Turkey: Kurdish Filmmakers Wrestle with the Future

For Kurds, a nation without a state, artistic expression in recent decades has tended to have a strong political flavor. Now, however, some Kurdish filmmakers are attempting to break out of the old mold.

The trends, old and new, were on display at the inaugural New York Kurdish Film Festival, held on October 21-25. The lineup included eight feature films, a documentary, and 10 shorts. The focal point of the festival was three works with political themes; Yol, or The Path, which won Cannes Film Festival's Palm D'Or in 1982 for its portrayal of Turkey after the 1980 military coup; The Storm, directed by the Turkish Kurdish Kazeem Öz, portrayed a group of students who become involved in the Kurdish uprising in the 1990's; and Yuksel Yavuz's documentary Close Up Kurdistan, a personal account of the filmmaker's own return to Turkey from Germany.

Some of the newer films screened at the festival explored the more universal themes of immigration and adaptation. For example, Vodka Lemon, a film by Hiner Saleem, an Iraqi-born director now living in France, is a comedy about a vodka lemon stand girl in an Armenian Kurdish town. Hisham Zaman, a Kurd who is now living in Norway, also screened Winterland,¬ a film that follows a Kurdish refugee living in Norway and the bride he welcomes from Iraq.

During a panel discussion on October 24, Öz, the maker of The Storm, sought to explain the political nature of Kurdish filmmaking. "All Kurdish cinema is political because you were not even allowed to speak Kurdish when I was a kid," said Öz, referring to the ban against the Kurdish language which lasted in Turkey from 1925 to 1991.

Zaman, another panelist, was soft spoken but steadfast in his desire to shed the political label. He said he wanted his work to transcend identification with a particular ethnic group and gain recognition based solely on its artistic merit. "I think sometimes Kurdish filmmakers can do more than politicians," he said.

Öz, Zaman and other panel participants all lamented the lack of interest within the Kurdish community in art in general, and film in particular. Political and economic uncertainty has left many Kurds throughout Turkey, the Middle East and elsewhere without the time and the resources for many leisure activities.

"There is no Kurdish public, so we make movies for others," said Saleem.

"My film did very well at festivals in Europe. I took it very personally when I didn't get the same reaction (in Kurdish areas)," Zaman added. "But I decided I'm not going to take it personally anymore. They might not watch it now, but they'll watch it later. I am the generation that will establish Kurdish cinema."