FILMING ON THE BORDERS OF FICTION, DOCUMENTARY AND IDENTITY
By Jim Quilty
The Daily Star
Feb 1 2008
Lebanon
Turkish filmmaker Huseyin Karabey’s discusses his first feature
‘My Marlon and Brando’
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. 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 Suleimaniyya in 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 Suleimaniyya. 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, 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
Suleimaniyya 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 Suleimaniyya, 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