INTERVIEW / Selim Güneş / Hasan Sönmez, Şebnem Aykol

2011.10.01
fotoritim.com

Hasan Sönmez: First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your undertaking in bringing to the screen “Ayran”, a story by Sabahattin Ali, whose stories so often tell the reality of the people of Anatolia, and in which conflicted states of mind are at the centre. My first question is this: many of Sabahattin Ali’s stories have been adapted for the screen by many directors. You made Ayran as a work of fiction. How did the screenplay of this film come about? Actually, let me put it this way: why “Ayran”?

As far as I know, 5 or 6 of Sabahattin Ali’s stories had been filmed before. The ones I remember are “Hasan Boğuldu” and “Kuyucaklı Yusuf”. Sabahattin Ali is a writer I have also greatly enjoyed reading. His language, as you just said, has a structure that brings the sense of reality to the fore. At the same time, stylistically, he has a visual way of telling. So when you read one of his stories, you imagine many things and picture the images in your head. And the impact that sense of reality leaves on you is very powerful. “Ayran” is one of the stories I read years ago. Necati Güngör says, “Ayran is a story that pierces your heart like a bullet.” I think the effect it left on me was the same.

Later, when I was at the stage of deciding to make a feature film and wondering what to make, one of the first stories that came to mind was “Ayran”. It is actually a story of 7-8 pages and looks short for a feature-length film. But because of the strong impression the story had left on me and the images I had imagined while reading it, I thought Ayran could make a good film. A child walking alone along barren roads, waiting for the train at the station, the things he dreams of while waiting: in its visual side it is a very powerful story. So when I set out to write a screenplay, I said, let me start with “Ayran”. Of course, between setting out to do it and actually starting to write the screenplay, a serious period of study also began. Once you say, all right, I’ll write it, you see that you can’t just sit down and write a screenplay. When I started researching the techniques of screenwriting, a period of study began that took about three years of my life. Those three years were a time when I studied the things a director has to do and know. During that period, once things about the techniques of screenwriting had settled in my mind, I started writing the screenplay. I don’t remember exactly now, but I shared either the fourth or the fifth version of the screenplay with Nesli Çölgeçen. We have an acquaintance and a friendship going back years. When he read that version of the screenplay, he said something like this: in this form the screenplay won’t make a feature film yet, you need to develop it a bit more, but still, if a film is ever going to be made from this story, you are the one who will make it (because he knew my background and skill in photography). In short, we had a conversation like that; I won’t go into our long exchanges of ideas for now. After that I kept working on the screenplay and added characters and events that are not in the story. But at its core, I developed the screenplay in keeping with the spirit of the story. In the end, I filmed the 26th version of the screenplay. As you can guess, if you also consider the things you change, develop, or are forced to develop on set, in the moment, improvising as the circumstances require without putting them on paper, it was really the 27th version that ended up on film.

Şebnem Aykol: By telling it at such length you have drawn us into the film, but I want to ask you about something other than the film. You said “when I was at the stage of deciding to make a feature film”; how did you come to such a decision, why did you turn from photography to film? Could you also briefly talk about your identity as a photographer?

Actually, I took up photography by chance. In 1989 a friend of mine was going to take a photography course at İFSAK. When he said, I don’t want to go alone, let’s go together, the two of us went to the course. My real aim was to keep my friend company. With this chance beginning, I entered the world of photography. But since childhood, my fascination with cinema had always held a special place. And I always drew well. I used to do my friends’ homework with great pleasure. But I never knew I had any skill in photography. My turning to cinema, on the other hand, is no coincidence. My uncle ran a cinema. As a child I spent my summer holidays in the movie theatre. Of course, every child loves the cinema. But for me it had a bit more to do with being right inside that world. The person who instilled the love of and passion for cinema in me, though, was my older brother, who told us about the films he watched and made us love them through his telling. That is why I dedicated White as Snow to my brother, who made me love cinema through the films he told us about. My brother’s story, briefly, is this: in the years when I was a child in Borçka, my brother was at boarding school in Kars, attending high school. There he had a better chance of seeing films; while in Borçka one film played a week, there a film played every day. Being curious, he was someone who went to the movies. He would tell us about the films he had seen that we couldn’t see in Borçka. His tellings (if you knew him, you would know they would be like this) were very detailed; he would tell an hour-long film in an hour and a half, for instance. He would introduce the actors, act out the characters, and tell it by adding certain things from his own imagination (we realise that now, looking back; it didn’t seem that way then). Imagine… You are listening to a film from the mouth of a storyteller and watching it at the same time. Especially in childhood, this had a great effect on us. So what had really been in me since childhood was cinema.

I took up photography by chance, but afterwards photography became an indispensable part of my life. After that beginning, I followed a path in the world of photography for about 20 years, doing projects and producing meaningful work. Cinema, though, was the dream I had always secretly carried in my heart. Later, the time and the conditions came about of their own accord, in a way I can’t quite describe, when I said I really must make this film now (in fact I think I was even late). Simply loving cinema, being a good film viewer, being a good reader on cinema: of course these were not enough to make a film. The books I read helped a great deal. Besides reading, you start getting hold of different films and watching them. You watch the DVDs of films that moved you before again and again. All of a sudden you find yourself trying to acquire and learn everything. But beyond a certain point, you also have to make decisions in order to get somewhere. This is where the screenplay makes things a little easier. Although I had no intention of becoming a screenwriter, the fact that I had written the screenplay and made the story so much my own was very useful to me on set and afterwards.

For years I taught at İFSAK, giving lessons on light and composition. And as those who know me will know, I am someone who takes great pleasure in sharing what I know, especially with young people. In fact, sharing what you know with others is something that enriches you, so I think that over these 20 years, while contributing to the association and to people, I was also developing myself. I am also aware that I have a style that could be called Selim Güneş’s style, one about which people who follow and know photography can say, this is a Selim photograph. On the other hand, as someone who has given his heart to cinema and looks through that eye, my knowledge, background and skill in photography have certainly contributed to what I have done in cinema. About some of my photographs I have felt, this could be the last scene of a film; about others, I could begin telling a story with this. That background prepares you for cinema too. All the photographs in my album “İstanbul Lodoslar Kenti” are horizontal frames. That is, between 2000 and 2006 I shot only horizontal frames. I used only a 24 mm lens…

Hasan Sönmez: Was this something that came about on its own?

Working in horizontal frames in İstanbul Lodoslar Kenti was not something I did with cinema in mind. I believe that in this kind of work people need to narrow their field. That is what I did in İstanbul Lodoslar Kenti. You can narrow your field in two ways: first technically, second in terms of content. Technically, I used only a 24 mm lens and Kodak’s 100 ASA film. I shot only horizontal frames. As for subject matter, I photographed only in İstanbul, and only places I knew and loved. In this work of mine there are neither the new districts of İstanbul nor the skyscrapers of Maslak. There are photographs from İdealtepe, where I spent my childhood and youth, where I lived for many years and which was around my home (during this period I lived in İdealtepe); Kadıköy was on my way, so from there; I take the city ferries a lot, so from them; I love Beyoğlu, so from there; the coastline up to Yedikule is where I spent my childhood, so from that area… I photographed in places I knew, and among those, in places I loved, and I narrowed my field; perhaps consciously, perhaps unconsciously, this was also a preparation for cinema. When the İstanbul Lodoslar Kenti album came out as the result of that work, I said, that’s it, I have taken a very important step I wanted to take in photography. As you know, one of the most important milestones in photography is publishing an album. 2006-2008 was a period both of preparing this album and of beginning cinema, and after that I turned my course, my focus and my gaze to cinema. So it was because I had completed something that needed to be done in photography that it became possible for me to start in cinema. Perhaps it was the completion of this album that triggered something I hadn’t been able to decide on.

Hasan Sönmez: Starting the course at İFSAK with your friend looks like a coincidence, but didn’t it also emerge as part of a process you might have expected?

In fact, before this course, in your childhood, you had already built a foundation by forming a visual memory through the films your brother told you about. Since photography was something that had never crossed my mind, I think it was a coincidence. What you said brought something else to mind. This may actually be an answer about my own world as well. In high school, I think it was in psychology class, our teacher said that people dream more when they are children and young, and stop dreaming as they get older. This is something that has stayed with me. At the time I couldn’t grasp it: how can a person live without dreaming? Because I was always dreaming: before going to sleep, while drawing, while playing… I am 50 now, and I still don’t live without dreaming. For some people this dreaming may have ended early, for some it may never have existed at all, I don’t know. But I still can’t imagine a life without dreaming.

Hasan Sönmez: In designing extremely pared-down moving images, you create a situation in which the influence of your identity as a photographer is deeply felt. When Mircan’s music is added to these moments that draw our attention, extremely intense emotional states emerge. Although I like this, at times I also felt I was losing touch with the film’s story; doesn’t the viewer drift away from the story at times?

Well, first I need to talk about how I worked when deciding on the image during the shooting of this film. During the period I described as studying, I learned that one of the points I had to pay attention to was deciding on the images. This is a knife-edge situation. That is: if you use the images in your favour, they become very meaningful and an advantage, but if you stay too much at the level of the photograph, they turn into a disadvantage. Yes, in the end both are visual arts, but one is built on still images and the other on moving images. This is the most critical thing that sets them apart. Thinking about this, and having prepared myself for it beforehand, I worked on set with this logic: what does the scene I’m going to shoot tell, which part of the scene will I fill with the shot I am filming and how, do I want to bring out a different meaning in this shot, where and how will the actors stand? What will they do and how? If the actors are going to stand here, and if this is what I want to tell in this scene, where should the camera be? When you decide on the camera’s position, you have also decided on the perspective. Which lens suits this perspective? After choosing the lens, you have to decide on the framing. It is at this point that I think my background in photography came in useful. I always ran the process this way. But afterwards, when I watched my own film, I saw that there were good, striking images. Had I been someone who came from music, I might have used music in the film differently. Had I been someone with a literary background, the screenplay might have been different. But up to this age, my background has been in photography. So my background in photography contributed a great deal while shooting the film.

As for afterwards, if you ask whether I was really the storyteller here or the person creating the atmosphere, I tried to do both together. When I try to look with an outside eye, sometimes it is the atmosphere I created that is effective, sometimes the story. But its being somewhat disjointed had more to do with the way I edited the film than with my background in photography. In the editing I had a style that challenged the viewer. For example, there is the boy’s dream scene; I show that scene in reverse. The viewer first sees the dream, and then has to realise that the boy was dreaming. Some things are disjointed, in pieces, like a puzzle. I wanted the viewer to gradually take in the information I gave through this different, at times experimental, editing, to put it together, and to complete everything in their mind at the end of the film or after the film was over.

Hasan Sönmez: You give the viewer certain clues, and you expect them, by the end of the film, to use these to build the plot in their mind; you steer them in that direction. Did you ever worry about that?

Up to the 35th minute, the viewer is given various pieces of information, and these are then drawn together by Kadir Dede’s account. Kadir Dede’s explanations put a full stop to the information the viewer has gathered up to that point. I have such an explanation repeated in one more place, Recep’s situation told from the driver’s mouth: “This Recep is actually a good man, but he became like this because he fell in love.” So there are places where we explain things. These are actually not quite right. Now and then I also give the viewer information that will complete the story. Also, the characters in the film cross paths late. This crossing could have happened at the very beginning of the film, somehow in the wedding scene. So the viewer has to watch very carefully. Despite such information, I also leave a lot to the viewer. In short, there is nothing for me to worry about. Because I think that even if the viewer misses some details, they will catch the feeling of the film.

Hasan Sönmez: In this context, this is actually the question I was going to ask. Hasan in the story is the child of a family that is rather more of an outcast; the villagers have shunned this family, and the family has been left on its own. Hasan in the film is in a somewhat different situation. There are characters who embrace Hasan in the film: Kadir Dede, his mother, Recep the coffeehouse keeper; they take on a role of embracing and watching over him. There is even, reinforcing this, your quotation from John Lennon, the words: where there is life, there is hope. Of course these are very beautiful, complementary elements in conveying the feeling of the film or the screenplay and the message it wants to give, but the film strangely ends with an uncertain ending. One can’t help asking, “What became of hope?”

Now, Ayran and White as Snow need to be kept apart. The reason for the boy’s loneliness in Ayran is quite different: there is no father. The story explains that in a different way. But again, at its core, there is the struggle Hasan puts up. It is the struggle of an 11-12-year-old child acting under the responsibility of looking after his brothers and sisters. That is how it is both in the story and in our film. When we think of the character of Hasan, the outcome the story and the film arrive at is the same. That is, even if there are people who stand by him and try to protect him, the outcome in the finale does not change. As for the answer to “Is there hope?”, I can say this. For most viewers the film ends pessimistically; for some viewers, though, there is a door left ajar, however slightly.

Hasan Sönmez: So from the moment you began creating moving images, what kind of identity did you mostly take on behind the camera? Were there processes in the cinematography of this film that pushed you into conflicting approaches?

I think I explained part of the answer to this question a moment ago. But this also happened; I don’t know whether it answers your question. On set, you sometimes need to collect certain images you think will be useful, like a documentary filmmaker, because editing is something else entirely. The more usable material you have when you come back from the set, the better; that is one of the realities of cinema. So there, apart from the moving images I have described and the work I put effort into in terms of meaning, I also gathered footage like a documentary filmmaker.

In fact, because of this I had some rather sweet clashes with the assistant director now and then. The assistant director has a schedule, prepared in line with the screenplay, that we have to stick to. According to this schedule, the scenes, shots and locations to be filmed that day are already fixed. When we got to the shooting location, many times, when I said to the director of photography, let’s shoot over there too, even though it was not in the screenplay or the schedule, the assistant director always objected. Because there was no time to spare for it. Since the film tells the story of a single winter day, we were always racing against time. We would get up at 4.00 in the morning, have breakfast at 5.00 and try to be on set. Naturally, although the assistant director objected to such requests in order to finish the film on time, I still got my way. That is, my photographer side and documentary attitude came to the fore. Some of those shots proved useful to me in the editing stage.

Hasan Sönmez: Your film has won a number of awards. One of them was the award for film music at the Antalya Film Festival. The film’s music truly matches the feeling of the screenplay and the story perfectly. It has a very moving quality. I think the choice you made played an important part in its winning the award. How did you decide? Through what process did you make this choice?

The award actually shows that my choice was right. To return to your question, Mircan and I actually go back a long way, 30 years. We met as children. But then, over the years, we lost touch. When I was at the final stage of the screenplay, I listened to Mircan’s piece called “Mircan’ın Ninnisi”. I felt that piece matched the film White as Snow very closely; besides, that piece is a lament a mother sings for her child. At the film’s finale, as you listen to this piece, the lyrics of this Laz song scroll down on the left: “Don’t be afraid, my child, I know you are afraid. But I promise you a bright dream.”

When I thought of the music and the lyrics together, the feeling that this was a piece that had to be in White as Snow settled at once in both my heart and my mind. And after 30-odd years I reached Mircan. I told her I was making a feature film and what stage I was at. I said I wanted to use this piece as the film’s music, and she said yes immediately. When I reached her she was abroad; when she came back she immediately sat down and read the screenplay, and we talked. We are both from the same village on the Black Sea. She came with us during the location scouting along the Artvin-Şavşat route; we went together. Mircan became part of this project while it was still at the screenplay stage, during the location scouting.

Hasan Sönmez: My next question is actually about your success, too. How did your view of cinema develop once you had completed White as Snow? What did your new film teach you? Will this path of yours continue in your next film?

First of all, what I feel right now as a first-time filmmaker, and I am still feeling it intensely, is that I must make a second film right away. Because yes, we did our homework, we were lucky and were able to do many things, but don’t I have regrets about my first film that I haven’t mentioned here? Of course I do. Things like, if only I had done it this way, if only these things had been there. Naturally, knowing my regrets, I think and feel that I can make a better film the second time. That is why these days I am longing to have my second film as soon as possible. The first film, naturally, however much preparation I did and however much the people in the team I worked with contributed, is, as the name says, a first film. Some things are experienced on set for the first time, the screenplay is a first, you work with actors for the first time. My making a first film is different from many directors making their first film. When you look at directors’ backgrounds, almost all of them have worked as assistant directors, been on sets, been part of a crew; they are people who have been inside the world of cinema for years. I was inside the world of photography, I had no experience on set at all, and from the world of cinema I personally knew no one apart from Nesli Çölgeçen. True, when Nesli Bey and I get together we have very enjoyable exchanges of ideas on cinema and photography, but that is just an acquaintance. Some of my friends asked me how I dared to do this without any experience. And in answer I always say this: I always knew what I wanted, because the most important thing is to know this, what you want… Because I knew what I wanted when I went on set, I can say I got through many things without problems. In fact, after the shoot was over, most of the people on set said they had never experienced a set like this. Not a single shooting day was called off, the director never raised his voice at anyone, and people never had problems with one another. And our set was in Artvin. A remote region, cold, winter; the snow chilled us to the bone and we got very tired, but in spite of that, this is what people told us.

At the root of this was one thing: that I knew what I wanted. That, I believe, is why we got past many of the problems that come with being a first. I went there knowing what I wanted. Because when you write a screenplay you imagine certain things, but when you get on set, not everything turns out as you want. There can be situations different from what you imagined. You need both to be prepared and to trust your instincts. Its being a first made me very well prepared. Just as its being a first had its disadvantages, having worked hard and in the right way also had its advantages. I think that if I shoot a second film I won’t have those regrets. Of course in the second film we will gain new experiences of its own, and accordingly we might say that perhaps in the third film these won’t happen…

At the point I have reached now, I say I must shoot a second film, and how I chart my path has something to do with the screenplay. Cinema is an art form made of moving images, and that is the first way you would define it. My second film, too, needs to be a warm, human film with a visual atmosphere. I also need to develop my storytelling; perhaps that was one of my shortcomings in the first film. My storytelling needs to be better, and I must capture the feeling of cinema again as well. Indeed, most people leaving the cinema come out moved by that feeling, but asked what Selim Güneş was telling, ten different people give ten different answers. Then again, you could also call this an advantage, because a film critic said this about it: “Most directors try to do what you have done, because it is a desirable thing for everyone to perceive and take away something different from what they watch, but not everyone can do it. If different meanings can be drawn from it, a film doesn’t end the moment it has been watched.” That is, you need to make the viewer part of this process too, and for that, everyone’s feelings and thoughts about the film must not end the moment they leave the cinema. In a sense, I think I achieved that. Do I have shortcomings in achieving it? Yes, I do. I think it would be good if I could produce something better in which I can make up for those and carry on the feeling and atmosphere I created in the first film.

Şebnem Aykol: In one interview you said, “Just as people look at my photographs and say this is a Selim Güneş photograph, from now on I want people to be able to say of my films, this is a Selim Güneş film.” Is what you wish to be your signature in your films, the thing that defines you, the feeling you just described?

Yes, this is a matter of style, but for that to settle you need to make more films. Only if your style settles will people say, this is a Selim Güneş film. But I also believe this, and it is the same for both photography and cinema: a person can tell truly what he truly knows and feels. I think I was able to find a language in the first film because I tried to convey a child’s feelings, something I felt with all my heart. Then, because I brought this film to the right consistency with things I knew, such as setting it in a region I knew and in the period of my own childhood, it turned out well. But on top of these, I can name two things I see as traits of mine: I am very emotional and I dream a lot. If I can carry these two things into my other films, then Selim Güneş’s films, charged with that emotion and able to draw people into that world through the atmosphere they create, can define me.

Şebnem Aykol: I want to ask one more thing, but we will be going back a little. In one of the comments made about the film: using a minibus left over from the 1980s instead of a train, linking the father’s absence to his arrest by soldiers after the coup; is this really because, as you yourself just said, you couldn’t fully know the details of a story written in 1938, while you know the period after 1980 very well, so you used this shift in time because you knew that environment and that feeling? Or did you think of it as an entirely different piece of fiction, not an adaptation?

What really triggered the idea of shifting the period had to do with steam trains. Thinking cinematographically, the railway was what I would have preferred, for the sake of creating an impressive atmosphere. But when I learned that a steam train wasn’t possible, I moved the story from the railway to the roadside. Once I moved it to the roadside, the story began to change. When the need arose to build up the roadside of that era as a period, I began this time to draw on my own experience. I didn’t sell ayran as a child, but I did sell fizzy drinks. Another detail: in many parts of Anatolia, people sell what they grow themselves, mostly fruit. In fact, in one sequence of the film, the one I call “breakfast”, Kadir Dede eats his pear, the boy drinks his ayran, and Recep puts his Turkish delight between two biscuits. That is, everyone eats what they produce, because the circumstances require it. In the end, that railway triggered me, and because of the things that changed, I think I moved the film to the right time.

Hasan Sönmez: Many years after Sabahattin Ali’s tragic life and death, at this point you have reached by way of his life and his social realist stance, the award you received in Sofia is, in my view, truly meaningful. What are your thoughts on this in the context of Sabahattin Ali’s political and social realist stance?

You have asked a very good question. And the best answer to it was given by Ege Görgün. When we went to Sofia, Ege Görgün from Turkey was on the Fipresci jury of the competition in Sofia, as a film critic. There we both got to know him and did an interview. In his own article he answered the question you have asked like this: “What a strange irony it is that Sabahattin Ali was prevented from escaping to Bulgaria, yet years later a film adapted from a work of Sabahattin Ali won an award in Bulgaria.” So this award is an outcome that emerged as the answer to “You cannot set borders to ideas, to that worldview.” Naturally, like everyone who reads Sabahattin Ali’s books, I am someone who embraces his human side and, naturally, his stance. The answer to your question was put into words by Ege Görgün. This result came out of Sofia as an indirect sign that there can be no borders. When I interpret the result this way, I say I am so glad I received that award in Sofia.

Hasan Sönmez: The question I actually want to ask at this point also has to do with precisely this stance of yours. Because, after all, in making this film you take a stance by making political references, just as Sabahattin Ali does in his stories. What I am curious about is whether this stance will continue in your future projects. Or will commercial concerns come up later on, will screenplays start being made for commercial reasons?

In my second film, too, I will keep telling what I know well; I will keep telling about where I stand and what moves me emotionally. That is the line of White as Snow. Other things that were not part of the feelings and thoughts of the first film may find their way into the new films, but in essence the line I drew there expresses my world, my worldview and my feelings very accurately. As the storyteller’s story changes, some things will vary, but this will not mean that I will veer away from my direction completely.

Şebnem Aykol: I want to ask what the second film is about, but from the clues you have given, it sounds as if it will be about İstanbul.

Yes, the second film will be about İstanbul. Why İstanbul? The answer is very simple. Because it is a place I know very well and am familiar with, and I know I will handle İstanbul well, not as a backdrop but as a character. For cinema, photography, music and many art forms, for many areas of life, İstanbul is an inexhaustible sea. That being so, in my second film I want to tell a story set in İstanbul, which I think I know well.

Hasan Sönmez: I also felt something like this: you are learning to swim for the first time, and as you let yourself into the water you start from the shallows. Could we also think of it as you easing your way into cinema slowly, from places you know, from settings you know, from places whose spirit you fully feel and have lived in, from areas where you feel safe?

Actually, on the one hand what you say is right, but on the other hand, as someone so far outside the film industry, you are jumping into the middle of the ocean. Whatever you call it, I started my first film in the middle of the ocean; it was as if, in the middle of the ocean, I came upon shores I knew. Like the three things you take with you when you are left on an island, I happened upon things I knew. I took my childhood, my feelings and my thoughts. With these three things I shot a film in the middle of the ocean. But if you look at it as a way in, we were in an ocean, however much I had taken swimming lessons and practised for three years beforehand.

It is like this in photography too. Eugene Smith, a photographer I greatly admire, also works like this. Look at all the photographs this photographer took. He shot in Europe, in Japan, in America, everywhere in the world. He is someone who, every time he pressed the shutter, felt from the heart the emotion and the thought of every region he photographed. But you couldn’t name ten photographers in the world like him. He is a true citizen of the world. He is someone who was able to share the very depths and the emotion of human beings. A person like him can tell any project that comes his way, can shoot a feature film. But I know that I can produce better things in places I know.

Eugene Smith is an example from photography. In every art form there are people like this: very sensitive, true citizens of the world, who know exactly what they want, deeply human. If only we could be one of them. But I think it is more right for me at least to know my own abilities and try to say something within those limits.

Şebnem Aykol: Will the reading and theoretical study you did during the three years before the film, which you mentioned earlier, be repeated for these new projects? How do you see the preparation process, or are you now only out in the field?

Of course I look back at my work and notes from those three years now and then. I no longer need such an intensive period of study. But I don’t mean that my studying is over. Now I say I will shoot a feature film about İstanbul, and I say I know İstanbul, but if you look at my desk in there now you can see: books on İstanbul, photographs of İstanbul; I am going to study films shot about İstanbul. True, I don’t need to study anything technical, but I very much need to study the İstanbul I know. Alongside the screenplay, this process of study is also going on.

Hasan Sönmez: What criticisms have reached you, whether you expected them or not, beyond your expectations? Were there very positive or very negative criticisms that surprised you?

To tell the truth, we didn’t receive any very negative criticism. One film critic said this about our film: “The director of White as Snow tried not to tell the story rather than to tell it. I appreciate the images he shot and the form he tried out, but I don’t like it.” Essentially he thinks I distanced him from the story. We have an experimental language created through editing, and he says he doesn’t care for that language. It is a criticism in which the critic concludes by saying, I appreciate it, this is an experiment, a piece of work, but I don’t like it. That was the most negative comment about the film.

Again, aren’t there people in our own circle of friends and family who didn’t like it? Of course there are. But they too usually say things like, the images were magnificent, I really liked that actor, the music was very moving, but… and then give their views: this part was like this, that part was like that, I didn’t understand that part.

After the screening at the Antalya Film Festival, at the place where we came out for the Q&A, I really loved the way one woman described the film. She was trying to convey her excitement and her feelings with her hands and gestures. Then I felt that our film had sunk into this woman completely, that we had touched her heart. But this kind of reaction usually comes mostly from women. For example, in Bulgaria a woman film director named Iglika Triffonova congratulated us warmly and from the heart after coming out of the film. Then, when we won the award, she was even happier than we were. We received very positive audience reactions like this abroad too.

The German film director on the jury told us: we chose your film without any hesitation, because your poetic narration, your cinematography and your natural acting impressed us greatly. There was positive feedback from ordinary viewers too. There were comments that warmed our hearts and that I think were accurate observations. One of the students who watched it at the Eskişehir Film Festival wrote a piece that I liked very much and that we shared; even if you ordered someone to praise this film, you couldn’t get such a heartfelt piece. Some film critics said, we are eagerly waiting for your second feature film.

Şebnem Aykol: We have finished our questions about your film; lastly, I would like to ask you a question about photography. Is it all cinema from now on, or will you have projects related to photography?

Actually, I want the two to go together. I also have a photography project in mind, but somehow I haven’t been able to start it; if I did start, I would see it through. To be honest, I want to shoot portraits. With the excitement of the second film we have started its screenplay, and that excitement continues. If I don’t do what I myself say, it won’t work: if you concentrate, you do good work. Sometimes you concentrate and work, then you need to take a break and step away a little, and then you can take up the other project… But the two together are difficult, for now.

But photography is always there; if photography is half of my heart, cinema is the other half. Now it is impossible for either of them not to be there.

Şebnem Aykol: But the enthusiasm you show when you speak of the second film isn’t really felt when you speak of photography. It seems as if cinema has stolen the show a little?

It may well have stolen the show. Because right now the second project is very much on my mind, and the rush around White as Snow is still going on — we have invitations to several festivals until the end of this year, so there will be comings and goings for those too — so the excitement of cinema, especially the excitement of the second film, naturally outweighs everything else at the moment…

Şebnem Aykol: Thank you very much for the time you have given us and for this warm conversation.

Lastly, I would also like to say something about you. This is a saying of Andrei Tarkovsky: he said to people who came to interview him, “Ask me intelligent questions.” And I thank you for asking me intelligent questions.

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