as the desert runs into the sea

When you’re left dehydrated for four days in a desert, you begin to lose sense of direction, walk in circles and eventually starve yourself to your inevitable end. US border officials know this too well and are often left collecting corpses beyond recognition of those who desperately try to make it across the ruthless Sonoran Desert. That, or they encounter them during their journeys and take them away, but not all those journey-makers prefer this latter outcome. Exploited by traffickers on the Mexican side of the border, if they can manage to complete their perilous walks, they hope to find a safe haven, and sometimes find themselves knocking on strangers’ doors, only to hope that they’d extend a helping hand rather than turning them to the authorities.

As fatal as they are, deserts can be incredibly inviting geographies; with no end in sight, an infinite depth of field and an offer of wilderness that us humans have long let go of our lives, which immediately draws one’s gaze. Borders on the other hand, especially those with walls, fences or any other invisible apparatus of control are usually repulsive. In the case of Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki’s “El Mar La Mar”, these attributes are reversed; or rather merged: the Mexican-US border at once draws the pair in to tread a careful and sensitive excursion around it. They were taken by both the landscape and the hard border on a trip from New Orleans to San Francisco and started to storyline what is truly an intense documentary of survival and expulsion.

Shot on a Super 16, the film is a visual feast of landscape imagery, combined with some incredible and innovative sound design. As the southern Arizonian images of nature, wildlife and cowboys blend into whitened- and blackened-out images, uninterrupted testimonial interviews with border officials and journey-makers alike are mixed with field recordings, sometimes in their raw format but most times manipulated with additions of reverb or stretching out of frequencies. Hardly any of this comes as misplaced as they create an environment that is both very impressionistic but also abstracted to such extent that Mexicans' heart-wrenching stories create the incredible tension that the film rests on.

The film is split into three sections titled: “Rio”, “Costas” and “Tormenta”. I had my own interpretations but also went to ask the directors why they did not translate those titles, to which they replied they wanted the audience to keep engaging with the film by researching them if necessary and that they had only finished editing 5 days prior to the screening! But as a contextual point, the film's opening title "Rio" begins with a flickery image recorded from a moving vehicle, which, as the camera zooms out, slowly morphs into a recognisable image of a metal fence. It is one of the most dynamic scenes of the entire film, as the rest is very much made of a static (and stunning) visual language. But, despite that slow pace, the film is anything but stasis. The directors did an incredible job of marrying their audio-visual interpretations with people's testimonials and allowed for these to speak for themselves, and safely stayed away from taking a stance.

The shortest description I could make for the film would be “excruciatingly beautiful”. As I arrived in Berlin on Sunday late afternoon, I was still filled with certain inspirations I had acquired over the weekend. Ending up at strangers’ house late on Friday night, finding myself playing percussion in an impromptu house jam session, and meeting the same incredible people who had put out an exhibition at St Pancras Parish Church’s Crypt Gallery the next evening had already filled me with much anticipation, as if the prospects of going to Berlin, one of the most special places in my life, was not enough.

Titled “CAPUT”, that exhibition that displayed works from artists from France, Greece, Italy, Senegal, Turkey, the UK and the US not only responded to its own setting so intelligently, but also portrayed the interplay between life and death, the dynamic and the static. Everything I saw at El Mar La Mar seemed to have this incredible point of reference to works I saw and experienced at the exhibition. Can’s video installation complimented by sound recordings from the materials he used was as genuine as Bonnetta and Sniadecki’s mix of the harsh audio-landscapes, metallic surfaces and the soft human touch of border-gazers. Beyza’s poetry and grainy video footage were almost a response to the filmmakers’ own use of artistic language, through blur and abstraction. Having experienced a monochromatic part of her video, I could not help myself but remember how El Mar La Mar’s brutal black or white backdropped scenes of testimonials merged into the landscape photography. And Merve’s three paintings, with a varying tones of red, green and beige from vivid to pastel had defined my interpretation of the exhibition: although she refers to themes of harvest and blossom, their spatial features and subtle lines gave me an immediate feeling of rugged but tested landscapes and borders. Her painterly abstraction did not give me a feeling of exclusion; on the contrary a sense of invitation and intrigue.

So, it was almost hardly a coincidence when the Berlinale presenter on stage addressed her first question to the filmmakers about the painful beauty of the film and how its poetry-like structure almost made Sonoran Desert an appealing place. My second question was about the two men who walked for 8 days and ended up at knocking at the ranch the filmmakers were staying at. They connected them with humanitarian focussed organisations, while receiving their testimony of the journey. The men were very tired, sleep and water deprived over the final few days of their walk and had almost acquired a totally indifferent feeling to the emotions they were suffering from, except, when they talked about a fellow female traveler who died as they had to leave her behind, one of them started sobbing. I wanted to know how the directors approached these men about a story so traumatic and had just taken place: apparently, the men wanted to put their story out and the filmmakers were, by this point, experienced enough to create the optimal distance that allowed them to investigate deeply with true interest but remain emotionally stable as not to take a subjective stance. That's why this film was so powerful. So human, despite very few humans seen in footage.

Writing this text took me longer than I anticipated. In between the 11 films I saw, friends I met, very different environments I have been in (both physically and spiritually), my initial feelings towards El Mar La Mar stayed the same. If anything, they have been supplemented by various inspirations through the week, culminating with an unexpected approach on the dancefloor at the end of a long clubbing night (and morning) with the statement “can I dance next to you; you look so happy and make others happy” — something you don’t expect to hear much in Berlin, the ultimate individualist capital of hedonism.

But, that was also reminder of how much we seem to strive for these interactions and the need to really understand and communicate what we individually and collectively go through, whether this be with complete strangers or our neighbours. In fact, often is the case that the more we connect, the less rigid those definitional boundaries become. Like the first scene in El Mar La Mar where the fluid image turns into a hard fence, or the weekend in London that prepared me for my journey to Berlin… with gratitude to everyone who keeps inspiring, old and new alike.

Tough Bond

On 15 Februrary 2013, I had one of the most fulfilling documentary experiences in my life. Having gotten out of the bed with ample time on my clock, I somehow managed to leave the small room I was renting in Berlin-Mitte late enough, so that I had to make a 3-minute run to Nordbahnhof, and fly through the "shiny surfaces and special effects, laced with nostalgia and product placement" of Potsdamer Platz to make it on time to the 11:30 screening of Tough Bond at the CinemaxX. My second film, so far, of this year's Berlinale edition, I was optimistic, having picked 5 great films out of the 6 I saw previous year. My expectations were far more than fulfilled.

Tough Bond was featured as part of the Generation 14plus section of the festival, a section that is aimed to "integrate children and youth into the festival’s film-aesthetic discourse". The documentary follows a number of kids in different towns in Kenya to merge the audience into the environment in which these kids live. Their lives, to a great extent, speak of otherwise invisible characters who struggle to become survivors (or "servivors" as one wall graffito read). All of the kids hail from an area surrounding Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake, whose life and provision of livelihood to its environment has come under threat with the construction of a major dam on the Omo river in the northerly-neighbouring country of Ethiopia. With very little to live on, indigenous peoples of the area have migrated to towns across Kenya. There is one common character that bonds these kids together, a tough one that is, that they all sniff glue on regular bases.

Our first encounter is Sinbad, a generally upbeat kid in Isiolo, Kenya. Sinbad is depicted as one of the stronger kids in the town, collecting plastics and metal from the streets, and the garbage and sell/return to metal scrap dealers for money, with which he either buys medicine for his ill grandmother, or more glue for himself. It is Sinbad's grandmother who has raised him, and to whom Sinbad looks upon as his true mother. And it is for whom Sinbad returns to his shack home every now and then, to take care of her, though he prefers to sleep rough on the streets, with the full confidence that his mates will protect him. Quite predictably, the mother figure is an underlying symbol throughout the film. The documentary starts with the filming of a very difficult labour process, and subtle references to the motherhood of nature, manipulated by mankind's political desires float throughout the film.

If Sinbad is an abandoned child of the nature, Akai, a young girl in the second village we travel to, Meru, a base for travellers to the Meru National Park, is the abandoned child of the society at large. She is the classical example of an exploited young girl who finds a way to get away from her abusive "husband", only to return to him a year later, and now infected with HIV that he contracted from others. As Akai introduces us to the medical care system in this impoverished town, our directos take us to Nairobi to reveal where the name of the film comes from: Tough Bond is a chemical product that is used to bond parts and accessories to metals, commonly used in minibuses and other vehicles to strengthen the seats. While the Kenyan Government is alleged to ask the producers of the glue company to combat the issue, the business-owner claims that 15% of the produce go to children for sniffing. As we follow the intricate route of the glue from the factory to the hands of the furniture manufacturers, and the elderly of the towns and villages who dilute them and sell them to children, we get a sense of how the supply chain works on this most precious goods on the street market.

As kids entertain themselves in the two small towns, watching trashy east-Asian marshal arts films on small television sets, a group of young and tough kinds in the Kiamaiko Slum in Nairobi call themselves the legion, the brotherhood. Complaining about being stigmatised by the city-dwellers, they claim to stand out for one another in a hostile environment. After all, these are places where individuals are not allowed to exist -- if you are outcast from the legion, you are in trouble; or, as the community worker lady in Isiolo had said "when a child is born, he/she belongs to the community; if the child splits from the community, the child cannot exist". Introduced, once again, at the very end of the film, she bluntly points her finger to the overall discourse that has come to plague the society:

"... these people, we, ... are not accustomed to urban living. We have to wake up... and we have to work very hard".

As I prepared to gather my thoughts on what the conditions of a rapidly urbanising world meant to otherwise invisible people to us, the directors of the film came up onto the stage for a Q&A. While I mention this, I have to add that I am always pleasantly surprised at the ratio of unannounced Q&As at the end of films at Berlinale (over the last two years, about two thirds of all films I have seen had them).

When the first-time documentary feature directors came up on stage, the Berlinale producer asked them the same question that came to everyone's mind: "two white Americans, shooting a documentary in sub-Saharan Africa -- why is this any different?"

The directors then went on to explain their motif: the idea of giving the people to voice their own narrative.
The means were simple: none of the documentary was scripted. The directors lived with the communities in the shacks and on the streets for over a year, and traveled back again after another year. They had an early interview with the Vice President in Nairobi, who claims in the film "that street children in Nairobi is no longer", and they used a picture they took with him to gain access where necessary in the villages across the country.
They had a code: no footprint -- meaning no unjustifiable help to the children (in terms of food). Though they sometimes broke the code, they had also initially agreed to put Sinbad into a boarding school, and Akai into a skills programme. They have recently found out that both children had been taken back by their families or communities.

And this is the soft underbelly of any such production, many examples of which we have come across over the years. It is inevitable to have left a footprint, to have had impact on the lives of the communities, and offer very little after leaving. Yet, the directors wanted to leave a legacy behind.

The production company, Village Beat, has set up a radio that serves to "1: Immediate information during crisis. 2: An equal access platform for peaceful & substantial issue discussion. 3: A means to celebrate and protect culture through music and storytelling." Crowdsourcing, entertainment, and an internal communications device, all at once. The idea is, possibly naive, but appreciable: "to see if it will help people to try and stop the children in their communities from using glue".

Majority of that responsibility lies with the authorities who can provide the mental, social, and physical infrastructure to communities in need. The resources may be scarce but they are disproportionately distributed. That said, external factors loom large. What this film was about though, as the directors claim:

"an answer to what happens when the delicate balance between humans and nature is disturbed". I learned from it, and I was inspired to see a full-house in a chilly, beautiful Berlin morning, and three rows of school children who participated in the Q&A of a documentary selected for a section of a festival dedicated to them.

Breathe in deep, let it out... and cough.

Atmen (Breathe) is a beautifully shot, brilliantly narrated and immaculately acted out film. It follows the story of the 19-year old Ramon Kogler, who has been put into juvenile detention for a crime he committed when he was 14. Brought up in an orphanage, experienced near-death from suffocation under a pillow and a good breather at the bottom of a swimming pool, Ramon is struggling to get hold of a job that is key to win his way out of the juvenile detention. While Ramon gets accustomed to see, touch, wash and finally breathe dead bodies in his new work at a municipal undertaker's office, we stroll through the harsh winter days of Vienna and the cold deadliness of an abandoned youth that is coming to grips with social realities, and re-integrating into a world outside the secluded compounds of white-washed, securely-gated, IKEA-like youth prison. As the fallen leaves on the highways' merger into the grey skyline of Niederösterreich are swept aside, Ramon walks a lonely path that leads him back to his mother and through whom he settles his score to move on with - or rather, attain a necessary raison d'etre for his sheer existence in - this cruel life. Breathing in the last remnants of life from the corpse of the people he carries and of the victim of his childhood (and of his own childhood), Ramon introduces us into a world of the living dead (not in a Shaun of the Dead style) who "wish little because that is what they can only achieve". As we gaze through the Viennese skyline in the closing scene, I sense that Ramon will have a lot more out of the remainder of his life than the total of everyone else we've seen in the movie.

Atmen is Austrian actor Karl Markovics's first attempt behind the camera and he delivers well. The film went on to win the ‘Europa Cinemas Label’ as best European film in the Directors’ Fortnight section of Cannes in 2011. The bleak atmosphere is set perfectly by the overarching grey tones of a wintry Austrian setting. Markovics often uses static shots with double or multiple vantage points, with actors or objects delicately moving within the third of the frame, leaving the audience with great instances of slow-motion photography. The score is delicate and the overall soundtrack fits the picture perfectly. Thomas Schubert, who, according to IMDB, has only appeared on an episode of a TV-series other than this film does a great job in portraying the dispossessed youth, spending his time on the streets of Vienna, the swimming pool and his cell in the youth prison whose walls are carved with names of Turkish people. Naturally, for me, the scenes from IKEA in Shopping City Süd where I was last Christmas buying furniture for a Viennese flat I was once invited to move to, of Bhf. Praterstern where I shortly after left a city to which I have affiliated myself so much to over the last 3 years, and to which I have no idea when I would return to and the rail tracks crossing Gürtel and Mödling bei Wien had very significant and sensitive meanings that made the film a bit more personal, too.

Atmen is the 2nd Austrian film I saw this year. In February, on a spontaneous loner's trip to Berlin for the closing weekend of Berlinale, I got to see the equally brilliant Spanien by Anja Salomonowitz, another young, talented filmmaker in her early career. Never mind the low ratings on IMDb: it turns out only a few people have seen it and they may not yet be fond of the raw realism depicted in contemporary Austrian cinema. Supported by an excellent soundtrack by the genius composer Max Richter, Spanien follows the stories of 4 different people whose lives overlap through human trafficking, relief-painting, gambling and "immigrant-shopping". An undercover smuggling operation organisation in the disguise of a lending institution, a late night's tungsten-lit Edward Hopperesque bars with a few, desperate slot machines, a scarred woman's homely drawing table and her boiling kettle, and a deserted man's role-playing prostitute reflect the paths these individuals walk that is no less lonelier than of Roman's and no warmer than the cold streets near Potzdamer Platz on a late Berlinale Sunday evening. Yet, the recurring fate of loners towards togetherness through co-operation leaves a bittersweet warmth like the after taste of a sip of a cheap Inländer Rum.

Atmen and Spanien have been the only two Austrian films I have seen without the person who has gotten me accustomed to all things Austrian, including cinema. The last one we saw together, at the last year's London Film Festival in September was Michael, another debut by Markus Schleinzer, who portrays a victim of a society that has been shaken by such similar stories, the most famous of which has been the Josef Fritzl case. Another bang in-yer-face, and a nominee for Palme d'Or in 2011 where Atmen won the aforementioned award, Michael is a reality check, looming large on a 400-inch screen, to humanity. Wolfgang's innocence chills the viewer more than the landscapes of Tyrolean mountain resorts, covered deep into snow that Michael visits with his friends, while the former is locked up in his cellar, biding his time to plan his exit strategy.

By this point, I may have gotten accustomed to a type of Austrian cinema rather well, not to get depressed or shocked by some of its attributes. Having loved certain aspects of independent cinema through the likes of The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (of which, one chapter of the three that make  up the film is called "Breathing"), I should rather say I got a late introduction to it. However my personal connection with the country may be, I look forward to seeing more of the likes of Atmen... of course, a fine London's evening with good company, wine and food will certainly help the overall equation.

love me gender, love me sweet: a review of short-documentary screenings on 2012 International Women's Day

A friend of mine who worked for CNN Turk in Washington, D.C. had told me that on one International Women's Day, she was sent to the Turkish Embassy in D.C. to report on the solidarity the Turkish women in the United States shared with one another on this special day. It turns out that this was a culinary solidarity, in which the women exchanged recipes whilst discussing the ways in which they could serve their husbands better. As tragicomic as it may be, it also made me realise how unaware I was of what sort of activities were taking place around me and around the world on this day. Yes, I had read in news, over the years, especially in Turkey, about the atrocities committed against women, even on this day, but that was unfortunately part of daily life in my home country; and in many other parts of the world. We'd also read about how people mistake this day with a 2nd chance to make up for the gifts or flowers they forgot to buy on the Valentine's Day. I would get a decent coverage how men approached the day but knew little about what kind of activities women around the world organised, other than marches, meetings, demonstrations.

So, this year I had the chance to see 4 short documentaries as part of a screening co-organised by Open City London Documentary Festival and Hub Westminster. The selection was titled: Gender, Sexuality and Documentary - International Women's Day Screenings, and it was held at Hub Westminster. A brief word about Hub Westminster and what kind of a place it is (the screenings were held there). As soon as we stepped into New Zealand House, we were surprised by the high-degree of security and the people's confusion as to why we were there and where we should go. Now, when you normally go to a cultural activity event, there is often only one or two simultaneous events taking place in the same location, at most, but you can normally find your way easily towards your desired destination. At Hub Westminster's 1st floor, there is a plethora of activities taking place at the same time in a setting that seems to have jumped out of a Michel Gondry film. The idea of Hub Westminster is to provide work space to whoever is interested, across its multiple halls. As we walked towards the screening room, I came across a friend working for an architecture/urban design company. After walking besides what looked like a greenhouse on which it said "this space is bookable", I walked past the "office space" (a long table with electric plug sockets) of a film company and seemed to recognise the faces that went past me. It felt as if I was in a dream, walking somewhere I didn't intend to or know about and random people I knew from different eras of my life were making cameos. Anyway, it was an interesting experience and I really grew fond of the space.

Hub Westminster is a curious place.

There were 4 films on the screening, and due to some technical issues, we started a little late, which only helped a few more people make it on time, so all the better. The first film was called Home for the Golden Gays, the trailer of which you can watch here. As a continuation to my dream-like sequence of introduction to the event, this film was made by a friend of the friend I just ran into on my way in. I had heard a lot about it: how the filmmakers went to the Philippines to shoot a documentary about someone who had to return to Denmark and this person had cold feet in the last moment, and they had 2 weeks (and the funding that was granted to them) to shoot something. It did not take them too long to find what they were looking for, in the form of an old gay man who has become a regular at the Golden Gays bar, a discreet location on a calm side street in the middle of busy Manila. More interestingly, as we heard from the producer who represented the film (and who is the friend of my friend), Golden Gays sits on a site which is an annex to the building it is attached to. This building is run by a prominent person in Manila, who has kept his own homosexuality discreet for long, long years; despite the fact that a flamboyant place like Golden Gays was next to where he lived. The filmmakers made a brilliant documentary by following the daily rituals of this old man, whose profession is to clean the streets and who joins his fellows in the colourful bar that could have set the setting for any bizarre Tarantino scene, after putting on his heavy make-up in the evenings. The editing of the film is superb with beautiful photography, compelling close-ups and a good, overall definition. Added to that is a good soundtrack and there you have it, a short documentary on the non-story of a few characters whose life stories could possibly make up volumes of literature. Obviously, the producers and the director used the material available to them in the best possible way they can, and the film could only become lengthier and ever more compelling when they find a story to attach to it.

 Golden Gays is at the top of my list of places to visit if I ever make it to Manila

Zan (Woman) was the second film in the series. Produced & Directed by Farinaz Nikbakht, it is available in its entirety on Youtube. It tells us about the liberation from their husbands, marriages and other forms of oppression of three different Iranian women by way of quick and short interviews. It was neither an eye-opener, nor a cinematic breakthrough in my perspective but in many ways, I felt that it was the most relevant of the 4 films we saw, with respect to theme of the day, if not, to the event as intended by its curators (I will say more about this later). Even though the film is not remarkable as a whole, its slightly experemintative and figurative scenes and the background music make for a different experience than many may have had gotten accustomed to in documentaries. I, personally, loved the music but found the interviews too short, and the their outcome too little to argue for what the filmmakers (I suspect, through the Youtube description, but it may be someone else who wrote it) may think the film is showing: "Contrary to common belief, these women are not victims but fighters".


The third film, Dyketactics took us back in time to deep into the 1970s. In my opinion, and I am not sure if this description exists, it was a lesbian orgy pyschedelia. The curator of the night argued that this was one of the first films which was made by a lesbian, entirely on lesbians without any other connotations to it than the free-spirit sexuality it depicted. You can see a short clip from the film here. It certainly stood out from the rest of the pack, but, at first, I was not even sure why it was included in the selection. As revolutionary as it may have been for the history of documentary-making (if not cinema as a whole), surely there should have been a strong motivation to show a film from 1974, and especially this one in the light of the event. It is then I realised that this event had little to do with women, but with gender and sexuality as a whole. Now, obviously, at that point I did not recall the name of the event, hence my surprise; however, more significantly, despite the obvious overlaps, these discourses deserve attention in their own respects and could easily have been subjects of series of screenings in their own rights. If the latter was the intention for this night, that is OK, but it surely has very little to do with women's day, which was the thought that kept lingering in my mind, and which I set aside when I decided to wait and see the final film.

Twinset, by Amy Rose, the trailer of which you can see here was a lovely film. It is revolved around the daily life of Alan/Jennifer, a person who could possibly be described as double-gendered who (and I missed this bit whilst watching the film) either fluctuates between the two or has already completed the transformation from once being Alan, now to being full-time Jennifer. Jennifer was born to a mother who expected twins, but she was the only one that came out; but one could easily argue - and that is where the title of the films seems to come to - that Jennifer already embodies a twin set. Jennifer's routines are depicted by the camera that follows her in the streets, to her sunday masses, and at her (or her mother's home) where she and the mom have often argumentative, yet very polite, and always dark-humoured and funny conversations. In so many ways, the film depicts the problems Jennifer may have encountered in her life, withough giving us much hint about her background and how she may have overcome them, but through an image that depicts her as a self-confident, peaceful and a generous person; all of which make up for an unusually sun-washed documentary, set in Scotland (hence the double-reference to unusual sun). This, and the first film were certainly the highlights of the evening for me, and we were very lucky to have the producer of the first one and the director of the last one to have a small discussion/conversation after the screenings.

  Twinset is a truly beautiful documentary about what seems to be a beautiful person.

 
It is rather easy and fair for me to say that I liked the films, in general and the curation, too. There was some variety in terms of geographies and stories depicted but there seemed to be a predominant theme that related to type of characters depicted in the films and that had to do with issue of gender. Some of the discussions after the film also related to this. What I did not have an easy time with was the fact that, although gender is one of the most important and challenging issues, which provides for some of the most outstanding independent and contemporary cinema works I have seen, it does not always and necessarily reflect the issues that women have had to endure, and which I thought the International Women's Day was all about, in terms of raising awareness.

In a way, this selection reaches out to a group of people who are already aware of certain issues relating to gender at an advanced stage, and the fact that there was hardly any exterme reaction to what was shown and discussed could prove this point. So, then, why was the night centred around this topic? That, I don't know, however I could not keep myself from wondering why there could not be more emphasis on films that dealt with the problems such as labour or sexual exploitation, domestic violence, segregation or exclusion that are faced on a day-to-day bases by women all around the world, even in the most advanced societies. I have to admit that I felt slightly misled by what I felt to be the disconnect of what the recurring theme of the screenings were and what I thought was the meaning of 8th of March.

Nonetheless, thanks a lot to Open City London Documentary Festival and Hub Westminster, I felt indulged in a useful activity and there are few occasions where I would say "no" to a free cinema event, especially when quality of the films are what some of these films had in them. On the other hand, there is a lot to be though about and done with respect to the people's comprehension and dealing with the identities, roles and all the underlying connotations of women, or any other gender, ethnicity, nationality, race, and any and all representations where applicable. Someone most special to me has had huge impact on raising awareness on these issues for me and even though she may not be near me at the moment, I am sure she knows who she is. This is probably why I can understand why still so few people try to face, challenge and embrace these sensitive paradigms I tried to refer to. Yet, we all need to contribute a lot more to this debate. Every day and all the time, there is only more to consider and I'd rather we start getting there sooner.

Les Misérables, Ciné Lumière and a sunday cinema double bill

 When I checked the clock, it was still very early. My eyes were unable to pick up the light outside to tell me whether the sun had already set as I woke up from a terrifying dream: a tall, blonde guy was answering all the questions correctly; with answers that I would have no idea about. He was before me in the queue, and I would be the next up. I realised I had no chance, and that is when I woke up with a cold sweat. It did not take long before I went to sleep again. When the hour finally hit 10 and I woke up to a cold and dry Sunday morning, I prayed that the actual experience would have no resemblance to what I had earlier dreamt.

It took me about 15 minutes to walk down to Barbican from my house. I had not eaten breakfast but I had no intention to get to my destination any later than I already was. I did not shave although I thought about it. I did not comb my hair, not there is much of it, but I also thought about it. I did not wear anything special, and I did not put much thought in it, anyway. By the time I got to Beech Street, I could already see the long queue, that stretched all the way from the entrance of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, curling its way around the Barbican Centre and one of the iconic towers of the Barbican Estate. I was disappointed with myself, knowing that I should have gotten here earlier, say, at 8 AM. But to be fair to myself, I would not even have turned up for my first ever try to be an extra in a feature film, had I not met L. and Z. who told me about it yesterday; had I not gone to the cinema with M. and invited R. who ran into L. and Z. at the theatre, with whom we had lunch afterwards. By the looks of the queue, it looked as if I was not going to make it into the registration for Tom Hooper's remake of Les Misérables.

So, there were no questions or interviews in the end like those in my nightmare. But there was not much remedy in showing up a little late, neither. It was announced shortly after my arrival that already more than 2,000 people showed up and that we would have to wait up to 4 hours, with no guarantee to get inside the building. Soon after that turned into "we will issue some tickets to those of you who we believe to be unique but others will not be seen today". It was something spectacular to see such interest to be an extra for a film. To be fair, though, the production is big, its cast is ambitious and there is a £110/day to be earned over the few days of shooting that the extras would be part of. Sadly, I was not qualified as unique, and neither were L. or Z. for this film's purpose. I was less about the £110/day to be had, but more in the idea of getting a foot in a major feature film production, something that I keep on dreaming about, and looks like there will be more dreaming than reality in the foreseeable future. Ah, how I thought I would shine as an extra in one of the dreadful scenes as a prisoner or a "miserable", how I practised the day before in the company of others, only to first entertain and then annoy them, and how this would have fit perfectly next to my role at the 2012 Olympics. Well, so much for Les Misérables, we thought, as we moved on.

After a brunch with L. and Z., I decided to head to Leicester Square for a cinema double bill. It has been long time since I saw two films back to back at a cinema. In fact, it has been long since I have done it on the TV or on a computer, too, but my history with back-to-back films at the cinema go a long way. For those of you who at some point in their lives have been "festival-goers", you would know about the rituals of seeing 4 to 5 films a day with the occasional lunch, dinner, coffee breaks, hovering from one cinema theatre to another one, only to bump into celebrities, friends, and those involved with the art of cinema who are often not to be seen in social environments whatsoever for the rest of the year. I have had the privilege to experience this in Istanbul, Berlin, London (and almost in New York) over the years. Even though each city has its own characteristics, and often the events are held at different seasons (in the harsh snowy winters of Berlin to tulip-blossoming springs of Istanbul and the rain-washed autumns of London), they all have one thing in common. For the "festival-goer", the city becomes a large film set as you wonder from one scene to the another. People on the street are your own extras, and your environment is your soundtrack. These were the thoughts I had when I decided to give my lone self another go at a back-to-back cinema experience. There were two films in my list that have been at the theatres for a long time and were about to be pulled out: Hugo 3D and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Luckily on unluckily, they were both playing at the Odeon Cinema at Leicester Square and at back-to-back sessions.

I started off with Hugo 3D. It was 2 PM, I was full with a nice Sunday roast and on time to avoid the early commercials and nothing could make me less happy... than the fact that Odeon was overpriced, the hall was tiny, the screen tinier, and I was sitting at the corner of the first row. It was not the 3-D glasses I wore for 2 hours that bothered me, it was rather my neck that squeaked more than the automaton featured in the film.

It was around the halfway through the film that Isabelle, the lead girl of the film, referred to Hugo, the lead boy and the character, as Jean Valjean in a reference that I cannot remember right now. If it wasn't for T. who reminded the day before that Jean Valjean was the main character of Les Misérables, I would probably have missed that funny reference. Then, after all, could the name Hugo, of the main character, be a reference to the great Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables? It felt as if my day with Les Misérables was not over yet. Jean Valjean did not provide the only coincidental reference to some of the conversations we had the day before with T., L. and Z. L. works for an organisation, based at the UCL who run a documentary film festival in June called "Open City". Although I did not recall this at first, now I seem to remember that we occasionally received emails from this organisation on their monthly documentary screenings while I worked at LSE Cities. There is a round of screenings for the European Documentary Festival starting at the Ciné Lumière in London on 16th of February, Thursday and there is a screening at the UCL on the 22nd.

The fact that Hugo celebrates the cinema of the late George Mèliés and therefore touches upon the history of early cinema and the Lumière Brothers was another nice coincidence linking up today and yesterday. The extraordinary visual representation of cinema of Mèliés is one aspect of Hugo that I think may win the film the Academy Award for Best Picture. In that regard, I am sure it will touch some people's hearts rather lightly like one of its competitors The Artist does. However, what makes Hugo even more extraordinary is its use of the 3D technology. I am one of those who believe that Avatar was somewhat a joke and its use of 3D was such a gimmick. I listened to many podcasts of Kermode and Mayo on BBC Radio 5 (much recommended for film lovers) over the years and got myself indulged in thinking about where I stand with the whole 3D debate in contemporary cinema. I found it very courageous of a filmmaker like Martin Scorsese to open himself to such development. I guess that what makes him one of the most celebrated directors of all time, his ever continuing appetite for progress and boy has he been successful in genres and over decades. He talks to Kermode and Mayo about how he "wants to do all his future films in 3D from now on" in one of their programmes. There is a lot to be said about Hugo but I do not want to make a full film review out of it, here and now. I just want to say I really enjoyed it, and it was yet another joyful coincidence to see Michael Stuhlbarg take part in it, the man who plays the character of spectacular Arnold Rothstein, the early 20th century and Prohibition-era mafia in what is my current favourite TV show, Boardwalk Empire. And guess who is one of the executive producers and the director of the pilot episode of the show?! None other than Mr. Martin Scorsese, himself.

 

The second film of the day was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I was looking forward to this film for a long, long while. I have to admit I was a bit confused when I first saw the trailer to and the posters of the first of the trilogy by David Fincher's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's literature. The name of the film sounded very familiar but I could not quite make out how. I did not know of Larsson's books before hand but then I realised that films with a similar name to this had just been released a couple of years ago; these were the Swedish versions of what Hollywood then re-made. This was probably one of the fastest remakes I have ever encountered. Although it may be argued that they are not remakes but just Hollywood adaptations of the novels, as against the Swedish versions, I reckon, had there been no Swedish TV-cinema production of this literature, Hollywood may have never picked it up. There were a number of reasons why I looked so much forward this film, other than its trailer being awesome.

First of all, I am a big fan of David Fincher's cinema. I am part of a generation of youngsters for whom Fight Club and its subsequent soundtrack meant something. The film was the cinematic representation of the way in which we wanted to go through our adolescence. Although other fringely mainstream films like Requiem for a Dream would be what we would like to aspire to, were we to have artistic careers (but not the types of lives depicted in it), most of us must have thought we could end up like Tyler Durden at some point in our lives. For me, Fincher was already special with Se7en and The Game (which a lot of people underestimate, I find) and Zodiac had just put him in a special place. And I think I also liked The Social Network more than many others I know. What I find so delightful in Fincher's films, apart from the great soundtracks, the audio-visual feasts, the always-right pace (often fast, sometimes delicately slow and always a good mix of both), his appetite for peculiar characters, is that he can pretty much make a film of any story you will give him. Obviously it helps if he is feeding from a text from Aaron Sorkin, or great literature, but I think he is one of the few directors that can make you watch what is practically a legal case and make a good entertainment out of it. With The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, he already had something fascinating to play with.

Another reason why I anticipated his take on the Swedish thriller was the Immigrant Song. Immigrant Song has been a top-20 in my playlist during my high-school years. I had given Led Zeppelin a good long break since high school, bar the summer when Robert Plant came into town (Istanbul) for the Jazz Festival I was working at, but hearing a raw Karen O (of Yeah Yeah Yeahs) take on a Trent Reznor cover of what was one of my long-time Led Zeppelin favourites clearly got me going. Should I also add here that Nine Inch Nails's dark The Great Below was a beyond-inspirational song during my early teens?

The film lived up to my expectations. I have to say that at times I felt Fincher compromised on the story's magnificence for the sake of some mainstream elements. It looks as if he gave into the Hollywood formula of making the film more approachable to wider audiences by making the characters a little more human than what they may normally be (I have to admit I have not read the books, though). Their relationships progress almost in a comical contrast to what we expect of their very strong, individual beings. Of course, with such successfully built-up violent rape and snuff scenes, the film is anything but a Sunday family outing, yet there is something in it that makes us realise we are watching a Fincher suspense thriller, but not a Gaspar Noé psychopathy. David Fincher seems to have followed, once again, his interest in dealing with complicated the state of affairs of individuals' dealing with some predominant social aspects of the societies in which they can (or cannot) operate (as he did so well with Se7en, Fight Club, or Zodiac). The fast-paced film makes for an easily followable and watchable two and a half hours of dark and wintry landscape. Some small details here and there also let the audience take a breather: I loved how the IT geek Lisbeth meets in the beginning of the film wears a NIN t-shirt, a reference to Trent Reznor who wrote the soundtrack. The entire theatre burst to loud laughter when Lisbeth was seen with her t-shirt reading "fuck you you fucking fuck" during her "morning after" enriched with the unexpected visit from Mikael, the journalist. And it did not take me too long to fall in love with the character of Lisbeth.

Fincher is one of the remaining great, mainstream filmmakers who has not yet adopted 3D into his cinema. I have not yet heard of him outrulr 3D from his future films, in the fashion that Christopher Nolan did. I have to say I agree with Nolan's reasoning of why he does not choose to use 3D, at least just yet, for the final part of his Batman: The Dark Knight trilogy. In this regard, as I said earlier, I hold Scorsese's pioneering decision and his use of the technology in high regard but for the moment, we can live with the IMAX, provided it comes with good stories, good acting and good directing. In that case, I don't even mind moving my neck right and left as if I am watching a tennis game (as against watching a bungee jumping event).

As my 4 hours and 45 minutes of double-bill cinema came to an end - and by its length, that could be 3 back-to-back films - I decided to re-fill my supplies with some "eat as much as you can" Chinatown goodies, reminiscing of my poor first year in London, doing my MSc. That was not the only thing that made me remember things, though. As I took a nice, 45-minute walk back home I re-visited the scenes from the day and from my own persona past. I traveled around Gare du Nord, making my way over the bridges over Seine, and across to the remote island in northern Sweden, then swimming down the Gulf of Bothnia to Gamla Stan in Stockholm, reminded of my "miserable" self cycling in the freezing cold in the dark winter nights in Denmark, or walking home from a long day of cinema through the prostitutes and stray cats on a spring evening in Istanbul. Yet again, the cities were my film set, devoid of extras on a late Sunday evening in London with deserted streets but I was happy to move from one scene to the next.

great directors and their great films

What makes a director, a great director? Box office, awards, charisma, endurance, diversity, establishment, anti-establishment, independence... There can be as many variables as there are movies and directors themselves and many of them we repeatedly hear, do in fact, refer to formative meanings, rather than to describe the "greatness" of the subject. After all, "great" is a difficult to term to begin with. For Angela Ismailos it is a group of filmmakers, whose films she says she has been deeply inspired by (it is more likely that it is a group of directors to whom she had easy access to). She has interviewed them and made a documentary titled Great Directors. It is her very personal "journey" with a narrative that does not always connect very easily. In fact, the reviews of the film are usually anything but good, criticising the lack of coherence through the feature as well as of Ismailos' incapability to get more out of the directors she has interviewed. Furthermore, her own appearances in scenes where she has portrayed herself as a very serious filmmaker, what feels like an attempt to mark her introduction to the film industry (this is her debut film) already at a league of "great directors" end up as a caricature. Rightly so, many reviews criticised the selection of the directors and her editing style that falls short of convincing the viewer to believe there is an overall story to tell. However, the appearances of Ken Loach, David Lynch, Agnes Varda, Todd Haynes, Bernardo Bertolucci among others is enough to make this film a worthwhile watch. If anything, one wants to visit, re-visit the truly great works of cinema these directors have made and that seems to be a point many reviews have missed. And it is an important in its own right.

Bernardo Bertolucci introduces himself through his encounter with Pier Paolo Pasolini, which, obviously was a definjng moment for the former's career due to the role he was offered by the latter. At this eraly scene of the documentary, we are drawn back in time to 1960s which is probably the era Ismailos started appreciating cinema. What seems to be set at a chronological narrative, thanks to introduction of Ken Loach, Agnes Varda and their films from the 60s and 70s, the documentary often jumps through eras, whilst attempting to bridge the directors through more abstract themes such as "struggle to define a new identity in his art" or "use of form in his/her narrative". Many of these connections are made somewhat poorly and the transition scenes often include a harsh-beat symphonic music with appearances of Ismailos herself walking along collonnades in Vatican or cruising by industrial docklands, shot from ground-level angled up towards her face, with a hint of magnitude with her very serious looking posture.

And then suddenly, we are back at Varda's garden where she is talking about her purple dyed hair and getting old while two cats play with flowers in the background, and walls carved with her name during the time spent here for more than 30 years. Another zoom into Lynch's shaking hand, scenes from Eraserhead and Mulholland Dr. and back again into the heavy drum beats. But it is precisely this cheesy play between the pure and simple emotions of the diverse range of filmmakers and their films that Ismailos attempts to fill her camera with. It is the tangibility of the directors she has interviewed, as opposed to their real-life attitude, grandeur, pompousness, or humility, which is what audience can associate with and which is what makes this documentary ever so graspable and digestable. Ironically enough, there is almost no greatness in any of the interviews and despite the fact that some of the directors interviewed may not even know another or approve of one another, they all seem to be part of this "family" that exclusively belongs to Ismailos' imaginary to which we are invited to for an hour and a half. This casual interplay does not always work though. It is easy to understand how frustrated reviewers of this film were to see Fassbinder used as a tool to enhance the film with his only real association tothe film being the mutual admiration of Ismailos and Todd Haynes, but then again, many reviewers may have been pissed off not to have had the chance to sit down with many great directors to make a documentary like this.

Not everyone does get the chance to spend a sunny English afternoon with Ken Loach who ends his interviee by saying "I've just been given a bus pass, so I guees I now have started the second half". Long-time Communist Party member Bertolucci may have suffered an identity crisis in the last couple of decades of neo-liberalism, but Loach has never lost his wit to enlighten the masses with the stories that mattered the most but exposed the least. If anything, his sharp cinematographic edge was recently highlighted with The Wind That Shakes the Barley. What "Great Directors" does great is to stimulate such discussion for the audience whilst browsing through a library of films that not only include those of the directors included in the documentary but also of people like Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese.

Greatness may only be a facade of this film. At best, a naive attempt to catch the attention of the audience, at worst, a farcical self-indulgence. It is no less than a "100 films you have to see" list, and more often than not, is it a lot more inspiring than that. Take it with a pinch of salt, if you will, but we've got to listen to the director, whose attempt it was to uncover a mystery she did not even know where would lead to, following the inspiration of these people. A very self-motivated journey it is, it is a pleasure to be part of it whilst reading into, what may only be momentary excerpts from (after all, these interviews only last a good couple of hours, at maximum) minds and eyes that saw through their lenses to bring the imagery on the big screens.

aimee und jaguar

A few days ago, I was cycling back home from work, at a rather unusually slow pace and in a much missed feeling of appreciating my surrounding. It was a warm summer evening. I cycled through small streets and alleyways opening up to main roads passing by families and strollers looking at them from a slightly elevated view. It was then I realised I missed traveling across the city on an overground train observing the life on the streets from the perspectives of buildings.

Then I missed taking the S-bahn in Hamburg between Sternschanze and Altona or in Berlin cutting all the way from the east all the way to the west. Observing the people in the train, reading their newspaper, talking to their friends, thinking about getting back to their homes. At the same time, I could see people walking when we approached stations, taking a left turn into the small street with that man, or taking my child into my lap like that woman. Contrary to what many people think, I never lived in Germany, maybe for that reason, I always attached myself into those stories that I could so easily observe or create. I have rarely taken an overground train in London, especially in the evening. Only when I lived for a few months in Streatham Hill, last winter, I would take a train from Farringdon, swim through the endless estates of South London, gaze upon the misty Brockwell park through a winter evening's fog. A few days ago, I felt I missed cruising over the city, watching my fellow citizens...

...

On another evening, I came upon a film called Aimee and Jaguar at the Prince Charles Cinema, a central-London favourite. I went home and downloaded it, to go back to it this morning. It is years 1943-1944, Berlin. Aimee married a Wehrmacht soldier at the age of 20, and has 4 kids from him. Her husband is away at the Eastern front, trying to keep hold of Berlin against the Soviets. Aimee seeks re-vitalisation in her life and enjoys small gifts from a flirt with another army general.

Jaguar is a Jew and she is working under disguise at a Nazi sympathetic newspaper assistant editorial. She is in love with words and poetry, and an adventurous, almost a carefree lady who is bitterly sarcastic at the unfairness of life, yet tries to secure an escape for herself and her close friends from Germany at the height of the Jew hunt by the Gestapo and the SS.

Ilse is Jaguar's girlfriend and she provides shelter for Jaguar until one evening when Ilse's communist father decides he will not be able to help a Jew hide in his house when he realises that Jaguar is a lesbian and that his daughter Ilse is in love with her.

Jaguar seduces Aimee, who is at first skeptic but is in search for a 'new feeling' after having been deprived of love that was never there through her marriage with Günther. Aimee seeks new friendships with Jaguar and her company, Ilse is more and more frustrated at losing Jaguar to Aimee and is worried that Jaguar will throw away her chance to escape Berlin, incapable of leaving Aimee behind.

The love between the two women grow when Jaguar finally reveals to Aimee that she is a Jew, and Aimee, in whom a deep insecurity has been embedded, draws closer to Jaguar, possibly succumbing under the responsibility of being the wife of a Nazist soldier, added to her tender emotions to Jaguar and the emerging chance of 'taking care of someone' she loves.

...

Berlin, 1943-1944, the city is rapidly being destroyed. Once the dreamland of Germania, the city is under constant mist, smoke, smell of burned flesh, blood, mortar and explosives. Everyone is dressed in brown, even the most exclusive hotel gatherings have a darker shade of grey overcasting the golden glamour. The city looks fatally beautiful even in its destruction. A beauty under depression, or the beauty of the depression. Ones who created the metropolis are now causing its total destruction. None stranger than Deutsche Bank (the funders of the research project I am working for) have sold the golds of the Jews to traders to 'neutral' countries, none stranger than my home country, Turkey, to provide more funding to the fascist regime and its army, the Wehrmacht. Those, who made, destroyed and re-made Germany.

A romantic ideology, suppressed by contemporary Germans for decades, one that created the 'fatherland's soul, its philosophy and its rich cultural heritage; that has recently been borough back to drama by films such as Aimee und Jaguar and many others. Aimee und Jaguar is an impressive, touching film about a real story that took place during one of the most cruelsome events of the recent past, is being told by a cast and crew that is dominating the contemporary German cinema industry with its familiar directors, producers and actors. Juliane Kohler (Aimee) was Eva Braun in der Untergang, in which also Ulrich Mattes was cast in a much more significant role as Goebbels (the SS who arrested Jaguar in Aimee und Jaguar, a 1999 production). Johanne Wokalek (Ilse) is Gudrun Elssin in the recent der Baader Meinhof Komplex, in which Martina Gedeck (Ulrike Meinhof) made worthy of her performance previously in das Leben der Anderen

Familiar faces, and familiar feelings. A warm Sunday morning brought back memories that I had just recently been missing of places that I associated with. Stories that once were, long forgotten, now re-lived. Traumas re-visited, coldness re-shivered for. I felt like I did the anticipated city-gazing over the rail tracks, following Aimme and Jaguar's love that was a fable, glimpse of a possibility in the impossible.

-----
24-31 August 2009, London.

Greenaway's True Cinema Definition?

Back in February 2007, on a visit to Berlin, I had come across a public talk given by the British filmmaker Peter Greenaway. A Turkish blog entry for the event is available at the following link.
For the non-Turkish speakers, the following summary should suffice for the purpose of this entry:

Greenaway gave a lecture to a full house at the Audimax of the Humboldt University in Berlin on 9 February 2007. He was surprised to see a big auditorium packed as that fine, cold Friday evening was also the opening night for Berlinale 2007. He delivered a speech he has been delivering for a while around the world, about why he thinks 'cinema has died' and there was need for a new definition for cinema. He summarised the 4 major "betrayal" characters of cinema that resulted in the 'death of it' as such:

1. Betrayal of the text
2. Betrayal of the frame (the spatial dimension)
3. Betrayal of the actor
4. Betrayal of the camera angles.

Basically, he was saying that, cinema was too much constrained by the inflexibility of the written text, the limitations of the frame, the inability of the actors to convey a potrait independent of their real-life personalities, and the limitations of capturing wide perspectives due to quasi-static attributes of camera angles.

The way forward for the cinema's new definition was in interactivity. The Tulse Luper Suitcases series he has produced in the last few years was his own way of trying this interactivity. I have to admit I could never get what he meant, maybe due to watching only bits of the T.L. Suitcases series, but I leave that up to film experts. In conclusion, a Renaissance painterly-art fetishist Greenaway has believed that there has never been a filmmaker who ever did 'real cinema', only those like Eisenstein came close to it.

I would like to divert the attention here now to an event held by the Future Cinema, a creative group who "creates large scale cinematic experiences, fusing feature film with music, theatre and live performance". One of these events is called Secret Cinema, where the audience is sent SMS/email alerts a day prior to a film screening event that is to be held at a secret location in the UK.

Future Cinema has recently held a special screening of Watchmen by the SE1 club under the railway arches of London Bridge. I was not lucky enough to get myself a ticket, but you can watch the reviews, some videos and pictures of the event at the following links provided...

Could this be the new definiton of the cinematic experience Greenaway was talking about a few years ago? Maybe little wonder it comes from the UK...

BBC 2 Video on the Event

Photos from the Event

Some Press Releases

Italian shoes with no laces

Frost/Nixon was premièred for London audience at the London Film Festival in November 2008. I missed it. Richard Nixon has been of great interest to me. I had written a 20-page article about the foreign policies of the US during Richard Nixon's presidency between 1969-1974. The controversial Watergate brought Nixon down from the presidency, but the interviews held with Nixon after his presidency had caught little attention from me. Frost/Nixon is a brilliant film, set around the interview attempt of an English journalist David Frost with Richard Nixon in the spring of 1977.

Richard Nixon was an ambitious lawyer who was brought up under hardships. He was Eisenhower's Vice-President but when he ran for his own presidential campaign in 1960, he had JFK up against him. The first-ever broadcast presidential debate in the US TV history brought the bright young JFK against and old, experienced but uncharming Nixon. Nixon would try his chance again only in 1968 after having lost to JFK in 1960 but he would forever keep the depression of his uncharming personality. He would, in stead, build a self-confidence, that of an army man, made of steel but fragile with regards to its foundations.

David Frost was an ambitious journalist who is portrayed as a young, charming, not-so-intellectual but a successful talk-show host in the film. After discovering Nixon was pardoned by his successor, President Gerald Ford, Frost decides to challenge Nixon on a TV interview. Also fuelled by one of his researchers he hires for the job, and against the lack of financial support for his project, Frost is determined to put Nixon down to his knees in front of the TV audience and snatch a 'public apology' from him. Ford wanted Nixon to feel as challenged and overwhelmed as JFK made him feel back in the early 1960's. The tensions between the two, the portrayal of the ambitions of the two men, the representation of the 1970's USA are cleverly displayed in this film.

A small but remarkable detail of the film is Nixon's obsession with the Italian style shoes without laces that Frost is wearing. Although Nixon is comforted by his personal adviser that Italian shoes without laces are very effeminate and that they would not suit Nixon, the audience is kept on their nerves with the symbolism of Nixon's insecurity over his own appearance with the shoe detail...

Today I met a friend from high school, M. and her mother at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University for a lovely lunch that inspired a lot about issues dealing with urban policies. As the usual case with earlier generations advicing on the younger ones, the conversation came to a point where young ones like us are being looked upon to bring important change to the current discussions. At some point M. reminded that there is way too many people these days who claim they 'want to be Prime Ministers or some other important people'. She gave the example of a friend of hers to conclude:

"Huh! You think he can make a Prime Minister... with those Italian shoes of his?!"

I dedicate this text to M., and advice her to watch Frost/Nixon as soon as possible! =)

"Of Time and the City": A Terence Davies take on Liverpool

The National Film Theatre (NFT) at the BFI Southbank is arguably my favourite cinema theatre in London (see, for example, here (in Turkish)). The venue sits beautifully on the South Bank of the River Thames, directly connected to the city centre via Waterloo Bridge and the nearby favourite Hungerford Bridge. It is the primary venue for the London Film Festival, as well as the BFI (British Film Intitute) Headquarters, the BFI IMax Cinema and is part of the wider South Bank arts complex consisting mainly of the Southbank Centre, Hayward Gallery, the National Theatre. The frontal BFI Southbank cafe opens right into the Jubilee walkway under the Waterloo Bridge and a stroll around there is a great joy, with an occasional stop at the 2nd hand, cheap book stalls located in front of the cinema.

If BFI Southbank is a decent depiction of many of the qualities of London, then it is arguably a prime venue to host films portraying homelands of many other cultures. BFI Southbank usually holds film series of famous filmmakers (recently, Wim Wenders, Coen Brothers), actors, countries, film cultures or genres. 3 major film halls (NFT 1, 2 and 3) screen for large audiences, while the Mediatheque and Gallery cater for a much smaller crowd in the shape of screenings of experimental films or video. More video installations or exhibitions can be visited in the decent gallery, BFI Southbank Gallery, which currently holds a Pierre Bismuth and Michel Gondry exhibition.

One of these special events was the screening of "Of Time and the City", the first-ever documentary by the famous British filmmaker, Terence Davies (1945 - ). The film was screened on 2 November 2008, on a nice, partly-cloudy London Sunday afternoon. After the screening, Terence Davies came up to the stage for a conversation with the head of the BFI and the audience.

"Of Time and the City" is a documentary about Liverpool. It is rather a subjective documentary through the eyes of Terence Davies who was born in the city and lived there until the age of 28 (1973). Davies had never done a documentary before, and this was his first film after being away from the industry for 8 years. This was rather a special commission, in part with the Liverpool '08, the European Capital of Culture, project. In stead of depicting a Liverpool of what most non-UK citizens associate the city with; the Beatles, Liverpoool FC, Liverpool dock-workers, Davies has followed a quite dramatic approach, almost denying the existence of these institutionalised aspects of the city and taking a very personal approach to it.

Majority of the picture consists of archival footage, bought from BBC, Liverpool Council and many other sources. There is very few contemporary footage, a few scenes of city-life of today, shot by Davies. Other than that, Davies's main involvement has been to prepare a working script, cutting through the scenes and installing the soundtrack. It is quite unique in the sense that, a contemporary document on Liverpool, especially given the current Liverpool '08 project make so less use of contemporary images or references to widely-accepted cultural notions of the city, as described above. But, this is precisely what makes the film more interesting.

A strength of the film lies in the poetic nature of it. Terence Davies uses his own voice as the voice-over narration and extensively reads into the images from literature. Homeros, T.S. Eliot, classical music, hymns from church music and his own poetry blend with the recurring black and white, and color images of life in and around Liverpool.

The film begins with a graphically filling shot of an empty theatre hall, drawing its curtains into a grimmy Liverpool scene. Church images, loud hymns and extremely sarcastic narrative of Davies flow in. It is this extreme sarcasm that creates the working tensions and the conflicts of the film. Archival sound from a BBC Radio show from the 1960's, or jokes that Davies makes about his time and his city are not completely graspable for non-UK, or even non-Liverpool audiences. At the Cannes Film Festival, the UK side of the theatre at the film's screening was reportedly giggling while some were puzzled. However, the conversation with Davies after the film at the BFI clarifies many questions.

There are extensive references to religion and Davies' conversion from a devout Catholic into an atheist. As a life-time skeptic, Davies' was challenged further by his father (died when Davies was 7), after whose death, Davies started to indulge in conflicting realities of life. At a very early age, he discovered interest in the same-sex and came out as a young gay man in the mid 1950's, having to wait 12 years (from ages 11 to 23), until homosexuality was no more illegal in the UK (1967). The years 7-11 play a significant role in his development where he was taken the films quite extensively and the 'awakening' to the non-existance of god, and turning an atheist simultaneously with discovering homosexuality seem to be main elements of why Davies chose ballet over Beatles or classical music over hooligan chanting of Liverpool fans.

He is the youngest of 10 children. I don't know about the others in the family but he may as well be the most enthusiastic and entertaining. It is easy to see the fragility in the man when he blushes as he is applauded by the full-house crowd of the giant NFT 1 Theatre, or in the use of gestures, the non-stoppable movements of his hands and arms in excitement when he tells a story from childhood. He told about a funny incident he has recently encountered, in order to give an example of the "northernly humour" that he cherished a lot about the Liverpool culture:

He has recently given a lecture at Harvard. Harvard gave him a jumper with the "Harvard" text over its chest. Davies was wearing this one day when he was back in Liverpool. A street beggar saw him and stopped by him asking:
"Hey mate, do you have some spare change? I am going to go to Yale".

It is much more than to Davies that these funny incidents came across his way. Although not peaceful with his childhood traumas and his sexuality, this is a man, grasping the world, and 'his city' of his first 28 years with full enthusiasm, arms and eyes open wide. And there comes the "Of City and the Time", maybe a slightly difficult piece to get into in the beginning, but a sheer joy of classical music, folks on the hill, decaying housing estates, the Cathedrals and fighting for a place in the Liverpool crowd of 1960's and early 70's.

I suggset the 70-minute long film screened with a 20-minute cut from a Terence Davies interview. It adds so much more to Liverpool and the city, knowing this interesting and remarkable person.

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Further reviews on the film can be found at the following links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/124576/of.time.and.the.city
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/film_reviews/article5048582.ece

orumcek agi

Basit bir tesadufler zincirinin aci veren baglantilari...

Bugun Rikke'yle gorustuk yaklasik 2 yil sonra. Aarhus Universitesi-Cambridge ortak PhD'ye baslayan sevgilisi/kocasi Martin ile birlikte Londra'ya gelmisler bu haftasonu.

Bundan 2 yil once Mart ayinin ortalarinda bir yerlerde Rikke'yle otostop cekmistik Kopenhag'a. O ailesinin dogumgunune gidiyordu, benim ise herhangi bir amacim yoktu. Christiania'ya gidip biraz alisveris yapmak gibi bir niyetim vardi, bir de belki sinemaya falan gider, Aarhus'tan cikmis olup Kopenhag havasi koklamis olurdum. Isin en cezbedici yani ise otostop cekme kismiydi.

Sabahin erken bir saatinde bisikletimi liman kenarinda, kime ait oldugunu bilmedigimiz bir mason locasinin onune biraktim. Belki dondugumde bisikletim gizli bir orgute katilip bana ilginc rituellerini anlatir, ya da 'scientologist'lerin biraktigi 15-20 tane brosuru uzerinden silkeler, yagan yagmurda islanirken, daha once el degistirdigi onlarca sahibine gosterdigi pasli selesini partlatirdi gunesin atlinda. Agir bir bisikletti, her gun 7 km. okul mesafesini Ispanyol bir arkadastan aldigim bu odunc, 7. veya 8. el agir, kiz bisikleti ile gitmek ayri bir maceraydi benim icin. Tukurugumun soguktan dondugu sabahlari az eslik etmedi bana meret.

Anakara'dan Kopenhag'in oldugu adaciga gececegimiz vapura bedava binebilmek icin, hemen limanin onunde otostop cekip, aracinda bos yer olan bir ailenin yaninda gemiye bindik. 1.5 saatlik gemi yolculugunda daha henuz yavas yavas ayilirken, ufak birer kahvalti yapip, esten dosttan, okuldan vs. konusuyorduk. Limanda gemiden indikten sonra, sansli bir sekilde, 5 dakika icerisinde bir arabaya bindik, bizi biraktigi yerden tekrar bindigimiz araba yaklasik 1.5 saat sonra bizi Kopenhag'in gobeginde birakti. Hava gunesli ve serindi. Rikke ailesinin yanina giderken ben Christiania'ya yollandim.

Cafe'de malum madde tuketimini yaparken bir yandan Schalke 04 - Bayern Munih macinda, sevemedigim Bavyeralilarin maglubiyetine keyifleniyordum sanirim. Gol etrafinda uzunca bir yuruyusten sonra, hava kararmasi ile birlikte sehir merkezine yonlendim. Ertesi gun acilar icinde kivrandiracak olan, ve dava acsaydim muhtemelen milyon Kron'lar kazanacagim Burger King zehirlenmesinden birkac saat oncesine tekabul ediyor bu. Brokeback Mountain filmine girdim. Epey etkilendim, cikista Fatih'i aradim, hislerimi paylastim.

Aksam tren istasyonunda Rikke'yle bulusup Aarhus trenine bindik. Gece bastiran siddetli yagmur ve otobusculer grevde oldugu icin (Aarhus'ta cok sik tekrarlaniyordu bu) calismayan otobuslerden oturu eve donusum cok zorlu olacakti. Geceyi Rikke'lerin salonunda kanepede iki buklum gecirdikten sonra, ertesi savah ufak bir tesekkur notu birakarak bisikletime yoneldim. O sirada babamin beni aradigini hatirliyorum tesadufi bir bicimde. Bisikletim yerli yerinde, islak bir bicimde duruyordu.

Hafif bir bas agrisiyla eve gittim, ve bir daha yataktan kalkamacasina siddetli agrilar ve gida zehirlenmesi ile gunu gecirdim. Fatih ve Gokce'yi aradim, cok aci cekiyordum, sagolsunlar gelmislerdi yanima.

O yaz en sonra Roskilde Festivali'nde gordum Rikke'yi, diger Danimarkali arkadaslarimin cogunlugu ile birlikte. Daha sonra o arkadaslarin bir kismi Istanbul'a 1, hatta 2 kere ziyarete geldi, bir tanesi Istanbul'da exchange yapti fakat Rikke'yi 2006 yazindan beri hic gormemistim.

2 yil sonra universite bitip Londra'ya geldigimde, sinemayla daha cok hasir nesir olacagimi saniyordum. Gel gor ki, yuksek bilet fiyatlari ve bir turlu yaratamadigim zaman darligi yuzunden sinema salonlarini boslamak zorunda kaldim. Ama Londra Film Festivali'nde 3 guzel film izledim. Bunlardan biri, hayatimda izledigim en guzel filmerden biri olan, Todd Haynes'in Bob Dylan hayatindan uyarlama karakterlerle susledigi I'm Not There idi. Bob Dylan'i Roskilde 2006'da canli izlemis ve acikcasi epey sikilmistim. Filme hayran kaldim.

Rikke'yi bugun 2 yil sonra tekrar gordum. Rikke, Martin ve ben biraz yurudukten sonra London Bridge'de guzel bir pub'da oturup kahve icip, bir seyler atistirdik. Derslerin son haftasina girerken yogun bir calisma temposu ile gece haftasonumun geri kalaninda oldugu gibi, Rikke'leri ugurladiktan sonraki vaktimi de odada ders basinda gecirdim. Sikildikca ara sira baktigim dergilerden biri olan Sight&Sound'u elime aldigimda Todd Haynes roprotaji oldugunu gordum. I'm Not There hakkindaki makaleleri okurken gozume ilisen fotolardan birinin altindaki yaziyi okurken sok oldum.

Filmde de farkedip tam olarak kestiremedigim karakterlerden birini Heath Ledger canlandiriyordu. 2 yil once Kopenhag'da Brokeback Mountain'da izleyip begendigim Ledger. 2007'nin sonunda I'm Not There'de izleyip tam olarak cikaramadigim Ledger.

2 yil sonra Rikke'yi gordum, biraz eski anilardan, bolca da ileride yapilabilecek hayallerden bahsettik. Gurcistan'a sevgilisinin/kocasinin saha calismasi'na eslik etmek icin gidecegini, daha sonra Gurcu yemekleri ile ilgili bir kitap yazacagini soyledi. Ben de kitaba her yemekle ilgili birer hikaye uydurup ekleyecegimi soyledim.

Bu arada Heath Ledger bundan yaklasik 2 ay once, asiri dozdan yasamini kaybetti.

Hidrellez ozlemi..

Dun ogleden sonraki derse gec girdigimiz yetmiyormus gibi, yarim kulakla dersi dinlerken surekli bir seyler ciziktiriyorduk. Master derslerinde, derse odaklanmadigim ve hazirlanmadigim cok seyrek oldu ama, persembe ogleden sonra haftanin son dersi biraz zorlayici. Lea, Lubnan'la ilgili bir sey cizdi, ve son bir haftadir sevimsiz hava ve o simge cilgin bir ozlem uyandirdi icimde.

6 Mayis gelse de, Hidrellez olsa istedim. Dolunay olsa, Sultanahmet'ten asagiya, guzel, hafif serin ve ruzgarli bir bahar aksaminda Ahirkapi'ya yurusem, gokyuzune baka baka, yokustan asagi, parke yoldan inerken kacirdigim, sektirdigim adimlarda hafif sert dusup kalkip, midemde komik bir turbulans hissetsem diye gecirdim... Bugun 'erken bahar' geldi gene. 4 gun gunes, sonra da 3-4 gun daha parcali bulut var diyor hem de hava raporlari. Berk'le Emre geldiklerinde iyi hava olacak demek ki umariz. Ucarak gelecekler, bir suru CO2 emisyonu demek oluyor bu da, Londra'daki emisyonun yuzde 34'unu olusturan ve valinin ciddi onlemler (en azindan artisi durdurma) politikalari guttugu. Dun sabahki dersin konularindandi. Bir yandan da Ingilizler, Avustralya'ya 4.5 saatte ucan ucak yapacaklarmis. Akli karismis bu milletin. Aslinda pratik adamlar. Arada ikiyuzluluk de var biraz tabii ama, iyi kulp buluyorlar.

Neyse, kafa karisikligi derken... David Cronenberg de yaslanmis, ya da kafasi karismaya baslamis. Sabah biraz tenis antrenmani, ogleden sonra gunesin tadini cikardiktan sonra, aksam '2 super bir film birden' izledik. Prince Charles Sinema'sinda (evet, haha, ucuzcu sinema, bizim Yesilcam gibi, diger salonlarda yeni ayrilan filmler var....) once 'Eastern Promises'i izledik. Londra'da geciyor Cronenberg'in son filmi. Sehir daha da bir guzel gozuktu gozumuze. Ama bu amca, insan psikolojisini cok iyi irdeleyen az hikayeli cok guzel filmler yaptigi gibi (eskilerden Videodrome, yenilerden Orumcek gibi...), kurmacalarda o kadar guclu degil. Film cok guzel, rahat akti, yer yer eglencili idi, yer yer epey siddetli idi ama gerceklikten de bir o kadar uzakti. Mesela, gene biraz hayal kirikligina ugrattigi 'History of Violence' da oyleydi, ama orada baska dikkat edilecek noktalar vardi. Insanin ciplak dogasindaki marjinal noktalara guzelce, cok da etliye sutluye bulasamadan biraz dikkat cekebiliyordu. Bu filmde de biraz bu var, ama kurgusal bosluklar bazi yerlerde o kadar fazla ki, filmi 'iyi' yapmakta zorlaniyor.

Ikinci filmimiz de, gene ayni yerde, sabahtan beri gecirdigimiz, guzel, rahat gunu, hemen yanibasimizdaki Soho'da cilgin atarak bolmektense, 'Sosyalist Isci Partisi' icin 'fundraising' etkinligi olan Sicko'nun gosterimiyle sonlandirmaya karar verdik. Michael Moore, belgeselciliginin icine iyice drama ve oyunculuk da sokmaya basladi. Ama simdi Sicko ayrintisina girmeyecegim. Onun yerine, filmin konusuyla da cok ilgili olan, neoliberallesen ve tum kamu hizmetleri hizla ozellesen ya da ozellesmis Ingiltere'de, hala ucretsiz olan saglik sistemi ve nispeten dusuk masrafli ilac edinme servisi ile ilgili, film oncesi yapilan bir konusma dikkat cekiciydi.

Yakin bir zamanda hastanedeki isinden kovulan 25 yillik hemsire aktivist, Blair-Brown hukumetlerinin, NHS (Ulusal Saglik Sistemi)'i tamamen ozellestiremeseler de, ona destek olan servis sektorlerini (temizlik, yemek, vs..) nasil ozellestirdiklerini, kalitenin de dustugunu, kar amacli sirketlerin az eleman calistirdigini animsatti. Isin daha vahim yani, hastane kadrosunda da kuculmeye, maaslarda kesintilere giderlerken, geri donusu zor kararlarda adim atacaklari zaman, bu kovulan hemsire gibi sesini yukseltenleri isten cikarabilme yetkileri ve bunlari kullanmalari ile ilgiliydi. Thatcher doneminde, 80lerde cikan kanuna gore 'maasta kesinti' hakkinda grev yapmak 'ekonomik grev'e degil 'siyasi grev'e giriyor ve bir kamu gorevlisi bir siyasi grev'e onayak oldugunda, isinden atilabiliyor. New Labor'in bunu kullanmasi ilginc. Muhafazakar yonetimlerin muhafazakar ve neo-liberal politikalarini hayata gecirirlerken, katakulli yapmadan 'olayimiz bu, bu yarar saglayacak' diyerek, milleti yanlis yonlendirip ama en azindan direkt haretekle yaptiklari seyleri, New Labor gibi hukumetlerin 'sosyal tabani kaybedemeyiz, sacmasapan bahaneler uretip, aslinda sanki sosyal politikaya hizmet ediyormus catisi kuralim' deyip urettigi bunun gibi ikiyuzlu politikalar daha da cirkin. Bir yandan 'herkes icin daha iyi isleyen' bir sistem uretiyoruz diye yola cikip, ufak ufak, itiraf edemeyecekleri neo-liberal politikalari bu kiliflara giydirmeleri, 'sosyal demokrasi'nin kotu orneklerinin yaklastiklari sular hakkinda ipuclari veriyor bize. CHP'nin yillardir 'laiklik, cumhuriyetcilik' gibi kiliflara sokmaya calisarak yedirdigi ikiyuzlu, anti-demokratik egilimlerin ne bu diger orneklerden, ne AKP'nin 'demokrasi' kilifina sokup, o ideolojide olsalar dahi bunun dayandigi temelleri inkar edip, uygulama zamani ve yontemi bakimindan da milleti 'itiraz etme hakkini bile tanimayacak kadar hassas' bir konuma getirerek uyguladigi politikanin iticiliginden farki yok. Politika cirkin, bu gunlerde epey cirkin olabiliyor.

Ama hava cok guzeldi bugun. Cok cok guzeldi. Nehir kenarinda guzelce bir yuruyusle 'mellow' gun sona erdi. Gecen hafta nehir kenarinda kumdan heykel yapan gencler gene komur yakmislar, bu sefer kumdan kanepe yapmislar. Yatak yaptiklari an gidip, ben de orada konaklamaya basliyorum, havalar biraz daha da isinip, yildizlar kendini gostermeye baslayinca. 6 Mayis civarlari olabilir, eger hidrellezde Ahirkapi'da sokakta dans edip, sarap icmiyorsam tatli bir esintinin surukledigi bir yerlerde.