Documentary looks at a legend’s trio

A new documentary by young director Okan Avcı follows Turkish music legend Erkan Oğur’s trio, Telvin, their unconventional improvisations on stage, and conversations about their free-flowing music offstage

In classical Sufism, or Tasavvuf, the word telvin means a seeker’s quest to journey from one state of being to another. And if you begin the word with a capital letter, it becomes a musical trio from Turkey whose music is inspired by the literal meaning of the word.

Erkan Oğur is a musical legend in Turkey and around the world. He is the inventor of the first fretless classical guitar and is a master of kopuz and bağlama lutes. A virtuoso at reinventing Turkish folk music, Oğur is also one of the members of the Telvin trio, along with İlkin Deniz and Turgut Alp Bekoğlu.

Much like the transcendent journey the word refers to, Telvin’s music embodies a free-flowing style, blending Turkish folk music with improvisational jazz, refusing structured performances and predefined mechanics in making music. A new documentary, available with English subtitles on DVD, brings to light the inspirations behind their music, the unconventional working dynamics of the members, and how nature is a guiding light in their work.

The documentary Telvin is at once an unconventional tour video and an inspirational tribute by a devoted fan. The young director is Okan Avcı, familiar to some thanks to his roles in TV series (Leyla ile Mecnun) and movies (Nefes – Breath), and to others with his award-winning documentary of 2011, Kadim (Venerable).

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Turkish documentaries expose environmental mishaps

As Turkish-German director Fatih Akın’s anticipated environmental documentary, ‘Polluting Paradise,’ hits the theaters, we take a look at other recent Turkish documentaries that hope to expose potential ecological disasters in Turkey

Following a special screening at this year’s Cannes, another one at the recent Golden Boll Film Festival and a showing in front of a Turkish audience at the hip film fest Filmekimi, Turkish-German director Fatih Akın’s anticipated documentary, Polluting Paradise (Der Müll im Garten Eden), hits theaters this week.

The paradise in question is Akın’s hometown, Çamburnu, a small mountainous town along the eastern shores of the Black Sea. The beautiful environment and its nature were threatened when the former copper mine right above the village was turned into a garbage landfill for the entire province of Trabzon by the government in 2007.

Akın learned about the potential environmental disaster when he was filming scenes for his 2007 feature Auf der Anderen Seite (Edge of Heaven). In Polluting the Paradise, he documents the struggles of the residents and those working in the landfill over a period of five years, as well as the impact of the garbage on the streams, not to mention an overpowering stench in the area.

The film is less an objective documentary and more a passionate plea to stop the impending environmental catastrophe for the town and its people. And it seems that Akın’s plea seems to be working.

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When a ‘Turkish Passport’ saved thousands of lives

The recent documentary movie ‘Turkish Passport’ is the unlikely story of Turkish diplomats who helped save tens of thousands of lives by issuing passports to Jews during World War II. The new documentary contains extensive research and an impressive production, which hits the right nerves, especially in these trying times. 

The Holocaust might have been an accurate indicator of how low humanity could go and of the atrocities humans were capable of. Great tragedies make good stories, and the Holocaust has been an unfaltering source for storytellers for decades.

Jewish and non-Jewish filmmakers alike have turned to World War II for real stories that were more often than not more gruesome than the sickest mind could imagine. First came the stories of war. Then came the human stories of tragedies of families fallen and families forced to break apart, none spared for the sickest game the modern world has seen.

Schindler’s List, Spielberg’s magnum opus to many, was one of the first in exercising hope and praise for unsung heroes of WW II. It was the story of one powerful man who had clung to his humanity and saved over a thousand Jewish lives.

Just when one thinks that every story about the Holocaust has already been told, an unlikely tale of hope, optimism and heroism, or “the only Holocaust story with a happy ending,” enters our lives.

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)