A tough race in Malatya / Kerem Akça

2011.11.23
haberturk.com

Kerem Akça looks at the contest between four films in the national competition of the 2nd Malatya International Film Festival

The national competition of the 2nd Malatya International Film Festival, held on 18-24 November 2011, in which the number of films dropped to seven after the ‘strategic withdrawal’ of “Zenne” stemming from its advertising campaign, deserves a closer look. Looking at the overall picture, in this selection, where we can find films covering four key tendencies in Turkish cinema, “White as Snow” and “Küçük Günahlar” stand out for me in particular. However, I can say that I expect the jury’s choice to centre on “Gelecek Uzun Sürer” and “Saklı Hayatlar”. In other words, four of the seven films have a chance of winning. All the awards of the festival, which also has an international competition and a short film competition, will find their winners on the night of 24 November.

More often than not, going through the ‘current’ national programmes of festivals makes it possible to arrive at a real ‘local picture’. This year, with “Zenne” (2011) withdrawing from the programme of its own accord and for promotional purposes, a similar picture can be found in the national competition for Turkish films at the 2nd Malatya International Film Festival. Interestingly, looking at this selection may be enough to draw a portrait of recent years.

Alongside three main sources, ‘otherness’ forms the main theme

Looking at the programme, in which I have seen every film except “Mar” (2011), a product of the now-classic ‘small-town film’ formula, one can observe the emergence of ‘admiration for directors’, ‘the influence of the minimalist New Turkish cinema of the ’90s’ and the idea of ‘focusing on subculture stories’. In my view, apart from these, the ‘postmodern cinema – new tendencies’ strand, the most ‘respectable’ link of recent times, has found its representative in Rıza Kıraç’s “Küçük Günahlar” (2011), which fulfils the concept of a modern love-triangle film.

Besides this, there is a ‘minority outlook’ permeated by the Alevi question, the Kurdish question and Black Sea culture. We can see that our directors who place members of those subcultures at the centre of their stories have now truly built up a freedom in this direction. While “Küçük Günahlar”, which also belongs to the second of these, brings an ‘unaccustomed’ basis with the political chain it forms between 12 September and today’s society, the small-town story outlook of “Mar” and the stance of urban alienation in “Eylül” (2011) seem to stoke a feeling of ‘we have seen this before’.

Selim Güneş ahead of Özcan Alper in representing ‘Tarkovsky’

I would say it is worth examining the films essentially in the light of all these tendencies. In my view, it is an interesting detail that two names who follow the Tarkovsky school and strive to become Turkey’s Tarkovsky, Özcan Alper and Selim Güneş, will be competing. It can be said that the cinematic power the first of them lost by getting carried away with ‘sentimentality’ and ‘political correctness’ is, in the second, on the verge of reaching its peak through real composure and a sense of style.

For this reason, the metaphorically rich, unsettling small-town picture that “White as Snow” builds almost without dialogue, through unusual angles and lens choices, can be set against the documentary-like, heavy-handed, heart-tugging view of the Kurdish question in “Gelecek Uzun Sürer”. Since, as an industry, we have a weakness when it comes to ‘distance’, the second of these will be closer to an award in every competition.

“Gelecek Uzun Sürer” close to the main awards

However, in my view, Güneş’s cinema, with a single film, is more revolutionary than Alper’s two-film body of work. At least in terms of direction and method, its universal judgement is stronger. And it is precisely for this reason that “Gelecek Uzun Sürer” is close to the film and director awards here.

Besides this contest, attention should be drawn to the way “Küçük Günahlar”, which has been the whipping boy of national competitions for a year, turns its political perspective into an abstract relationship film across generations. At this point, the work, at whose roots we can sense a ‘director’s interest’ following in the footsteps of Bertolucci’s cinema, which creates meaning through ‘colour’, must be valued for its sociopolitical vein.

Only a political basis and a minimalist outlook can sell

However, one should not be surprised if the jury rewards “Saklı Hayatlar” (2011), whose ‘epic love film’ formula does not work, simply because it showed the courage to tackle the Alevi question, with an ‘outdated’ kind of cinema. In other words, sociopolitical issues and a genuine feeling for cinema will clash in this competition. In my view, the former will, as always, come to the fore in the festival awards. In the light of this, the problem of ‘seeing oneself as far above everyone’, which has grown in recent years, will spread into Turkish cinema, for better or worse.

Just as can be seen in Cemil Ağacıkoğlu, the director of “Eylül”, which won an award at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, thinking that he produces a minimalist film by applying the functions of a stills camera to 35 mm. For, as it approaches the problems of migration and cancer from the triangle of loneliness, weariness and capitalism, it is quite obvious that the work suffers from serious shortcomings in character, acting and screenplay. In other words, we can say ‘the same old form’.

The focus of competition in the actor and actress categories seems clear

While we are at it, let us say a few words about the other categories as well. In the music category the original score of “Küçük Günahlar” stands out, while in the best actor category there seems set to be a tough race between the young talent of “White as Snow”, Hakan Korkmaz, and Durukan Ordu from “Gelecek Uzun Sürer”. In the best actress category, Esra Ruşan or Görkem Yeltan could put a stop to the standout performance of Gaye Gürsel, again from Alper’s film.

The film, director and screenplay categories, meanwhile, will be shaped by general taste. But it is certain that Rıza Kıraç’s mature writing, which leaves the others far behind, is well ahead in the third category we mentioned. How a ‘film made of short films’ shot entirely in foreign languages, such as “Unutma Beni İstanbul” (2010), will be received remains to be seen.

The nominees who should win the awards, according to Kerem Akça:

Best film: White as Snow
Best director: Selim Güneş
Best actor: Hakan Korkmaz (White as Snow)
Best actress: Gaye Gürsel (Gelecek Uzun Sürer)
Best screenplay: Küçük Günahlar
Best music: Küçük Günahlar

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