Festival on Wheel rides again in Ankara

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The 18th Festival on Wheels, organized by the Ankara Cinema Association, is placing special emphasis on the static crises of the modern world. In addition to screenings in the capital Nov. 30 to Dec. 10, the festival will head for the Black Sea province of Sinop from Dec. 7 to 10.

The festival will offer film fans a lineup of international cinema. The selection is made up of films from countries all over the world from Chile and South Korea to Austria and Serbia, many of them award-winning films at major international festivals such as Berlin, Cannes and Rotterdam. Several films including “The King of Pigs,” “The Year of the Tiger,” “The Parade,” “Here and There,” “Thursday Till Sunday” and “The Cleaner,” will be premiering in Turkey at the Festival on Wheels.

“No,” a feature directed by Pablo Larrain and Chile’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2013 Academy Awards, will take viewers back to the oppressive Pinochet regime of the 1980s.

The section features another Academy Award submission, Michael Haneke’s “Love,” a portrayal of an elderly couple’s heartrending relationship that brought the Austrian director his second Palme d’Or in three years. Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which scooped plentiful awards at the Cannes, Los Angeles, Seattle, Sundance and Sydney film festivals, leads viewers into the fantastic world of six-year-old Hushpuppy.

Turkish Cinema 2012

The Turkish Cinema 2012 section presents a pick of this year’s home-turf productions, and actors and directors from the films will come together with audiences at gala performances during the festival. The section includes “Küf” (Mold), the poignant story of a father still desperate for news of his missing son after 18 years, which won first-time director Ali Aydın a Lion of the Future Award at Venice; and “Devir” (Cycle), the latest offering from Derviş Zaim, who turns his camera on Anatolia and the cycle of the natural world.

Also in the lineup are “Siirt’in Sırrı” (Know My Name), a documentary co-directed by İnan Temelkuran and Kristen Steven about the teenage female wrestling champion Evin Demirhan, which scooped three awards at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival; the first feature from Belmin Söylemez, “Şimdiki Zaman” (Present Tense), the winner of the Best Film and Best Screenplay awards in Adana; and “Babamın Sesi” (Voice of My Father), the latest work from filmmaking duo Orhan Eskiköy and Zeynel Doğan.

Other award-winning films in this section include “Zerre” (The Particle), “Yeraltı” (Inside) by Zeki Demirkubuz, “Araf” (Somewhere in Between) by Yeşim Ustaoğlu and “Lal Gece” (Night of Silence) by Reis Çelik.

Films watched ‘over and over’ by Tuncel Kurtiz

The 18th Festival on Wheels dedicates one of this year’s sections to the favorite films of actor, writer and director Tuncel Kurtiz. The selection features five American and European classics watched “over and over” by the master of Turkish cinema. Among them are Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard” and Elio Petri’s “Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion.”

Festival goers will also have the chance to watch two 1970s classics from U.S. cinema, “Nashville” and “All That Jazz.”

War, the relics of war

In this year’s edition of Special Screenings, the 18th Festival on Wheels will take another incisive look at the unchanging crises of the modern world. Films in this section present a stark and offbeat account of children growing up in a war environment, contemporary vestiges of fascism, commonly held to be the shame of the 20th century, and the battles waged by people in the West against corporate life and authority.

Montreal-based filmmaker Kim Nguyen’s “War Witch” and Iraqi brothers Atia and Mohamed Jabarah al-Daradji’s “My Mother’s Arms” are among these films.

There will also be a special screening of “Blood Must Flow – Undercover Among Nazis” with director Peter Ohlendorf.

In “Manufacturing Defect,” a section comprising two feature-length and two short documentaries, the 18th Festival on Wheels will also examine corporate life, production systems, the police, authority and, more generally, the status quo of Western civilization in the 21st century. “Work Hard – Play Hard,” by Carmen Losmann and Andrey Gryazev’s “Tomorrow” are the films in this section.

At the “Beyond Captivation: Larry Jordan Retrospective” festival audiences will be treated to one feature film and eight shorts by one of the pioneers of animation and experimental cinema, American filmmaker Larry Jordan. The avant-garde Jordan, a director acclaimed for his surreal collage animation and singular cinematic style, has been making his trademark films for 60 years. In “Sophie’s Place,” thousands of hand-painted, single-framed images merge with shots of the Hagia Sophia, promising audiences an unparalleled visual journey.

The Short is Good and Children’s Films sections will again take their place in this year’s festival. Selected from over 1,000 entries from all over the world, the lineup of festival shorts will introduce audiences to the innovative cinema of myriad different countries.

As well as a fun-filled animation workshop by Jenny van den Broeke and Mieke Driessen for kids, the 18th Festival on Wheels program will include a new media documentary workshop, offering both theoretical and practical content for adults.

Screenings in Ankara will take place at the Kızılay Büyülü Fener Cinema and the Goethe Institute.