Festival on Wheels to hit the road in Aegean

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Gloria

Organized by the Ankara Cinema Association, the Festival on Wheels is set to host film enthusiasts at its 19th edition, which will run from Nov. 27 to Dec. 9. The festival will start in the Aegean province of Edremit, before moving onto Ankara for more screenings between Nov. 29 and Dec. 5 and travelling to the northern province of Sinop from Dec. 6 and 9.

A one-day event will take place in Edremit as part of the festival, in honor of legendary actor Tuncel Kurtiz, who recently died. The day’s line-up will include screenings of his film “Gül Hasan” (Hasan the Rose), and a documentary, Tuncel Kurtiz: a Trusted Travel Companion of the Festival on Wheels. There will also be further film screenings in the town throughout the day.

The second opening of this year’s festivals pays tribute to another important name. In its first ever screening in Ankara, Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film “Blackmail” will be presented with live music accompaniment at the city’s State Art and Sculpture Museum on Nov. 28.

“Turkey 2013,” a selection of local films made this year, once again promises to bring audiences the cast and director of featured titles at premiere performances throughout the festival. The program for this section includes: Mahmut Fazıl Coşkun’s “Yozgat Blues,” Deniz Akçay Katıksız’s “Köksüz” (Nobody’s Home), Onur Ünlü’s “Sen Aydınlatırsın Geceyi” (Thou Gild’st the Even), Hakkı Kurtuluş and Melik Saraçoğlu’s “Gözümün Nuru” (Eye Am), and Ramin Matin’s “Kusursuzlar” (The Impeccables). Also in the line-up are two dramatic features first screened at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Reha Erdem’s “Jîn” and Uğur Yücel’s “Soğuk” (Cold).

World cinema

The Festival on Wheels will bring audiences a pick of the latest award-winning films from leading international festivals such as Berlin, Cannes and Sundance. The bill includes Turkish premieres of foreign films “The Great Beauty,” “Cutie and the Boxer,” “Workers,” “This is Martin Bonner” and “Nobody’s Daughter Haewon,” as well as first screenings in Ankara of “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” “The Past,” “Gloria” and “A World Not Ours.” The program also consists of short films such as “Below” and “Videogame” by Dominga Sotomayor, “Titans” by Edison Cajas, “Tree Boy” by Waldo Salgado Lemmermann, and “The Blessed” by Mauricio Lopez Fernandez.

This year, renowned Turkish writer Barış Bıçakçı has chosen two films for the festival that will be shown in the section, “Barış Bıçakçı: The Shortest Distance Between Two Films.” The films in the section are two of the modern classics of American cinema, which share themes of friendship, brotherhood and the idea of wounded souls finding hope in communion. The films are the 1984 Alan Parker drama “Birdy” and Lasse Hallström’s 1993 film “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.”

Meanwhile, internationally recognized video and performance artist Köken Ergun will also feature in the festival, with audiences promised Turkey’s first retrospective of Ergun’s video art, which has previously screened at the Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Sydney and Zagreb Film Festivals. He left this year’s Berlin Film Festival with an award for his documentary short, “Ashura,” and will himself be an official guest of the festival. The retrospective will be shown at the SALT Ulus gallery from Dec. 5.

In conjunction with the film screenings, the festival will also be hosting a “What To Do?” panel discussion, addressing issues such as alternative forms of organization, representation and pluralist democracy, along with urban activism.

This year marks half a century since the first examples of experimental cinema began to appear in Turkey; and in this section, audiences will find a collection of short films from Turkey and Austria, a country almost synonymous with the genre.

In the “Short is Good” section, short films selected from close to 1,000 entries from around the world will introduce audiences at the festival to innovative works of cinema from different countries, among them the U.S., Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, the U.K., Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Jordan, Portugal and Serbia.

Children’s films and parallel event

The “Children’s Films” section will be screening non-dialogue animated shorts from the likes of Estonia, Spain, Latvia and Norway. The films in this section are “Pupil’s Concert,” “When Apples Roll,” “Grand Prix,” “Miriam’s Food Processor,” “Corrida,” “Miriam’s Green Spots,” “Red Rider” and “Wonderful Day.”

The Animation Workshop also awaits younger audiences. The workshop, to be held in Ankara, offers youngsters the chance to make their very first films and will be led by Jenny van den Broeke, a Dutch specialist in working with children.

Meanwhile, in two separate master classes in Ankara, Zeki Demirkubuz and Taner Birsel will evaluate screen performances picked out from different films.