‘In Flames’ tackles tough issues

Director Murat Saraçoğlu’s ‘Yangın Var’ (In Flames) tackles the Turkish-Kurdish conflict in a comedy that does not aim for cheap laughs but shows the nonsensical nature of prejudices and ignorance

 When the Turkish government made known that the Turkish-Kurdish conflict was no longer a taboo subject and it was open for discussion for a peaceful resolution less than a decade ago, Turkey’s filmmakers were quick to jump on the bandwagon and contribute to the resolution.

History was made two years ago when the biggest cinema event in Turkey, the Golden Orange Film Festival, included in its lineup of films for the National Competition two films in Kurdish, İki Dil Bir Bavul (On the Way To School) and Min Dit: The Children of Diyarbakır.

The government’s undertakings to include greater cultural rights and freedom for Kurds and put an end to separatist notions took two different directions in Turkish cinema. While mainstream cinema was less condemning and more sympathetic toward the past, an independent Turkish cinema by Kurdish filmmakers promised fresh cinema, with distinctive voices, aiming straight at the heart of problems.

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)

Turkish inmates get new faces in '72nd Cell'

Revered writer Orhan Kemal’s 1954 classic play, ‘72. Koğuş’ (The Prisoners), has been adapted to the screen for the first time in over two decades. While the female inmate Fatma gets a bigger role with prolific actress and diva Hülya Avşar, director Murat Saraçoğlu’s film regrettably fails to capture the heart and soul of Kemal’s original work

One of the greatest Turkish writers and a modernist pioneer of the Turkish novel, Orhan Kemal, has always been relevant. Kemal’s realist novels on class differences and the poor side of Turkey have left their mark on a period spanning two decades after the early 1950s, now thought of as the golden period in Turkish literature.

Meeting another great literary name, the “romantic revolutionary” Nazım Hikmet, in prison in the early 1940s had a profound effect on Kemal’s literary foray and social politics. He began writing poetry and stories, eventually trying his craft in novels and plays. Kemal was one of the first authors to write about the working class, the alienation of immigrants in big cities, mass urbanization and the changing social structure of Turkey after World War II. He shed a realist light and took a brutal look at poor people living in dignity. Kemal’s stories, novels and plays also lent a voice to working-class women for perhaps the first time in modern Turkish literature.

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)