BAK

Image Capture

Director: Aylin Kızıl
Diyarbakır, February 2021,  6’33”

Image Capture (Fotoğraf Altı) takes us on top of Helin Apartment – a tall building overlooking Diyarbakır Fortress and the surrounding neighborhoods, which are either demolished, reconstructed, or waiting to be demolished any moment now. The disembodied voice-over initially endeavors to rule over images but then slowly surrenders to them. As the voice starts to engage with the images, it slowly finds its body and place in the film’s world.

Possible

Director: Berivan Karatorak
Diyarbakır, February 2021, 4’ 11”

What if I just lie there in the shade of those trees? Is it possible? It is not possible for women who try to get away from the boredom of the city and find peace in nature. Possible is the shining dream of an ordinary day spent in Hevsel Gardens, which is at the centre of cultural heritage and ecology discussions in Diyarbakır. A day when a woman can breathe through boredom, curiosity, dancing and searching...

Granny Zeki

Director: Berivan Bagı
Mardin, February 2021, 6’ 36” 

In Granny Zeki, Berivan and her grandmother have a sweet conversation through the camera, and they happily introduce the colourful world of grandmother to the audience. Granny Zeki, who lives alone in her house with a garden in a village of Mardin, welcomes us to her world with Berivan with her rings and bracelets, basil in her garden, pickles in rows and pieces of life that adorn the dazzling wall of her living room.

The Door

Director: Evindar Tokur
Diyarbakır, February 2021, 7’ 19”

By confronting the city, The Door sets out from an effort to relieve the unending pain of unsolved murders and forced migration. Searching for the past in today's Diyarbakır, the film tries to keep personal history and collective memory together while tracing childhood, home and lost places. With words of anger, mourning, and farewell, The Door replaces the memory of a dark crime with a desire to heal, reminding of survival.

Mehla Qorê

Director: Fatma Çelîk
Diyarbakır, February 2021, 8’24’’ 

Based on Fatma's first memory, Mehla Qorê reconstructs the neighbourhood where she spent her childhood. Bringing together photographs of the neighbourhood destroyed during the conflict in Suriçi in 2015, old family albums, what the women in the family remember and what they do not want to remember, the film traces Fatma's search for that first memory.

Think of A Circle 

Director: Fatoş Güneri
Diyarbakır, February 2021, 5’29”

Fatoş, who lost her way in the narrow streets of Diyarbakır, tries to find her way with fortune-telling. Every sentence of the fortune-teller leads her to another path. She will pass through streets that she has never known but are very familiar to her, even if she does not want to. Bringing together the voices of Diyarbakır fortune-tellers and documentary images of the city's streets, Think of A Circle is a film of a walking state that transforms the memory of a childhood place into a quest and comes to light.

Space, Fehmi and Secrets of the City

Director: Mediha Güzelgün
Mardin, February 2021, 11’ 47’’

Space, Fehmi and the Secrets of the City is a story that replaces the fairy-tale representation of Mardin with a space adventure and brings the past and the future together. The film, which is guided by a narrator who believes that the castle of the city is actually Noah's ark, that Noah's ark was filled with human spirits, not animal species, and anchored in Mardin, introduces us to Fehmi, who is perhaps Noah himself. According to the narrator, Fehmi, who wants to go to space, maybe already came from space…

Stone and Water 

Director: Nalin Acar
Batman, February 2021, 5’14” 

Hasankeyf, which was inundated by the Ilısu Dam, now adorns the walls of only one ornamental pool in Batman. This ornamental pool creates its own ecosystem, just like the historical Hasankeyf. Moving forward by matching images with concepts and returning to the same concepts in the context of different images; Stone and Water invites the viewer to look and understand again, while pointing out the weight of witnessing.

December 4, 2020, Nusaybin

Director: Rozerin Tadik
Mardin, February 2021, 4’ 13”

Among the thousands of houses destroyed during the conflict in Kurdish cities between 2014 and 2016, there was also Rozerin's grandfather's house, where 11 people were born and raised, together with his siblings and cousins. December 4, 2020, Nusaybin, a short visit to the childhood memories of two cousins, with a phone call from the balcony of one of the mass housing units built in the same area after the demolition.

Cudi of the Wishes

Director: Semiha Yıldız
Diyarbakır, February 2021, 6’ 32”

Based on the emotions and images of a childhood memory of Cudi, Cudi of the Wishes simultaneously deals with the natural flow of the four seasons in Cudi and the consequences of conflicts that interfere with this flow. An effort to establish the name of a mountain, which is the home of all kinds of flowers, goats and honey bees, and which is believed to make wishes come true, that has been established in the language of others for decades, this time from within that geography, with the voice of nature. 

Here

Director: Sibel Öğe
Batman, February 2021, 6’31”

With Here (Li Vir), we are stepping into the concrete area left behind after the Batman Yılmaz Güney Cinema Hall, which has hosted hundreds of films, plays, concerts and interviews since 2005, first burned down and then collapsed. This concrete void, whose future is uncertain and waiting, begins to transform into a space as the sounds of the past fill it. While the street sounds are inaudible with the memory of this space and the culture shared in it, the power of producing, being together, solidarity and sharing affects us here and now.

Gleaners, Dreams and Greens

Director: Zelal Sadak
Diyarbakır, February 2021, 5’21’’

Who remembers the women who picked the grass that grew in places where no one planted the seeds, watered, fenced the boundaries of their land? Gleaners, Dreams, Greens fill the current absence of women who gave the famous bazaar in Diyarbakır Suriçi its name, with a choir of whispers. The light of Hevsel Gardens, where gleaners gather herbs, shines on the invisible history of the bazaar.