Turkish films attract art lovers

The first Turkish Film Festival for Bloomington was the idea of Abbas Karakaya, a doctoral student at IU. Karakaya said he wanted to focus on sharing a mutual interest in cinema and working together to produce free public entertainment as a way to promote art on the campus.\nWhile limited to movies with English subtitles, the festival will show a variety of movies. Organizers attempted to select films that would appeal to a wide range of tastes. \nFor the next two weekends, Turkish films with English subtitles will be shown between 7 and 10 p.m. today, Saturday and April 1-2 in Ballantine Hall 013. The April 3 showing will take place in Ballantine Hall 109. All screenings are free.\n"All the films revolve around 'real' people and their experiences of love, fear, joy, grief, etc.," said organizing committee member and doctoral student Burcu Karahan. "In fact, with the exception for 'Baba,' all of the films belong to the period known as 'Yeni Turk Sinemasi' (New Turkish Cinema), which has been underway since the first years of the 1990s. Among other things, this new trend has managed to speak to the popular taste without neglecting what may be called aesthetic or idiosyncratic aspects of an art work." \nTurkish film is different from American cinema in some aspects. The purpose of the festival is to show people a glimpse of Turkey and these differences. Karakaya said generally speaking, Turkish cinema is low-budgeted, human-oriented and not as focused on the current Hollywood trend of special effects and technology use. For many Turkish directors and artists as well as film watchers, cinema is still more like an art form than a commercial industry. \nThe organizing committee said its members hope to attract to the festival those to whom art, artistic expression and cinematography are important because this is a valuable chance to be exposed to five examples of contemporary cinema made in Turkey. \n"Her Sey Guzel Olacak" ("Everything's Gonna be Great") is a 1998 comedy featuring many Western Turkish landscapes that will be shown Saturday. "Mustafa Hakkinda Her Sey" ("Everything about Mustafa") is a 2004 thriller to be shown Sunday.\nThe film for April 1 is "Baba" ("Father"), a 1973 movie with much acclaim. Director Yilmaz Guney was recently named as one of the most prominent cinema men (director, script writer, actor and producer) by the Ankara Cinema Association. The film's presence among the festival is tribute to Guney's contribution to Turkish cinema, Karahan said. \n"Im Juli" ("In July") is a 2000 romance scheduled for April 2. The final film, "Uzak" ("Distant") is a 2003 drama, which won the Grand Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and will be shown April 3.\nThe festival is sponsored by the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center. The Resource Center is deeply committed to promoting artistic events and being a liaison between inner Asian and Uralic cultures and the public, said Aimee Dobbs, the graduate assistant outreach coordinator. It is this desire that brought forth the Bloomington Turkish Film Festival this year and possibly for years to come, as festival organizers hope. \nMore information on the films being shown and the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center can be found at www.iub.edu/~iaunrc.\n-- Contact Staff Writer Liv Cole at olcole@indiana.edu.