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Filming on the borders of fiction, documentary and identity |
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Filming on the borders of fiction,
documentary and identity
1.2.2008
Movie Review By Jim Quilty
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Turkish filmmaker Huseyin Karabey's discusses his
first feature 'My Marlon and Brando'.
February 1, 2008
ROTTERDAM: A handheld camera jolts and jerks
its way across a film location - somewhere in the
mountain vastness of Kurdistan, the audience later
learns. It approaches a young woman in a wedding
dress and a slightly pompous-sounding voice begins a
mock, Oscar-awards interview in English.
"Do you love the Kurdish people?" the cameraman
asks, then presents the bride with a plastic sword
as a trophy. "We are like gypsies," he says. "As
long as we're with our loved ones we can live
anywhere."
The prologue for Turkish writer and director Huseyin
Karabey's first feature "My Marlon and Brando" is
appropriately self-referential. |
Hüseyin Karabey - Director |
The Turkish-Dutch co-production had its world premiere at the
International Film Festival of Rotterdam earlier
this week. Audiences - apparently curious about this
often discussed, if selectively filmed, region -
have received it with enthusiasm.
The film follows the efforts of Ayca (Ayca Damgaci),
the young actress of the prologue, to see her lover
Hama Ali (Hama Ali Kahn). He's also an actor and the
couple met on location in Kurdistan. The prologue is
a video record of one of their early encounters.
Afterward, Ayca returned to Istanbul to resume her
life and work, while Hama Ali went to Sulaimaniyah
in Kurdistan 'northern Iraq', where he works as a
butcher. Their long-distance relationship is
comprised of letters and phone calls from Istanbul
and video epistles that double as informal
documentaries of his life in Sulaimaniyah. All their
communications are, eccentrically it seems, in
English.
Hama Ali's letters profess his love in baroque terms
and he sometimes splices mock-heroic film clips into
them, underlining the letters' comic aspect. He
promises he will join Ayca in Istanbul as soon as
conditions are right. Conditions are destined to
worsen,www.ekurd.net
however. It's 2003, and
America is preparing to invade Saddam Hussein's
Iraq. When the bombs start falling, Ayca can't stand
it and sets out for Sulaimaniyah to be with him.
The balance of the film recounts her journey. Upon
arrival at the Turkish-Iraqi border, she learns that
the Turkish Army is prohibiting any movement into
Iraq. She has no choice but to travel to a town near
Sulaimaniyah,www.ekurd.net
just on the other side
of the Iranian border. True to road movie tradition,
the incidents coloring the journey are as important
as the destination itself, both in terms of what
Ayca and her audience encounter along the way.
The great strength of "My Marlon and Brando" lies in
its verisimilitude. Both Ayca Damgaci and Hama Ali
Kahn look more like human beings than fashion
models. Indeed, the story at the center of the film
is that of Damgaci herself.
This shouldn't be a surprise, given that Karabey,
38, has been making documentaries for the last 12
years. He says verity is central to his aims,
although he also professes skepticism toward the
truth of film.
"In the old days," Karabey says. "[We Kurds] used to
record our letters on tape recorders [because] we
don't like to write. Now Kurdish people shoot
videos. I knew the film would take Ayca to the
Turkish-Iraqi border because ... we want to remind
people what has happened in Kurdistan in the past
and what's happening there now.
"I believe that documentary is more fictional than
fiction film. Some people believe that if you can
move 24 frames per second, then what you're seeing
must be real. With the video letters in this film,
we are trying to show a new kind of reality.
"We didn't want to define the reality of things but
to raise questions about this reality. This is the
main question in Turkey right now. The state's
policy has always been to ignore our identity, to
call us 'Mountain Turks.' It's more important to
raise questions about these statements than to make
our own didactic statements."
Karabey has made a film with both Turkish and
foreign viewers in mind, but a skeptical audience
may misread the codes he uses. The extensive use of
English in the film seems an effort to appeal to
anglophone audiences, renowned for their distaste
for subtitles. He says the Turkish-Kurdish couple
communicates in English because this is the only
language they share.
"There are different [narrative] circles in the
film," he continues. "The outermost circle is the
simple love story that anyone can understand. There
is also a second circle that people who have a small
knowledge of Turkey and Kurdistan can follow. Then
there's the inside circle for those who know the
region very well.
"The early shots show street scenes of Istanbul, for
instance, but the soundtrack music is Kurdish.
Filming the ancient capital of the Turks with
Kurdish music has never been done before.
"Later, when Ayca drives to the Iraqi border, she
talks with her Kurdish taxi driver about identity.
They stop at a ruined village so he can clean an old
grave there. This may mean nothing to foreigners but
all Turks will know the village as one the Turkish
army destroyed 17 years ago because it occupies
strategic high ground. There's no need to name it.
"I didn't plan to shoot that scene originally,"
Karabey laughs, "but when we came to the site, we
found the security detail that usually guards it was
between shifts. So we stopped and filmed the scene
in an hour."
Several recurring motifs seem to mark the film as
something other than fictionalized documentary.
Ayca's neighbors in her Istanbul flat are a pair of
fretful, elderly ladies who gawk out their window
all day and greet her every time she comes home,
taking the opportunity to remind her to lock the
door as she enters the building.
Throughout her journey, Ayca's various taxi drivers
all want to play the music of pop singer Ibrahim
Tatlises. She doesn't mind at first, but ultimately
asks the driver to play something else, only to find
Tatlises is all he has.
The foreign audience may appreciate these motifs for
the comic relief they provide. Those closer to the
story will find another layer of meaning.
"Turkish audiences will recognize Ayca's downstairs
neighbors are Armenians," Karabey says. They are
funny but their fear sends a signal about the place
of Turkey's Armenian community in the country.
"Ibrahim Tatlises," he laughs, "is a huge pop star
all over Turkey and Kurdistan. The point is that
people are listening to the same silly music,
despite the borders between them. Ayca's finds
people in Iran are watching illegal Turkish
television but she can't cross the border to be with
her lover."
Borders are a not uncommon motif in the recent work
of Kurdish filmmakers. An otherwise very different
film, "Half Moon" - the award-winning 2006 feature
by Iran's Bahman Ghobadi - also follows Kurdish
characters unsuccessfully trying to cross into Iraqi
Kurdistan. Borders reflect the political reality of
Kurds being dispersed among four different countries
- Syria and Iran as well as Iraq and Turkey - and
impose identity politics upon Kurdish filmmakers,
whether they want it or not.
Karabey is ambivalent about the matter. "On one hand
we don't care about borders," he says. "We're not
all saying there must be a unified Kurdish state.
But the borders are a reality. I've seen villages
cut in two by the Iranian and Turkish border. Many
people are trying to stir up hatred among people. We
say you must look at these matters with humor and
compassion and humanity.
"I don't want to ignore my identity or to use it be
a successful filmmaker. I'm trying not to forget
where I come from, just to fight this policy of
ignoring who we are. My father speaks four languages
- Kurdish, Turkish, Farsi and Arabic. Today people
turn their backs on this [cosmopolitanism]. But it
was a good thing, no?"
The International Film Festival of Rotterdam
continues through February 3. For more information
on Huseyin Karabey's "My Marlon and Brando," please
check out
www.asifilm.com
Dailystar com.lb
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