October
29, 2009
NEW YORK, — The first New York Kurdish Film
Festival took place on October 21-25, presenting a
wide range of feature films, shorts, and
documentaries under the slogan “A Cinema Across
Borders.”
The festival comes on the heels of the larger London
Kurdish Film Festival, which has been run annually
since 2001.
Nine full-length films by as many directors and a
smorgasbord of documentaries and shorts were
screened in New York.
Spread over a volatile region encompassing parts of
Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, the Kurdish people
for centuries have struggled for identity and
statehood. Turbulent history and political realities
often force Kurdish filmmakers to express themselves
through allegory, symbolism, and allusion.
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Iraqi Kurdish director Hiner Saleem (right) and
actor Yvan Franek promoting their film Vodka Lemon.
Photo: rferl org |
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Despite the
unfavorable conditions for cultural development at
home, Kurdish cinematographers have achieved
considerable success abroad, including the Palme
D’Or at Cannes in 1982 for "Yol," a film by the
Turkish-Kurdish director Yilmaz Guney. "Yol" was
filmed by an assistant based on detailed
instructions from Guney, who was in prison at the
time.
Bahman Ghobadi from Iran, whose film "No One Knows
About Persian Cats" premiered at the New York
festival, is among the better-known contemporary
Kurdish filmmakers.
Also offering a film in New York was Hiner Saleem,
an Iraqi-Kurdish cinematographer based in France.
Saleem’s latest comedy, "Vodka Lemon," is a gentle
love story about an ex-army officer and a barmaid
set in a Kurdish village in Armenia that dismisses
the notion that there is a common underlying theme
for all Kurdish filmmakers.
“We can live in the same city or the same village
but think differently or have different
sensibilities,” Saleem said. “Unfortunately today
for Kurds in Turkey, in Syria, in Iran, it is very
hard to make movies. It’s very difficult to work
because there is an apartheid against Kurdish [people],www.ekurd.netthere
is no equality, there are no human rights, there is
no freedom. But some very courageous, brave Kurdish
girls and boys [are] making movies in very hard
conditions.”
Bollywood Or Melodrama
Saleem says that as in many other parts of the
world, Kurds are far less excited to see movies
about their bleak living conditions than the latest
action flick featuring Tom Cruise.
As an example of the extreme lengths Kurdish
filmmakers have to go to bring their movies to local
audiences he recalls his experience from one of his
previous movies. He filmed the movie with the help
of a 500,000 euro grant from a French cultural
institution, but upon offering it for free to one of
the Kurdish TV channels in Iraqi Kurdistan, his
offer was declined.
Bollywood films and Egyptian and Turkish melodramas
dominate the cultural landscape in Iraqi Kurdistan,
Saleem notes, and few people show an inclination
toward the politically or socially engaged movies
that many Kurdish filmmakers produce.
Jano Rosebiani is an Iraqi-Kurdish filmmaker based
in California whose film "Jiyan" -- a story of a
10-year orphan in the aftermath of the 1988 gas
attack in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja -- was
screened at the festival. Rosebiani says that
terrorism concerns are another major obstacle
keeping local audiences in Iraqi Kurdistan out of
the movie theaters.
“You would not want to sit in a dark room full of
people in that region, at least not yet. So,
therefore the cinema has not really taken its ground
yet in that region,” Rosebiani said.
In 2000, when Rosebiani felt safe enough to relocate
to northern Iraq's Kurdistan region to start making
movies locally, he had to smuggle all the equipment
through Turkey because there was none available in
Kurdistan. After the films were shot, the negatives
had to be flown back to Belgium for development and
editing.
Prohibition In Turkey
The situation is not much different today, says
Rosebiani, who relocated from Kurdistan to
California in 2008. “We don’t have a cinema industry
in Kurdistan yet because for the majority of the
Kurdish regions, you are not allowed to show Kurdish
films,” Rosebiani said. Where 60 or 65-70 percent of
the Kurdish area is in Turkey, you cannot show
Kurdish films in Turkey, for example; likewise in
Iran or Syria. The only part [where] you can show
Kurdish film is Kurdistan in Iraq, that’s only 5-6
million people, half of which are not at...the age
to see a film.”
Yuksel Yavuz, a Turkish-Kurdish filmmaker based in
Germany, says that he was surprised when he received
a call from a distribution company in Turkey in 2004
requesting the rights to his movie "A Little Bit Of
Freedom." When he later visited Turkey and sought to
see his film in Istanbul,www.ekurd.nethe
discovered that it was being shown only in a small
screening room of a local porn-movie theater.
"Bawke," a 15-minute film by Iraqi Kurdish filmmaker
Hisham Zaman, captures the tension and desperation
of a Kurdish father and his young son as they make a
perilous attempt to cross Europe and find a safe
haven. "Bawke" has received numerous awards, and
Zaman, who has been based in Norway for the last 17
years, says that though still underdeveloped,
Kurdish cinema has its own distinctive features.
“Kurdish cinema for me, what makes Kurdish cinema
different from other cinemas, maybe is the way they
present human beings, the way they use amateur
actors, the way they show their existence and their
life and cultural traditions,” Zaman said.
The festival featured a special presentation called
"Women in Kurdish Cinema," which included short
films made by and about Kurdish women. The
organizers were forced, however, to cancel a panel
on the subject because the moderator, Müjde Arslan,
a young Turkish-Kurdish filmmaker, was not issued a
U.S. visa.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, rferl
org
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