Museum to screen ecological movies

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Istanbul Modern is hosting a movie program for the 2011 Amber Arts and Technology Festival. Within the festival’s catalogue it is possible to discover some of the best Turkish documentary movies.

The theme for this year’s festival is “Next Ecology,” proposing to look through a new perspective at all the different relationships humans establish with their natural and artificial environments and the living spaces and forms they create.

The program includes Ecumenopolis: City without Limits directed by İmre Azem, a depiction of neoliberal urbanization. The movie is about how all ecological, economic and demographic thresholds are surpassed and social harmony is upset in Istanbul. In his first feature-length documentary, Azem aims for a comprehensive approach to Istanbul, as much as the change itself, and he questions the underlying dynamics. He takes us on a long journey in this endless city, from demolished slums to the tops of skyscrapers, from the depths of the Marmara Sea to the route of the third bridge crossing the Bosphorus, from real estate investors to urban development opposition. The hope is that you will not be a mere spectator to change, but question it.

An Ecology of Mind, a Canadian movie, also features in the program. The documentary concerns Gregory Bateson, celebrated anthropologist, philosopher, author, naturalist, systems theorist and filmmaker, produced and directed by his daughter, Nora Bateson. The film includes footage from Bateson’s own films shot in 1930s Bali (with Margaret Mead) and New Guinea, along with photographs, filmed lectures and interviews. His youngest child, Nora, depicts him as a man who studied the interrelationships of the complex systems in which we live with a depth motivated by scientific rigor and caring integrity.

Amber’11 will continue in Istanbul until Nov. 13