FILM FESTIVAL HELPS TO BRIDGE CENTURIES-OLD BARRIERS BETWEEN TURKS AND ARMENIANS
Voice of America News
July 8, 2009
Film has become an important medium in helping to break down
barriers between neighbors Turkey and Armenia. The border between
the two countries has been closed for more than a decade and the
historical controversy over Armenia’s claim that the Turks committed
genocide against its Armenian population in 1915 continues to sour
relations. But this month’s Golden Apricot Film Festival in the
Armenian capital Yerevan sees the two countries’ filmmakers coming
together. It’s part of the Turkish Armenian Film Platform launched
at this year’s Istanbul film festival. The project was inspired by
of all things, a football match.
Last year’s football match in the Armenian capital Yerevan, between
Armenia and Turkey, with the historical attendance of the Turkish
president, was the catalyst for restoring diplomatic relations between
the two countries. But football diplomacy is fast making way for
film diplomacy.
At last April’s Istanbul Film Festival, Armenian filmmakers attended
the first joint workshop as part of efforts to build ties between
the two countries.
Cigdem Mater, Director of Istanbul’s Mithat Alem Film center, says film
can play a unique role in helping to ease age old misunderstandings
the neighbors.
"These two people who are very near to each other, and two neighbors
which are very far away from each other," said Cigdem Mater. "We lived
together for thousands and thousands of years. And now we actually
are trying to re-know each other. So it’s a huge process and a new
process and we think that the cinema has a huge power to help with
this process because its easy when you watch and see a movie to
understand what happened, to see what you are missing."
To achieve this goal, the Turkish Armenian film platform was
founded at the Istanbul Film Festival. Twelve Turkish and 12 Armenian
filmmakers are now working on documentaries, short and feature length
films. Mater, one of the platform’s founders, says it aims to offer
both technical and practical help in working together.
"This network will operate as a logistic help," said Mater. "It could
be possible to help people to find art directors, cinematographers
or even scriptwriters. So this platform will help both countries
filmmakers to make better movies about each other."
An elderly woman from the Armenian town of Gumre on the Turkish border
recounts a traditional fairy tale. It is a scene from a documentary
currently being filmed by Turkish director Zeynep Guzel. She is
recording such tales from towns on both sides of the border. Guzel says
the film seeks to transcend the historical animosities of the past.
"History seems so factual but it is something so abstract on the
level of historians, politicians and governments etc., but it doesn’t
touch to the real life to me," said Zeynep Guzel. "We need put the
similarities in front. And fairy tales is [are] something that is [are]
more transcendent than the border. It is something so universal, you
can find the fairy tale in northern Ireland. The same fairy tale as
well. It is something so specific to that culture as well. It became
specific with the tellers. We want to grab something very beyond the
history, before all of these talks and painful events."
But not all films skirt around the painful past of the two countries.
A Turkish Armenian recounting how some of his family members were
rounded up and then massacred along with thousands of others in the
surrounding mountains, during the deportations and mass killings of
Armenians in 1915.
The killings, say Armenia along with much of the world, were genocide,
something Turkey strongly denies. The scene is from the documentary
Hush by Turkish filmmaker Berke Bas. It tells, for the first time,
the story of the killings through the perspective of an Armenian
child, Bas’s grandmother, who was saved by a Turkish family. The film
platform organized for the film to be screened at this year’s Yerevan
film festival. Bas says she made the film for both Armenians and Turks.
"There are thousands of stories that are lost like this, that not
heard, that are not shared, that are not transmitted through the
generations," said Berke Bas. "Because in Turkey we have a terrible
relationship with our history and our past. So this kind of story
can make Turks feel we have lived with these people. These people are
part of our culture, part of our lives, part of our family histories
and I feel we have more in common than what divides us. And as for the
Armenian audience I would like them to feel we share the pain, we share
the history, and we have a right to know and talk about this history."
Such hopes are shared by Mater who along with the dozen Turkish
filmmakers will attend this month’s Golden Apricot Film Festival. She
sees the ongoing cooperation as part of a much wider reconciliation
process in which culture can trump politics.
"I think films, concerts, music and exhibitions will help a lot
in this process," said Mater. "Sometimes even seeing a picture of
Istanbul in the streets in Yerevan helps a lot in this reconciliation
process Because people will remember again the things they listened
[to] from their families."
Within a year, the first Turkish-Armenian films are expected to
be completed.