Istanbul Municipality opens 2012-2013 culture season

ISTANBUL - Anatolia News Agency

Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş speaks at the press conference at Esma Sultan Mansion to announce the new culture season. Çekil’s works (above rigth) are shown. Turkish actress Neslihan Atagül has received the “Best Actress of the Present and Future” award at Moscow’s 2morrow Film Festival for her role in “Araf” (Purgatory). Atagül received the award for her portrayal of her character Zehra, competing in the category against Isabelle Huppert and Alexandra Dahlström. “Araf” itself also rece

The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) has raised the curtain on the 2012-2013 culture and arts season with an eye toward celebrating its platinum jubilee the following year.

“2013 is very important for the preparations for the 100th anniversary [of Turkish cinema and Turkish theater]. We have already started preparing for this anniversary,” İBB Cultural and Social Affairs Director Abdurrahman Şen said Oct. 8 during a ceremony at Istanbul’s Esma Sultan Mansion.

Noting some of the difficulties of the İBB’s City Theaters, Şen said: “The City Theaters put on serious works of theater, but people do not know how to reach them. We are preparing to present this theater repertoire to theater-lovers as a catalogue in 2013.”

Speaking at the ceremony, Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş defined Istanbul as a city that goes 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “As local administrators of such a city, we have responsibilities to make use of our valuable artists.”

The mayor said the municipality had made an investment of around 2 billion Turkish Liras in the field of culture. “When we took office, Istanbul had only four cultural centers affiliated with the municipality.

These four centers had 1,420 seats. Now we have 28 cultural centers and 22,200 seats. We increased the number of theater stages from eight to 17, an increase of 42 percent.”

Speaking about the social side of art, Topbaş said: “What brings us together is cinema and theater halls – fields of democracy. People from all sections of society share the same venue. These venues make us remember that we are a big family and each member of this family has a different character.

The more we bring together our people, the more tolerance we have. This is the most important factor for democracy, and art will contribute to it.”

Şen, meanwhile, also said the documents of legendary Turkish actor and director Muhsin Ertuğrul were being published under the name “Muhsin Ertuğrul Catalog.”

Şen also said they planned to launch Istanbul Culture Awards to deserving artists starting next year.