INTERVIEW / The right side of a sharp knife / Berke Göl

Altyazı magazine, May 2011

White as Snow opens in cinemas this month after a long festival journey. Describing the path from a passion for cinema rooted in his childhood to the making of his first film, director Selim Güneş talked about many things, from the steam train in Uşak to the Dev-Yol members in Şavşat.

After years of working as a photographer, how did you decide to start making films?

During my childhood years in Borçka, a district of Artvin, my older brother was studying in Kars. When he came back to Borçka, he would tell us about the films he had seen there. He would tell a 100-minute film shot by shot, scene by scene, event by event, acting out the characters, over at least 120–130 minutes. And we would wait excitedly for our brother to come home again and tell us films. That’s why I dedicated White as Snow to him. In the late 1960s and in the 70s, during the summer holidays I spent with my uncle, who ran a cinema for many years, I would watch films from morning till night. Indian films were especially popular at the time… In short, my whole childhood was spent inside cinema.

As for how I started photography, that was pure coincidence. I began going to a course at İFSAK to keep a friend company; he quit a year later, but when I saw that I had talent and was producing good work, I carried on with photography. Some of the photographs I take feel to me as if they could be a scene from a feature film, and I think the film could begin with that frame. I have been in the world of photography for about 20 years. Half of my heart held cinema and the other half photography, but I had always followed cinema as a keen viewer. I don’t remember a moment when I said, “Now I need to make a feature film”; that desire emerged slowly. What triggered me was reading Sabahattin Ali’s story “Ayran”.

Was it the subject of the story that first struck you? Or did you set out with a photographer’s eye, imagining its visuals?

Actually, both, of course. One of our literary figures, whose name I can’t recall right now, describes ‘Ayran’ as “a story that pierces your heart like a bullet.” ‘Ayran’ is set in 1938 and, although Sabahattin Ali doesn’t specify the place, in a barren village in the Aegean, near Balıkesir, I would guess. In the story, the boy goes to the railway line to sell ayran. Trains are very cinematic. When I read it I was deeply moved and felt that it could make a visually stunning film. So when I decided to make films, I thought of this story without hesitation.

But in the end, in adapting the story for the screen, you both changed the setting, moving it to the Eastern Black Sea, and shifted the period in which the story takes place from the 1930s to the 1970s. Were these changes choices or necessities?

In fact, I had written the first 5–6 versions of the screenplay around the railway. But then I learned that the only steam train left in Turkey was in Uşak, and that it had been given a shiny new coat of paint for the tourists. So shooting with a train would also have been very expensive. When I gave up on the train, I thought of the children all over Turkey who sell something by the roadside depending on the season. Once I had adapted it to the roadside, I started scouting locations, thinking that the village should then be somewhat away from the road. I took photographs in Şavşat, considered Zonguldak, did research in Kastamonu. In Artvin, as soon as I saw Maden village, which appears at the beginning of the film, I felt that it was a natural set. So I chose it not because I am from Artvin, but because Maden village had an atmosphere that suited the film.

As far as one can tell from the radio news, the film is set during the coup period of the 1970s and 80s. How did you decide to give the story such a political background?

There was no father character in Ayran; I added him, but there had to be a reason for him to be away from the family. When I started the screenplay, the story took place after the 12 March memorandum. The radio news in the film is also adapted from news broadcasts after 1971. But once the work reached a certain point, I decided to leave it ambiguous whether it was the 70s or the 80s. I had been thinking of putting the date and place on screen in the opening scene, but then I decided it would be better for the film to carry a sense of timelessness, and I removed all of that.

But somehow that political dimension and the father in prison weigh heavily in the film…

Of course, of course… Şavşat, a district of Artvin, is one of the places that was hit hardest by 12 September and where people suffered the most. The people of Şavşat went through great hardship after 12 September. So when I moved the story to that setting, I positioned the coup as the reason the father goes to prison and as what triggers the events that befall the boy.

How did the screenwriting process go?

At a certain stage, I had Nesli Çölgeçen read the screenplay. Apart from Nesli Bey, I had no connection or acquaintance whatsoever with the film industry. Nesli Bey read one of the early drafts and said, “Selim, this would make a good short film, but not a feature; you need to develop it further for it to be a feature. But if it is going to be a feature, you should be the one to make it.” It was a very motivating conversation for me.

In the film you mostly worked with actors who had no film experience. How did the preparation process go?

Apart from Kaya Akkaya, who plays the traveller, almost no one had any experience. There were actors with a theatre background and amateurs. Hakan Korkmaz, who plays Hasan, is a boy from my village; as soon as I saw the way he stands, with one shoulder drooping and his neck drawn in, I knew he was the right actor.

After the award you won at the Golden Orange, there was a controversy over the film’s music. People debated whether the music was really Mircan’s. Could we hear the inside story from you?

When I heard the Laz-language piece ‘Ninni’ on one of Mircan’s earlier albums, I was deeply moved. The song is a mother’s lament for her dead child, and when I read the translation of its lyrics, which say “Don’t be afraid, my child, don’t be afraid of the dark, I promise you a bright dream,” I thought that even if I had commissioned it, I could not have found a piece so right for White as Snow. I tracked Mircan down, and she came with us to Şavşat. What I really wanted was to use just that one piece, but later 5–6 more of her released pieces made it into the film. During editing Mircan said, “This won’t work with my pieces alone; we should also use theme music that suits the spirit of this film.” We decided to work with the cellist Uğur Işık, who had worked with Mircan before. But throughout this process we never met Uğur Işık; our only point of contact was Mircan. We always worked with Mircan on decisions such as where and how the music would come in and how the tones of the sound and the music would change.

Uğur Işık’s name appears in several places in the film’s end credits. In fact, Mircan and Uğur Işık are both credited for the film’s original music. But Uğur Işık’s name was not written alongside Mircan’s in the opening credits. The issue was never raised again until the film won the “Best Music” award at the Golden Orange. Now that the matter has gone to court, I don’t want to say anything more.

The film has been screened at festivals in Turkey and abroad. How have audiences reacted to it?

From what I have seen, women in particular are more affected, because of the sense of motherhood in the film… There were also comments like “I wish you had told the story with a more linear structure.” But I think this structure is the right one. At times the boy’s dreams, memories and fantasies intertwine. It is possible to separate them using all sorts of techniques, but I chose not to. In my view, certain details whose meaning only becomes clear later have added richness to our film.

Returning to your identity as a photographer, how did your photographer’s eye contribute to the film as you built its visual structure?

In some films, the cinematographer decides even the framing. In my view, the right way is for the director to decide the framing entirely. The camera will be placed here, the lens will be this one, our frame will be this… Coming from photography is certainly a big advantage here, but when deciding on a frame I never once looked at it as “this is a good photograph.” Being on the right side of that sharp knife was essential, and if I managed that, I think something good has come of it.

*****