Yeşilçam awards ‘frozen’ this year

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Beyoğlu Mayor Ahmet Misbah Demircan says the municipality and TÜRSAK agreed on freezing the Yeşilçam Awards for a year to give a chance to alternative awards.

The Beyoğlu Municipality will not be organizing its annual Yeşilçam Film Awards this year, Mayor Ahmet Misbah Demircan announced yesterday.

The Beyoğlu mayor and Engin Yiğitgil, the chairman of Turkish Cinema and Audiovisual Culture Foundation (TÜRSAK), held a press meeting and said both of the institutions had agreed on freezing the awards for a year, to give a chance to an alternative award ceremony, organized by professional cinema unions.

The Yeşilçam Film Awards has been held for four years. For the 2012 ceremony the Beyoğlu Municipality decided to collaborate with professional cinema unions. The mayor said that they took a proposal to the unions, but before they were given a reply the unions had made a press statement that they were organizing an alternative award ceremony, titled the “Yeşilçam Academy Awards.”

“When we heard the media reports about this award ceremony we contacted them again. They said they had refused the offer to take part in our award ceremony because they wanted to organize their own event. They said if we wanted to collaborate we could take part in their organization.”

Demircan said the municipality would not take part in another award program, which quotes the name of their own but was initially planned without their consent or collaboration. “However, we are very happy to have learned that the professional unions are now gaining a new institutional level through this new formation, which includes ‘academy’ in its title. We would like them to know that we will stand by them to provide them with our know-how.”

The mayor said they would like to see the first Yeşilçam Academy Award ceremony before deciding whether to resume their own award ceremony. The decision would depend on how the new ceremony measures up to the quality level of its predecessor.

TÜRSAK Chairman Yiğitgil said TÜRSAK had been supporting Turkish cinema for 2 years and added they would continue to do so. “We agree with the mayor about giving this independent award a chance, but this does not mean that we are leaving them all alone. We will be keeping a keen eye on how they do. If we decide that the result is below the quality we have set so far, we will reconsider our decision to freeze the Yeşilçam Awards,” he said.