Not wanting to do things by half, I packed my jewel-encrusted shirt studs and my wee slip of a black bow tie and took myself off to Antalya to attend the Golden Orange (it sounds better in Turkish: Altın Portakal) Film Festival. Luckily it was raining in Antalya, too.However, the sun shines metaphorically. The Turkish film industry is not in as dire form as would appear from the first competition film gala I went to see. “Spring, Fall” (İlkbahar, Sonbahar) is not to be recommended to those sticklers for tradition who seek films with characters or plot. It is a vague parable of Thoreau-like communalism, although clearly not of ensemble acting. An elderly idealist recruits a band of aimless young people to give meaning to their lives by devising a film, and one can only hope it was better than the one director Yavuz Ozkan has made us watch. The moment the packed audience seemed to enjoy the most was when the cast chased an escaped chicken. The whole enterprise seemed as archaic as the protagonist, but at least it flopped with honor.
Yet even this shaky start did not dampen my enthusiasm -- nor, it seems, that of the citizens of Antalya who saw their first film festival 46 years ago. The venues are packed, and the streets full of cheering fans for the cavalcade this year of 1960s stars of the Turkish screen. Once upon a time, the Turkish film industry was among the world's largest, as powerful in shaping the imagination of its citizens as Hollywood was of America. The festival is very much the city's own and while there is an international component, it works best as a showcase for Turkish films. Alas it is not a showcase for Turkish politics, and the buzz is as much about the way central government has tried to starve Antalya of funds for having the temerity to vote in an opposition candidate as mayor. The current city administration is having to work off its predecessors' debts, and this year's festival stumbles along on a shoestring budget.
There was politics on the screen as well, and a reminder in the documentary section that the government's attempt to overcome years of bitterness with its much heralded “Kurdish overture” is not the work of a moment. “Prison No. 5” relates the harrowing history of brutality in Diyarbakir Prison after the 1980 coup. One has to look elsewhere for seeds of hope. There was a standing ovation for what promises to be the most controversial film of the festival -- “Min Dît,” or “Before My Eyes” -- a film shot mainly in Kurdish. It is the first feature-length film of Miraz Bezar and one with heart and meaning. The story is of two young children, presumably during the mid-1990s, who are left destitute when their parents are murdered by secret police and are forced onto the streets of Diyarbakir. The film's young stars were themselves recruited from the bands of young marauding street vendors to whom the film is dedicated. Şenay Orak, who plays the sister, has a face as economical in expression as Robert Mitchum's and a more schooled performers ability to evince a world of emotion with a single blink. Like “Slumdog Millionaire,” the film is uplifting. The children manage to avenge themselves on their parents' assassin in a way that asserts their own humanity. Unlike “Slumdog,” the plot is not mawkishly sentimental and only a little bit contrived. Not everyone, of course, cheered. “Min Dît” is not the sort of story that will comfort the prejudices of a Turkish audience nor is Kurdish a language they expect to hear. We must wait to see what sort of reception it gets.
Of course there were other films to see, including Kutluğ Ataman's mockumentary, “Journey to the Moon,” and Zeki Demirbukuz's “Envy.” And I write this before the jury has decided on whom to bestow the laurels. I do not suppose that Turkish cinema will ever recapture the role it once had in the 1960s, before there was national television and when “Internet” was something to do with tennis. But it is clear that a national cinema is recapturing its role of providing the images which people will use to make sense of the world, and it is extraordinary that some of the vocabulary is in Kurdish.
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