TURKISH FILM SERIES at the UNION THEATER

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Nov 18^th-19^th, 2010

Organized by the Turkish-American Association of Wisconsin, UWM Union Theatre, and the Moon and Stars Project.

All screenings are FREE and open to the public. Films are presented with English subtitles.

Turkish Film Series has been made possible by a grant from the Turkish Cultural Foundation.

PROGRAM:

Honey / Bal     FRIDAY 7PM

(Semih Kaplanoglu, Turkey/Germany, 2010, 103 minutes, DVD)

Yusuf (6) has started primary school and is learning how to read and write. His father, Yakup (35-38), works far in the depths of a frightening forest. He is a honey-gatherer who hangs his hand-made beehives in the upper branches of tall trees in the forest. The forest is a place of mystery for Yusuf, who often accompanies his father.
One morning Yusuf describes the dream he had seen that night to his father. This dream is to be an ever-lasting secret between the father and the son. On that same day, as Yusuf struggles to read before his entire classmates the text the teacher has given him, he begins suddenly to stutter and is ridiculed by his classmates. Yakup goes to a distant forest, looking for the Caucasian bees which seem to be quickly and mysteriously disappearing. His father gone, Yusuf slips into silence. Yusuf’s mother, Zehra (28), who works in the tea fields, is saddened to see her son in this state. No matter how much she tries, she cannot get her son to speak. Days pass and Zehra and Yusuf becomes anxious when Yakup does not return. Zehra sends Yusuf to spend the sacred Mirac Night (the night of the Ascension of the Prophet) with his grandmother, who lives quite a distance away from their village. There, Yusuf listens to the story of the Mirac, and believes that his father, who to the lad resembles the Holy Prophet, will return. The next day they fail to find Yakup at the festival being held on Sis (mist) Mountain. Yusuf goes deep into the forest to search for his father. Will the dream he has seen come true?

The Majority / Cogunluk         FRIDAY 9PM

(Seren Yuce, Turkey, 2010, 102 minutes, 35mm)

Sometimes a debut feature startles by virtue of the simple clarity of the story it tells. Such is the case with first-time feature director Seren Yüce’s The Majority, which transforms a sober account of family life into a trenchant social critique.

The film revolves around Mertkan, the shiftless scion of a middle-class family and the heir apparent to his autocratic father’s construction company. Mertkan works so hard at upholding his image as a freewheeling young man with no responsibilities that he has lost interest in pretty much everything: cruising the malls with his friends, smoking in his dad’s SUV or working for his father’s business all bore him equally. He feels no need to plumb for any meaning in life or any inkling of a professional calling.

When he meets Gül, a young woman putting herself through university by working as a waitress, Mertkan seems poised to break out of his empty routine. However, his family disapproves of his new girlfriend on the grounds of her being a minority from the Eastern city of Van; their values are too imposing for Mertkan to challenge. He is, after all, unaccustomed to doing anything that requires real effort.

While setting out along the arc of a coming-of-age narrative, The Majority builds to much more. Through Yüce’s examination of one man’s choices – or perhaps his lack thereof – the film offers an alarmingly realistic study of a stratum of Turkish society that nurtures nationalism and militarism through the seemingly innocuous relationships of parents and their children. The fact that the film is set within a liberal and modernized Istanbul makes Mertkan’s inability to shun tradition all the more ironic. The Majority emerges as a study of the inertia of private values that can co-exist with a fast-changing public sphere.

Merry-Go-Round / Atlikarinca                        SATURDAY 7:00PM

(Ilksen Basarir, Turkey, 2011, 93 minutes, Betacam

Erdem and Sevil live in a small town with their two kids, Edip and Sevgi, until they are forced to move to Istanbul to look after Sevil’s mother who has become paralyzed. Ten years later, Edip is away at boarding school, disconnected from family life. Erdem still has the same dream: to become a successful writer…Noticing that her daughter has suddenly become withdrawn and unhappy, Sevil begins to question some of what is going on at home, and discovers a secret behind closed doors. Erdem’s death in a traffic accident will reveal further secrets within the family. Each member of this small family is faced with truths that they will have to bear on their own for the rest of their lives.

Shadows and Faces / Golgeler ve Suretler    SATURDAY 9:00PM

(Dervis Zaim, Turkey, 2010, 116 minutes, DVD)

Last film of Zaim's trilogy made around traditional Ottoman arts (Waiting for Heaven/Cenneti Beklerken on miniatures, Dot/Nokta on calligraphy), Shadow and Faces is the coming-of-age story of a young girl who is separated from her father, a Karagöz shadow play master, during the beginning of the conflict between Turks and Greeks in Cyprus in 1963. With a backdrop of extraordinary natural beauty, the experiences of the villagers fleeing from their village in the Island’s Karpas region to the relatively secure but alienating city sheds light on the story of Cyprus.