FESTIVAL ON WHEELS 2008 goes international
Festival on Wheels has changed its route!
The
14th Festival on Wheels, which is organised by the Ankara Cinema
Association with the support of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism and
the Municipality of Kars, will start its journey on 7 November in Kars and then stop in
Artvin from 14-16 November. For the first time in 13 years, the festival won’t
stop in Ankara, but invites all cinema and
festival-lovers from the capital to Kars
instead. The festival will travel beyond the borders of Europe this year, venturing
into the new territory of the United States,
Mexico, Argentina and India,
as well as Germany, Denmark and Sweden closer to home. Audiences
will be able to pick from a programme of 156 films, which are spread across the
genres of feature, short and documentary.
THE
GOLDEN GOOSE COMPETITION THIS YEAR
Ten films which comprise examples of contemporary world
cinema will compete once
again for the Golden
Goose, the Silver Goose and the SİYAD Awards in the Third International
Golden Goose Competition. The best film to be determined by the International
Jury will win the Golden Goose Award, worth 20,000 Euros, which will be
presented
by the Municipality
of Kars. The film to win
the Silver Goose Award, on the other hand,
will receive 5,000 Euros.
The
spectacular line-up of competition films includes Cloud 9 (Wolke 9), which
caused controversy first in Germany, then at
other festivals where it screened;
Moscow,
Belgium (Aanrijding In Moscou), a Belgian film; The Snow (Snijeg), a
co-production between Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Germany, France and Iran; The Hunger,
a memoir of the IRA Hunger Strike in Maze Prison in 1981 under the leadership
of Bobby Sands; Lake Tahoe, a
Mexican film which won a string of awards in
the Berlin, Cannes, Copenhagen and
Sundance film festivals; Goran Markovic’s
latest film The Tour (Turneja), which earned him a Best Director award at Montreal
as well as a Fipresci prize; Three Wise Men by well-known director Mika Kaurismäki
and another Mexican production, Rodrigo
Pla’s
The Desert Within (Desierto Adentro).
Two films from
Turkey
will also be competing: Semih Kaplanoğlu’s
highly anticipated film Milk, which
follows
the earlier Egg, and Özcan Alper’s first feature film Autumn.
Turkey 2008
The titles
making up Turkey 2008 are as follows: My
Marlon and Brando directed by Hüseyin
Karabey
who received Best Director award at New York’s Tribeca Film
Festival; Derviş Zaim’s latest
feature Dot;
Pandora’s Box, written
and directed by Yeşim Ustaoğlu; Three
Monkeys, which brought Nuri Bilge
Ceylan t
he Best Director Award at the 61th Cannes Film Festival,
and Seyfi Teoman’s feature Summer Book
which has won Turkish
cinema a succession of awards this year.
Italian
Political Cinema: Elio Petri
This section, dedicated to Italian political cinema, features
two films by Elio Petri: The Working
Class Goes to Heaven (La
Classe Operaia Va in Paradiso), which won Cannes the Golden
Palm Award in 1972, and Possession Is
Not Theft (La
Proprieta Non é Piu Un Furto). Both films will be screened with
the generous contribution of the
Italian Cultural Institute.
Nation
and Its Fragments
Festival audiences
will have the chance to watch Sergei
Eisenstein’s 1938 classic Aleksandr
Nevsky
with a commentary by Murat Belge; Ken Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss
(2004) with background from Ferhat Kentel and
Lars Von Trier’s Europa
with a review by Fatih Özgüven. All three writers frame their reviews in the
context
of nationalism, the theme of this section. There will also be a panel
discussion on ‘Nationalism’
in Kars,
which will be attended by Murat Belge, Ferhat Kentel and Mesut Yeğen.
Fake
Documentaries: Mockumentary
These films
will be shown for the first time in Turkey and although they tell
stories that purport to
belong to the documentary genre, they are more
fictional than fiction itself. For all their fakeness,
however, they speak of a
surprising number of realities.
Punishment Park directed by Peter
Watkins; This is Spinal Tap
directed by Rob Reiner and Achero Manas’s
November
(Noviembre) will reflect the ‘real’ world as represented by fake documentaries
on screen.
German
Film and Television
Academy
This special
selection comprises the films Ich Nicht
and Der Eine-Der Andere by Wolfgang Petersen, a
graduate of Berlin’s German Film and Television Academy
(aka ‘The Berlin School’), Hannes Stöhr’s
short film
Berlin Is In Germany and a
selection of short student films made by leading contemporary German directors
such
as Detlev Buck and Angela Schanelec.
One-Take
Films
This section is
made up of feature films, medium-length and short films all shot in a single
take. The titles
will also serve as a basis of discussion for the ‘One-take’
Workshop, a sidebar event taking place during the festival.
Short
Is Good and The Video Room
Just one film in the section Short Is Good is set to receive the Short
Film Audience Award, worth 1000 Euros,
based on the votes of Festival viewers.
Local
productions in video format will be available for viewing in the video room,
which will be set up with
the aim of enabling local and international guests to
watch new work coming out of Turkish cinema.
Shortly
Romania
Festival on
Wheels also has a section allocated to Romania cinema, one of the rising
stars of recent years.
The section will serve as a showcase of recent short
films made in Romania.
In addition, a
Romania-Turkey Co-production Panel Discussion will be held during the festival with
the
participation of Romanian and Turkish producers, directors and cinema
institutions.
Children’s
Films Latvia / Estonia
Children don't
go forgotten in the festival either... Still, this section features a selection
of kids’ films
from Latvia
and Estonia
that have as much appeal for adults as they do for children.
From
Liberties To Losses and Afterwards
The eponymous
volume, written specifically for the Festival by Tül Akbal, Necla Algan and
Ayla Kanbur,
focuses on that part of the cinematographic experience which comes
with watching films, discussing them
critically, writing about them, discussing
them again and lecturing on them at schools and other institutions.
Here are
three academics and colleagues with abundant first-hand experience of both the
process and each other.
CINEMA MEETINGS IN KARS
Festival
guests from different countries and cultures around the world meet in Kars in order to watch films
together, share their experiences and create. The busy program, packed with a
variety of events
including panel discussions, Q&A sessions, workshops and
concerts, will blow the festival wind all over Kars
throughout the week.
Gala
Premieres
The gala premieres
promise to be one of the highlights of the Festival, not only bringing a number
of
ig-name Turkish directors and actors to Kars, but featuring some of the
most recent award-winning
examples of contemporary Turkish cinema. In this
section there are films such as My
Marlon and Brando
by Hüseyin Karabey, Dot
by Derviş Zaim, Pandora’s Box by Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Summer Book by Seyfi Teoman
and Three Monkeys by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Lets
Talk Cinema in Kars
III Workshop Activities
The ‘Let’s
Talk Cinema in Kars’ meetings are held for the third time this year, the point
being to
bring together amateurs and professionals of the film world for the exchange
of experiences and ideas.
Film students and cinema lovers from many cities around
Turkey
will attend a programme of workshops
during the week with the best tutors in
their fields, as well as taking part in the Let’s Talk Cinema meetings.
Five Different Workshops for Young Film makers
This Festival,
there are again several workshops targeting young people from different
disciplines and
encouraging them to produce joint projects. This year Reha Erdem will give a film direction
workshop
for three days. Gökhan
Tiryaki, the director of photography for Climates and Three Monkeys,
will
lead a digital
cinematography workshop; Natali
Yeres, who was art director for Journey
to the Sun, A Saint
in Laleli, In NowhereLand and
Derviş Zaim’s latest film Dot will host
a workshop
on art direction; Çiçek
Kahraman,
who edited The Little
Doomsday, The Break and Summer Book, will give an editing workshop; Nurşen Bakır,
known for
her experimental film work, will perform lead a workshop on experimental filmmaking.
The workshops are aimed at groups of 10 people.
Cinema classes open to all
In addition to
these workshops, a series of cinema classes will also be given within the scope
of the
Cinema Meetings. Reha Erdem will
lead a panel discussion on the experience of film directing and producer
Leyla Özalp a discussion on filmmaking.
At the same time, Belmin Söylemez,
Somnur Vardar and
Elvan Kıvılcım
of Filmist, whose latest documentary What
A Beautiful Democracy? has screened at
many festivals in Turkey and abroad, will lead a panel discussion on
contemporary
documentary making in
Turkey.
These meetings will be open to everyone.
Briefly
Kars in “One
Take”One-Take
Workshop
The NISI MASA European Youth Cinema Network,
which made a series of short films inspired by
Orhan Pamuk’s novel‘Snow’ at last
year’s Festival on Wheels, will also be a guest of the 14th Festival
on
Wheels with a new filmmaking project. In the scope of the ‘one-take’ workshop,
short filmmakers from several
European countries will meet in Kars to produce several short films made in a
single sequence.
The resulting films
will be shown within the festival in Kars
on 13 November 2008.
Your daily festival newspaper from Nisi Masa Nisimazine Kars
NISI MASA will
lead two workshops at the 14th Festival on Wheels. Young amateur film critics from
Turkey and Europe will publish a daily festival
newspaper in Kars.
Reviews and critiques of the festival films,
interviews and articles on the
festival sections and guests will be presented in the newspaper, which
is
designed bilingually in Turkish and English.
Cinema For Peace
The Anatolian
Culture will organise a workshop study under the title ‘Cinema For Peace’ with the
Corporation of Gyumri
City Research
Center. Three young filmmakers
from each country, namely Armenia,
Georgia, Azerbaijan
and Turkey,
will attend the workshop, which will present examples of pacifist documentary
cinema from the contemporary world.
DocuTravel
Now in its
second year, the DocuTravel Documentary Workshop targets film students and
young documentary
makers from Turkey,
Armenia, Georgia
and Ukraine and presents
short documentaries that seek to explore
and gain understanding of the history,
culture and current position of Kars.
Workshop films is an opportunity
for
young filmmakers from the same region to meet in the city of Kars and create together. Their output will
be shown in Kars on 13 November 2008. The workshop is
to be led by tutors from all four countries: Turkey,
Armenia, Georgia
and Ukraine.
Stop
Motion Animation Workshop
This year, as
in previous years, Dutch animation director Petra Dolleman and her assistant
Hasan Cemal Sargın
will hold a Stop Motion workshop with primary school
students in Kars.
Concerts
Festival
evenings in Kars
will be galvanised this year by a line-up of glittering live performances. This
year’s gigs include names such as Baba Zula, Replikas and Kırıka, as well as several
musicians from Hungary.
This year’s Festival
poster is illustrated by Behiç
Ak and designed by Yeşim Demir as
it always has been
since the inaugural Festival on Wheels.
Fehmican
Gözüm, Mert Kızılay, Ömer Kasımoğlu and Candaş Şişman co-directed the teaser for
the Festival.
http://www.festivalonwheels.org
