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Turkish
club singer discovers herself in Kurdistan |
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Turkish club singer discovers herself in
Kurdistan
27.2.2006
By Vladimir van Wilgenburg, Journalist - Netherlands
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The Turkish South
Florida nightlife queen Ozzie Aziz visited Kurdistan
to shoot a low-budget movie. A lot of Kurds have a
very bad image of Turks, but this Turkish
independent lady spent a month shooting a movie in
Kurdish, a language she couldn’t speak.
The movie addressed taboo issues in some Middle
Eastern countries, such as rape, honor crimes [where
girls are beaten and even killed for having sexual
or romantic contacts], forced marriage reported the
Miami Herald.
Despite danger, protected by army bodyguards and
attacked with hostile questions and angry comments
at the film’s premier in Kurdistan, she flies back.
The movie “Bekhal’s tears” will be shown at a Film
Competition in Dubai.
London-born Aziz says she starred in her first
feature film, Bekhal's Tears (Firmeski Bexal), not
to further her own career, but to make a statement
for women's rights. Bekhal's Tears is the result of
the collaboration of two ''soul-mates'' who are
descended from ethnic groups locked in a historic
conflict: Kurdish filmmaker Lauand Omar and Cypriot
Turk Aziz. A rare combination, who have thought that
Kurdish and Turkish moviemakers would ever work
together in peace?
"I wanted to do something"
Omar wrote Bekhal's Tears after visiting
Iraqi-Kurdistan, where his father runs a cultural
center. The Kurdish government funded the film,
which shows the police rescuing Bekhal and sending
her to one of the women's shelters that are being
established in Kurdistan. Omar says conversations
with Kurdistan's young people, ''the forgotten
generation,'' inspired him to make the drama.
''I started to hear about the things that did not
get discussed in public,'' Omar says. ``The problems
between the young and the old generation. The abuse.
The honor killings. I wanted to do something.''
He invited the Westernized women Aziz, because any
Kurdish women playing in this movie could face
danger from angry men. Ozzie Aziz accepted it with
delight. She was always looking for more adventures.
Even the Kurdish cast was racist
Aziz is a women, with a impressive décolletage,
that’s not natural for a Middle-Eastern women. A
raven-haired beauty with an infectious laugh, her
ambition and talent have taken her from London's
stages to Kurdistan making a movie. She has worked
as a model, singer and as an actress. Her latest
single “Let Me Be” is about a fetish-loving women
and a gay men, who struggle against preconceptions
and prejudice. |
EVOLVING PHILOSOPHY: 'The more I travel...the more
it changes me as a person,' says Ozzie Aziz. 'It
made me look at the world in a different way.'
Photo:
http://www.ozzie4u.com/bekhal.shtml
"A raven-haired beauty" |
Aziz was definitely unprepared for the intensity of
the emotions that would await her as a Westerner
playing a Kurd. ''Even the cast was racist,'' she
said. She hid the fact she was Turkish for weeks;
tensions between the ethnic groups are thick,
because of the conflict between the Kurds and the
Turkish government. Eventually, Aziz won over her
co-stars with her determination, but not until she
had been humbled.
Turkish singer memorizing Kurdish
''The hardest part was the language,'' Aziz says.
She speaks Turkish but not Kurdish, the language of
the film. Most Kurds in the Kurdish area’s of Turkey
were forced to learn Turkish and to assimilate into
Turkish culture, but now a Turkish singer had to
speak Kurdish. She read a translation of the script,
then memorized the sound of her lines without
understanding the words. There was no rehearsal. The
whole film was shot in two months for $50,000.
Bekhal's Tears depicts a family not standing by each
other, but turning on a daughter who brings
''disgrace'' after her fiancé rapes her. When the
film premiered in Kurdistan, it got a standing
ovation. ''The young people loved it,'' Omar says.
Then during the press conference, audience members
accused the filmmakers of being outsiders showing a
false picture of Iraq.
"The movie touched people"
''There was a lot of anger,'' Omar says. ``Some,
mostly men, [verbally] attacked me, saying that such
problems do not exist in their society, and who was
I to come here and make them all look bad in other
countries? That's when I realized that I was
achieving what I wanted. The movie touched the
people.'' ''I've never felt so much hatred in my
life,'' Aziz says of the premiere. ``Ninety percent
of the questions were against us.''
That kind of challenge inspires Omar and Aziz. They
are preparing for their next film, also to be shot
in Kurdistan. Mistress of Mesopotamia will be a
horror flick that draws on classic Kurdish legends.
When Aziz returns from the film festival in Dubai,
she'll focus again on her music. But the movie
definitely changed her live.
Read the full story here:
Madonna of Mesopotamia: A traveling club singer
discovers herself in Iraq
Firmeski Bekhal, the new Kurdish movie is on the
air! - Hewler Globe- PDF
More pictures and information: ozzie4u.com
Kurdish director Lauand Omar
Source:
http://vladimirkurdistan.blogspot.com
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