Germany's federal culture ministry, the Lolas are handed out in 15 categories and carry $4.4 million in prizes.
The winners are chosen by the German Film Academy's more than 1,000 members.
Notes
[1] For her latest drama "Cherry Blossoms" about a grieving widower who journeys to Japan, Doris Dorrie was nominated for six Lolas, the German equivalent of the Oscar.Close behind were Fatih Akin's cross-cultural drama "The Edge of Heaven" with five Lola nominations and Christian Petzold's cerebral mystery thriller "Yella" with four.
[2] Turkish migrants in Germany were the key theme of TV productions honored by the Adolf Grimme Institut in 2007. Winner of five Grimme awards in the fiction category was “Wut” (Anger) by German-Turkish helmer Zuli Aladag, about a middle-class family being bullied by a Turkish youth, on ARD. Tackling similar themes from the lighter side, further awards were snatched by series “Tuerkisch fuer Anfanger” (Turkish for Beginners), also on ARD, and telepic “Meine verrueckte tuerkische Hochzeit” (My Crazy Turkish Wedding) on ProSieben.
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