“A film cannot resolve the social and political issues it raises. Instead it records to what extent those questions remain unresolved, their difficulty, misunderstanding, conflict, lack of a solution and sometimes their impossibility.”

Alejandra Riera, Maquetas-sin-cualidad, 2004.

“The works I have been producing can be viewed in general as different attempts to deal creatively with cultural difference (the differences both between cultures and within a culture). They seek to enhance our understanding of the heterogeneous societies in which we live, while inviting the viewer to reflect on the conventional relation between supplier and consumer in media production and spectatorship.”

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Identity and Representation,1996.

The film and video programme Prologue. Towards experimental ethnographies which we present in this year’s Barcelona International Women’s Film Festival, has its origin in meditations on geopolitical aesthetics, gender and globalisation which different audio-visual narrators have been producing in localised social and cultural contexts since the Eighties. Following on from the line of argument established in last year’s programme, this year the cycle continues its interest in recent documentary accounts that continue to look at the politicisation of gender narratives and the construction of subjectivities. Filmmakers Berke Bas, Hito Steyerl, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Tracey Moffat, Sally Gutierrez, Caecilia Tripp and Lisl Ponger identify the new global conditions in which representations on class, race and gender are shown, through the creation of visual documents.

Prologue. Towards experimental ethnographies is part of a wider research project we are carrying out on the subject of documentary practices, from different locations and perspectives, with regard to a series of gender narratives that question the actual forms of representation and diffusion with which they work. Our interest lies in exploring and extending the idea of experimental ethnography proposed by Catherine Russell(1) based on the visual document. This narrative and research strategy extends through an itinerary of devices and activities that will take place over the coming months.

The programme of films in the festival is complemented, on the one hand, by a workshop run by the visual artist Sally Gutiérrez. Taking her own documentaries as a starting point, the filmmaker will focus the workshop on ways of inhabiting the urban environment, and on the various resistance strategies its inhabitants employ – particularly women – in between the gaps left by multiple global systems that are never completely controlled. On the other hand, and as its title indicates, this year the programme of films has been designed to act as a prologue to the exhibition Working Documents, which will take place at the La Virreina-Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona . It also establishes a direct link with the projection-debate coordinated by the artist Sandra Schäfer on the 13th June at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona on gender and representation policies in Afghan cinema.

The case study that gave rise to Working Documents as an itinerary of the visual document is found in the material filmed by Maya Deren between 1947 and 1954 on life and ritual in Tahiti, which led to part of the film “Divine Horsemen: the living gods of Haiti”. Deren starts to develop her theory of film in articles like “Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film” and “Cinema as an Art Form” (1946). In these, she emphasises the need to develop cinema as an art of context, endowing it with process, in contrast to the forms of spectacle and consumer culture, both elitist and popular, which are currently embodied by the Hollywood narrative, and which today are perpetuated in the focus of narrative as a process of narrative statement, conflict and resolution.

Maya Deren’s specific process-based ethnographic writing enables us to create a trans-historic link with a new type of documentary-making which emerges in the Eighties, and which brings with it the need to create visual documents that go beyond the different classical formats in which a narrative is transformed into a documentary. This urgent perspective of an immediate reality represents a paradigmatic change in ethnographic cinema, and imposes itself over the supposedly neutral notion of direct cinema and the direct account of an event, as shown in the “cinéma vérité” of Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin in “Chronique d’un été” (1961). In contrast, the feminist ethnography we present here offers a perspective on the idea of “experimental ethnographies” in which antagonistic bio-political practices of the visual document would be located.

The deconstruction, image of appropriation, staging and post-production of the narrative are clear symptoms of the post-capital era in which the image-document becomes the reading of social contexts. The documentary methods and examples we are screening act as spaces for mediation between the setting prior to the document’s creation and its launch into circulation, questioning the social context in which the images are read and interpreted. As a result the focus of interest of these films moves from the representation of the documentary narrative to the question of how the narratives inscribe themselves in the social and physical context, and how in turn they place themselves at the service of the subjectivities they inhabit.

The first part of Prologue. Towards experimental ethnographies includes a pioneering work in terms of the thought of the Eighties, which explores the cartography mapped out by “women in the developing world”: the film Reassemblage by the filmmaker of Vietnamese origin Trin T. Minha-ha integrates the post-colonial vision from a position that is critical of the cultural subject. Thus the shooting of the documentary itself becomes a reflection on the traditional ethnographical discourse in terms of who speaks, who films and how the subject situated on the other side of the camera is represented. In the film from Turkey “In Transit” (2005) and the film from the Philippines “Nazareno Negro” (2007), Berke Bas and Sally Gutiérrez reflect, from different contemporary situations, on the documentary perspective established by Trin T. Minha-ha, which is defined by the “outside in – inside out” nature of her position, enabling us to cross and enter into dialogue with the environment and its witnesses by bringing together multiple locations that locate us before a reflexive visual ethnography.

The second part features a variety of narratives constructed between fiction and the visual document, which break the established order of the symbolic to question the issue of cultural translation and to demolish the hegemonic vision of the oral and written tradition. Thus we recover the idea that Hito Steyerl raised in her text The Politics of Truth – Documentarism in the Art Field (2) , which is that in its function of structuring and acting upon the social arena the documentary adopts bio-political functions. So action through symbolic products can essentially develop in the field of culture, and it is there that mechanisms of diffusion will have to be built which will enable a new form of seeing and contributing to the uncovering of deception by the media hegemony.

The selected narratives of gender establish an interplay of scenic representations which combine the strategy of the archive, the autobiographical narrative and the dissemination of images in the film “Lovely Andrea” by Hito Steyerl (2007). The symbolic translation of the cultural imagination in cinema, photography, dance, theatre, music and literature can clearly be seen critically in the film “Imago Mundi” by Lisl Ponger (2007). The resources of the theatrical set that the film-maker Tracey Moffat uses in Nice Coloured Girls (1987) deconstructs ethnographic films through the use of subtitles, and avoids the cliché of so-called realist reconstructions. This system of trans-cultural exchange is centred on the idea of the translation of local and global imaginations, as the film-palimpsest My Curaçao (2005) by Caecilia Tripp argues.

Seen overall, this selection of gender narratives represents the mediation, cultural agency and documentation of activist positions in the form of essays on the global representations that are today narrated to us.

(1)Russell, Catherine: Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 1999.

(2) Steyerl, Hito: “The Politics of Truth –Documentarism in the Art Field”, in Vít Havránek, Sabine Schaschl-Cooper, Bettina Steinbrügge (eds.): The Need to Document . Zurich: IRP Ringier, 2005.

Yeni Film, No.16, Nov. 2008

TOTAL WORK (1)

The socio-political events of 1968 caused an impact in the West, thanks to the liberation movements, which brought with them an understanding of the particularity, the difference and the specificity of the social and intellectual aspects that have defined postmodern thought. These changes have been projected into the dynamics of post-industrial society through the consolidation of service industries, on the one hand, and the application and use of new communication technologies, on the other. Within the sphere of production, the Fordist model, traditionally linked to the factory structure, to the assembly line, and determined by fixed units of time, place and action, has been succeeded by what is known as “immaterial work”, which appears as the node in the recent production/consumption relation.

The post-Fordist production model implies, then, that the traditional division between productive and reproductive work, between exchange-value and use-value, has undergone a process of flexibilisation, causing most of the capacities, until recently considered as pertaining solely to our private apace ad our time, to now become directly productive factors.

This redefinition of the concept of work has been analysed from the perspectives of different critical theories, including feminism which has assimilated it into “female work”. Thus, the affective, relational, creative, cognitive and symbolic qualities, which had been characteristic of reproductive activities carried out above all by women, are now a vital part of the productive process and increasingly demanded of the workforce.

To these developments, which have taken place in the global economy in past decades, we must add the welfare crisis and the privatisation of public services, increased unemployment and the resulting migratory flow. All this has accelerated the process of precarisation among citizens, submitted to a working system characterised by flexible working hours, temporary contracts, extensive workdays, work at home, unpaid holidays, and so on. These working conditions have led to a modification and a reinforcement of already existing social and economic hierarchies that have particularly affected those groups which are least favoured, most notably women, one of the most hard hit collectives.

The exhibition proposal that we present under the title Total Work offers a reflection on the shift from material work to immaterial work (although both still coexist and need each other) within the context of economic globalisation. It focuses its analysis on two processes: the feminisation of the workforce, a historical phenomenon that has grown in recent decades in response to labour deregulation, and the feminisation of poverty, which appears to find its most visible face in what are known as “alternative global circuits”-often transnational territories – but also in the big cities as a consequence of new market conditions.

Furthermore, as a topic secondary to the central thrust of this project, we include a discussion that addresses the sphere of artistic production, the qualities of which have also been reappropiated and made profitable by the capitalist market.

Thus, as cultural producers devoted to the construction and criticism of representation, and no strangers to job precariousness, we consider it to be of vital importance to place ourselves within the production system, to know what our situation is as consumers and as generators of symbolic and economic gains. Out of this conviction, Total Work approaches precariousness as a territory for investigation and as a way of life. Not as victimisation, exclusion or isolation, but rather as a place of political action and collective structuralisation.

We therefore propose a parallel reading of certain feminist discourses and strategies of representation so as to develop a politisation of our practice through symbolic production. This will help us to reveal other forms of visibility and resistance to what has been termed “female social precariousness”.

The proposals by Maria Ruido and Ursula Biemann from different perspectives (local and transnational) and approximations, and beyond mere documentation of a given reality, enter the labour world to produce, through word and image, a counter-geography of precariousness based on histories and subjective experiences.

Hence Biemann sets out a mapping of the sex trade in the information era, which incorporates gender, ethnicity and class variables, to explore, through different female voices, the routes these women follow towards transnational spaces, their conditions of life and work. Maria Ruido examines the conditions of immaterial work and the experience of precariousness in our lives, by reviewing, on the one hand, the antagonistic strategies of image production, and on the other, certain modes and spaces for self-management of groups of women striving for a transformation of labour conditions, inasmuch as they constitute venues for new forms of collective sociality and production.

Total Work has opted to exhibit a breakdown of the oeuvre of each artist which materialises through a dual process of induction and deduction. While Biemann follows a reorganisation process based on the deconstruction of her own filmed material in order to create a proposal that she has termed “World Sex Work Archive” –in other words a file assembled from interviews with different women, female sex workers and activists (partially show in Total Work)-, Maria Ruido combines different media (texts, films, slides and interviews) accumulated in the months leading up to the exhibition and those that she will add during the two months of its duration, using appropriation and register to underscore, through a subjective narration, the possibility of a plural history generated by personal experiences.

In this way, we have employed the archive as a method of ordering and organising knowledge and reality, so as to politically rethink and reorganise certain visual and conceptual orders. We could speak of a counter-archive as an open, dismountable, subjective and partial device, one that advances and rewinds –as a work involving a continuum of memory and re-elaboration demands- which is revealed as a potential way of establishing other more complex forms of representation of reality and other relation modes between the author and producer, on the one hand, and the visiting public on the other, which would reduce the distances existing between the two.

Total Work is set out in a discursive way based on a dynamic relation among artists, materials and their interaction with space, plus those elements that the different participating agents will contribute with their talks and presentations in the course of the exhibition. Thus, tools are suggested to the spectator for a critical reading, providing the means for him/her to appropriate this setting of work onwork.

(1)An exhibition (Barcelona, October 15 – December 7, 2003) curated by Montse Romaní in collaboration with artists Maria Ruido and Ursula Biemann.

About Writer: Montse Romani is a cultural producer based in Barcelona (Spain), with a major focus on curating and writing. She has worked extensively in the fields of post-Fordist work-conditions, self-organized cultural practices, the transformations of urban spaces, and visual culture. She was curator of several exhibitions, including Non Place Urban Realm (1999), Imaginando Identidades [Imagining Identities], (2000), Memòria Urbana i Espectacle [Urban Memory and the Spectacle] (2001), Total Work (2003), Tour-isms. The Defeat of Dissent (with Núria Enguita and Jorge Luis Marzo) (2004), What the hell does music have to do with industry and feminism in an art centre? (with Laurence Rassel/Constant) (2005). As a programmer, she collaborates with the International Women’s Film Festival, Barcelona since 2003. Is member of the artist group El Sueño Colectivo [The Collective Dream], with which she produced the video-essay Work Narratives (2005).

Yeni Film, No. 16, Nov. 2008

Interview with the director of “My Father The Turk”, Marcus Atilla Wetter. We had a chance to meet him during International Istanbul Film Festival, 2008.

Marcus Vetter graduated in 1991 in Economics and in 1994 in Media Theory and Practice. His studies included residences in Buenos Aires and Madrid as well as practical internships in the media and film business. He was selected for the Discovery Campus Master School 2004, a 10-month European training programme in international co-productions in the nonfiction sector. Since 1994 he has been working as a TV editor, producer and director at ARD/SWR in Baden-Baden and Stuttgart. He received attention at national and international film festivals and won numerous prizes, among others 3 Adolf Grimme Awards. Currently, he is working on a film project called “Cinema Jenin” about a father of a Palestine boy killed by Israeli soldiers as they confused his toy weapon with a real one. Among his films and documentaries are: “The Tunnel”, “Ein Schweinegeld”, “War games”, “La Florida”, “Streets of the Duped”, “The Unbreakables”, “My father the Turk”.

First of all we want to ask you how the reactions of the audiences were to your documentary in Turkey. What did you think about this reaction?

The reactions of the audiences were incredible. So, we have travelled with this film all over the world and we had no such reaction more than we did in Turkey. Here it was really incredible. The film has so far touched the people in Germany and almost 6 million people saw it there, because it has been screened almost ten times in television. We got a lot of reaction from Turkish people and German people. I received one hundred letters each time the film was screened. Also it was shown in some festivals in the world. But nowhere reactions were so deep like here. Because the reaction here was people screaming, laughing and crying in some parts. This was a huge experience. We hadn’t expected that. For this reason we thought it should be shown in Turkish cinemas. We are reluctant to show it on Turkish television. Some of them offer but we don’t want to. We are searcing for the possibility of a movie theater release. In Germany, television is different because in there a lot of people just watch TV when they want to watch a film. But in Turkey, unfortunately most of the people just watch and eat at the same time. So I thought it would be great to find, or at least try to find, an opportunity to show it in movie theaters. This is my dream.

Was its first screening in İstanbul?

Yes, the festival was where we did the first screening.

I mean the film first came to Turkey. But your film was made in 2006 but we couldn’t get the chance to watch till now. Why did you wait?

I didn’t wait for so long. The first screening was in Istanbul in 2006 in Tünel Cafe. I rented a little projector and invited my family and people publicly. I was alone so I didn’t have so much support. Because the film was made for the German television and the television is an entertaintment medium; televison and nothing else. They don’t really know what kind of movie they have in their hands. We had 60 people in Tünel cafe in 2006. It was the premiere.

We have a documentary film festival in Turkey and other festivals so we thought that you were invited to them before.

It is always the same. You need someone to organize all of these. This year I applied to Istanbul Internatonal Film Festival. The problem is that I don’t own the rights. The TV station does. All the time I have had to deal with that so much. But now I am going to get the rights just for Turkey. If I buy the rights, I can try to screen it in the Turkish cinemas.

We support your wish but we have some bad news. For example, “Beyoğlu cinema” which screened your movie in the festival will be closed soon.

Why?

Financial issues. Less people are going to see movies in the theatres. Or “Taksim Theatre” which is in the centre of Taksim is closed and they are selling kebabs in there. There are very dramatic developments nowadays. Cultural degeneration.

Unfortunately, everywhere is like that.

Can we get more imformation about your cinema experience? Your film was a biographical documentary and we want to know more about your cinema experience.

The first 90-minute documentary that I made was The Tunnel. It was a film about the tunnel which was underneath the road of the Berlin Wall that was built in 61. It tells the story of two Italian guys and 29 German students from the Technical University. When the wall was built in Germany they tried to dig a tunnel in order to get relatives or friends through this tunnel to West Germany, to West Berlin. This was the first feature documentary I made. It was very successful because it tells a story that symbolizes our divided Germany. I could work with accurate material because that time the documentary team from the US embassy were filming how they digged the tunnel from the very beginning to the end. So it was a unique material because the camera team was always with them.

Then I began to make a lot of movies about the economy. The reason is that as an approach to films I have always chosen the science of the time. This means that these films have to be done now and this very moment. I have a critical point of view of the economic situation. I have a thought that capitalism is on its final stage of this cycle. That is why I was very interested in the economy and I did a movie which was about day traders who are people that were trading grain or popbelly or, sugar. They go to the market, stay for five seconds in the market until in order to make his slim difference. It was the first film I made about the economy. It was very interesting because I potrayed ordinary people, housewives who are suddenly trading sugar or grain. I was very interested because capitalism became something for ordinary people who we do not think would work any more and try to gamble with money. This was in 1980 and the first film.

In 2001 when the stock market crashed all over the world I did my second film. It was about a company which was a high flyer in the stock market. It went up like 25000 percent in two years. That was the moment when I thought we were in a real bubble and everybody was just thinking about stocks but not about working anymore. So, I made a film about real lives. These two guys were entrepreneurs of this company which was called EMTV. The film’s title is Where the Money Grows. These two guys come from a little village in the south of Germany. They normally have only farmer’s land. They thought they should grow in order to make beer. So, the farmers suddenly bought stocks because the products were so low and they didn’t want to work anymore. And the film was about the stocks which went up and down. So, the title is Where the Money Grows.

The third film I made was about the crisis in Argentina. The year was 2001. I made the film in 2002, when the banking system collapsed. It was about an Argentinian company crisis. When the Argentinian crisis was there and nobody could get money from the banks anymore. The entrepreneur of this company couldn’t pay to his workers anymore, so the women workers decided to take over the factory. It was not clear who was right, because the bank system had collapsed. The owner of the factory was also right. The battle rose between the women and the owner of the factory. After that I stopped making films about economy.

Were they all shown on TV?

Yes, they were all shown on TV and in festivals. All are 60 and 90 minute documentaries. Then I made a film about war games. It was about the young guys in Germany playing computer games, shooting games. I tried to find out why they were hooked to these games. I made some other films as well.

Again congratulations… these are all interesting subjects and that means us. You have a political and critical view to look at the problems of our reality. And suddenly you made a very personal documentary. How did you decide to make this documentary? You are turning the camera to yourself. You face with your origin but also I found the reality of my country.

Normally I am not a part of my films and this one is extreme. My mother wanted me to know about her. So, she mailed me what she was writing about herself and her past years. She wrote almost 50 pages about her life. She sent it to me as a son.

Weren’t you curious about her life?

I was curious but I had a problematic relationship with my mother. My mother has always had very much bitterness in her heart. So, she went to a psycologist to get over with this problem but I didn’t want to go because I didn’t have any problems. It was OK for me. I grew up together with my mother very alone in happy and sad days. I didn’t have a very happy childhood because we were only the two of us. When she was sad I was not feeling like her. I was happier or at least I pretended to be happy. I felt alright. But when I read them I was shocked. She was purely open. She told everything and we couldn’t put everything in the film. She stayed alone. My grandmother didn’t support her and she got kicked out from the university. I was sorry about our society, but there are so many things to laugh in these writings as well. So, I thought that I had to make a documentary or even maybe a fiction film about the sixties in Germany.

My mother was an intellectual woman who studied History and German. My father came from a little town in Turkey. He was just the opposite of her. She was somehow political and my father actually wasn’t political. But they were singing poltical songs together and this wasn’t in the movie. This was the begining and it was very clear that I wanted to visit my father. I wanted to visit him before, two years before. We were planing but then suddenly the film came and I had to start the film that summer. So if I had gone there I would have carried a camera with me. There was one incident one year before as well. A producer from Turkey called me. My father was in a TV programme which searched for people. She called me and invited me to the programme. All of these happened at the same time; my mother’s diary, this incident, etc. She called me several times. I didn’t accept, I said “if I go, I go alone.” Then, I decided to take a camera and go there. I didn’t want to make it for TV, actually. But my TV channel (SWR) was very much interested.

First I wrote a letter to my father but couldn’t get an answer. My letter didn’t get to him. So, I waited for two months and asked my mother and she said he was still alive. She was sure because they were in contact through letters. I found his telephone number with the help of a Turkish man. And I called him. I told him that I wanted to visit him and bring a camera with me. I didn’t say I was a filmmaker. He said that I could come with whoever I wanted and that I could bring whatever I want, that his life is like a film. He was very open and had a very nice voice. There was humor in his voice. And it is very important for the film. I was thinking always as a filmmaker and as a son.

There is one thing which we didn’t say in the film not because we didn’t want to say, but because it didn’t fit the film. My father’s name is Satılmış Çubuk, not Cahit Çubuk. So, this was actually a problem for my mother. When they met he said that he was Cahit Çubuk. One month later, she found his passport; it had the name Satılmış Çubuk. My mother thought he was a liar and she treated him all the time like that. When I went to meet with him, one of the most interesting things for me was that nobody called him Satılmış Çubuk. Everbody calls him Cahit Çubuk. The meaning of Satılmış is sold and he doesn’t want to be sold. He hates his name and everyone in the town calls him Cahit. It was the first problem in their relationship. It was a misunderstanding and he couldn’t make her believe he was not a liar. Until today my mother has thought he was a liar because he wanted to hide the fact that he was married. The funny thing is that he was in Germany and he played lotto as usual and he got six in the lotto, which means 500 000 Marks. The problem is he wrote Cahit Çubuk on the lotto. He went to take his Money with his passport but he couldn’t get the money because of the name. When he came the second time to Germany when I was seven he played again. It is like a joke but it is true. At this time he got 10 000 marks but this time too he wrote Cahit Çubuk.

He insists to be Cahit Çubuk.

Yes, he is insisting. This is one of the biggest problems to my mother. My mother is very German, she is so strict and if he says something which is not really true she does not trust this relationship anymore.

It is the most important film I have done and will always be the most important film. I mean, there are lots of important films which will come out and that I want to make. But I can watch this film again and again in every film festival.

You were sitting in front of us in the festival. I was happy to see you with your family. You were the main part of the film. You said that at the end of the film” we dont know our languages but this film is the best way for communication”

Exactly. I went there without any knowlege about the family. I just went.

And what a beautiful village…

Yes, and the house. When I saw the house I couldn’t believe and I felt as if I was in a fairytale. Boys were going to the “yalak” to swim. It was funny to see them swim in it. But the only thing in this village that makes me unhappy is that there were no women on the streets.

You mean the village was conservative.

Yes, yes.

But isn’t your father?

No, he is not.

Especially the conversation between you and your father after praying in the mosque.

When you see the girls they are looking out through the window. They were very nice. Everybody was looking out through the window.

The village is maybe conservative but this doesn’t explain the situation. They are in the village and they are working.

But the boys are not. This was somehow the first thing I observed there.

But you are right. Life of the men is separated in the central Anatolia.

The funny thing is that I have just finished a film about Palestine; Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I was in the refugee camp in Cenine. The women they are in the daily life. Maybe they cover their hair. If you think the situation in Palestine.

But your sister was different because they live in the city.

That’s because of my father. He is different. He is exceptional even in his village. I don’t know what would happen if I met a man/father who is conservative. I don’t know if I could make this film. I was saving money actually to pay the cameraman immediately in order to stop the film. This was a plan. I just wanted to stop the film after three days because I couldn’t make a film about a man who didn’t have sympathy. In the first three days I thought I was not going to like him. When I went to the hotel for the first time, I was at the point of stopping the film. It was the dramatic point of the whole journey when I was in the hotel. But the next day was different. It was a new day. I went again to the village. I saw everything differently. It was Friday and my father wanted to take me to the mosque along with him. Camera team asked me: “Do you want to do this really?” I said, “No problem.”

Every interview we did was a one time chance. If the camera wouldn’t have been work in interview would be the same. Because the feeling was different on each day. We went on a holiday trip to the Black Sea. I wanted to make the last iterview with my father at the seaside. Because he didn’t answer my question and I asked him again what I had been asking from the very begining. Two things are actually very interesting to me. The first thing is “can a woman and a man marry each other without knowing each other?” I heard someone in Turkey saying that love comes later and grows. For me, always love comes first and then you can decide on being together. I actually see the love between my father and his wife. Very much. They walk together because they need each other. I think it is something like love. The second one is a very simple and very easy question, because it is so symbolic. He had four sisters. I always asked my father why sons are so important for Turkish men, especially for him. He always avoided answering this question. He went around. But at the seaside I asked this question again. Out of the seen I sometimes asked this question while we were cooking, sitting together, etc. But at the seaside I asked the question in real interview situation. He couldn’t find a chance to escape, he had to be serious. And we did this interview in Turkish. Because in all the other interviews I was asking in German; in German he could escape. I interviewed him as a journalist in this interview and he had a totally different face. I asked why he had always waited for his son. He said this was my opinion, that his opinion was different. This was the first time he was being opponent. He didn’t want a reunion, he separated. He said, “You are here and I am here.” This was a moment when I felt very sad. Because suddenly he thought I was interviewing him as a journalist but not as a son anymore. He was more serious at this moment. He tried to explain at least behind of this because of the name. Because he wants his name to survive. And then he explained another thing. Suddenly he said in our village everyone was at work. No fathers were there, all were abroad. One in Istanbul, one in Saudi Arabia, one in Germany. “We didn’t see our children. As a father, it is hard not to see their children.” Then he cried for the first time and one tear was rolling down. I felt for the first time that he really loved his children. In 70s, there were almost no men in this village. That was a time form me yes you are right actually. How can I look at all this from my point of view? For sure you have to take into consideration that all the things are different. I thought I went too far in my question, I thought I was too much of a journalist and less of a son. There is a situation afterwards which we didn’t film. That was one of the saddest situations because everyone was crying. It was interviewing very early in the morning, at 6 o’clock. Then it was 8 o’clock and my father felt very bad and went back to tell everyone in the family about it. Everyone thought I came just for the film. I just wanted to tell him that it was a journalistic trick to force him to answer me. I didn’t want him to feel like having lost his son, even for one second.

Markus there was a big incorrect translation after the screening yesterday. You said that you talked to him as a son not as a filmmaker. But the translator translated it incorrectly. She said that you talked to him as a filmmaker. We understood you but the family, I am afraid they misunderstood. Your family, whole life, they were waiting for you and they were very open to you.

Exactly. This was also the moment when I first interviewed Nurşen, my second sister. She came two days later.

She was very sensitive.

Yes, she is. She is really great. She was very silent. While we were sitting at the balcony she was in silence. It was 4 o’clock in the evening and there was a beautiful sun light. I wanted to make an interview with her now. I asked her if it would be possible to speak with her in the garden, because she couldn’t speak at the balcony. So, we went down and she went to the rest room in order to look pretty. Afterwards we sat at the garden and the translator was beside me. I asked Nurşen how it was the whole time. “How did you feel when you were a little girl?” She said that she has a little photo of me. I asked “what kind of photo?” She said “you are playing with wooden things in the photo.” I said “yes, I know this photo. Where did you get it?” It was around there and passing from one sister to another. She was talking to this photo. I was totally lost. Because when I was young I knew that I had sisters but I didn’t have this feeling at that time because our society is different. I mean, at least I can talk like this personally.

Were you angry?

No, I wasn’t. The thing is I can’t love someone because she is just my sister. We don’t have this kind of family relationship. We have to love. She was talking with me in her imagination but I was totally at a different side of the world. I really got involved in my sister’s life. After this moment we had no limits any more, no barriers between us.

You have 4 sisters, right?

Yes. One of my sisters, Nurten, wasn’t in the movie. She lives in Diyarbakır. Her husband is an officer there. The other sister of mine, Nurhan, lives in Ankara but she was very sick, she had cancer at that time. Her husband died because of cancer at that time. So, she couldn’t come. Today she is fine but her daughter came. Also, Nurten was not interested at that time because she is the youngest. For her, brother was not so important, today it is more so. My father told me Nurhan’s wish to see me. She always asked: “When does Atilla come?”

Markus, do you know that we also have feature films made in the seventies on this subject in Turkish cinema? Divided families, especially from the sight of those who stayed in villages of these immigrant workers, women are waiting for the husbands and they don’t know what is going on in Germany, whether their husbands have a second life. They all are waiting for them, they send some presents from Germany. Do you have feature films too?

Yes.

First time I see a movie about this subject from Germany. There is a new generation in Germany now. Turkish-German directors make documentaries, feature films. What do you think about this generation?

For example, Fatih Akın?

Yes, also Yüksel Yavuz…

I don’t know him.

“Mein Vater, Der Gastarbeiter”

Yes, I know that film. But I didn’t see the film.

Ayhan Salar, he also made a documentary about it. He lives in Hamburg.

I don’t know him.

In general, what do you think about this generation?

Actually, I don’t know so much about this generation. I am just entering this generation. Until sixteen I had a lot of Turkish friends. With one of my Turkish friends I went to Antalya, Turkey for six weeks. I wasn’t in Turkey with a family. We were in the same school in Germany and he had very very nice parents. We went on vacation. That time there was the football cup. So it was 1982. But it was a very horrible vacation for some reasons. This is one of the reasons why I didn’t visit my father; because I stopped having Turkish friends. It was a very bad experience in Turkey. After all these years I have just started to get involved in here.

What do you generally think about the documentaries in Germany? Feature films, fiction films, there are some depression problems in German cinema. But documentary is a new fresh area not only in Germany but also all around the world. It is like an opposite movement. What do you think about this?

Internationally, it is the best time for documentary right now. Because of the new technology, you have a chance to work with documentaries. But people haven’t realized yet. I mean the audience. They realize slowly. I am going to a lot of festivals and it is amazing to see what making a documentary is internationally. In Germany, there are a lot of documentaries, not all of them but most of them are succesful. Not all of the documentaries but some of them are shown at the cinemas at least and it will grow. But there are also great fiction films right now.

But we don’t see directors that follow the big directors in German cinema. Fasbinder, Wenders…After them, there have been no great directors in German cinema.

I actually want to say I loved the film Head-On. I also loved his latest film. It is even criticized but I really love it. I don’t know what your opinion is. Have you seen it?

We found the German part more realistic…

Exactly.

One of my friends in Germany thinks so. We had a long discussion about the movie. But there are so many bad films shown and they have nothing to tell. But this was a film which touched me.

What about the son of the old man that comes to İstanbul and works in the bookstore?

Yes, that was a little problematic. It is overly structured. But on the other hand you can say that the director was playing with it. He was just playing with all these subjects.

Anyway, I just wondered. In your documentary you are saying “I didn’t say my father is a Turkish man. I said he is French.” The title also shows something. You also show your change and family chages as well. I like the developments. The changes are developing in the movie and in the end all of you were different. In the end you give a present to your father, a motorcycle. What was the idea? Actually, I don’t want to seach or try to find ironic things in it. Generally fathers give presents to their sons, like a bike.

There were two reasons…

It was very funny and humanistic.

After that, I did the interview in Black Sea and I went too far. So I wanted to show him I loved him. This was the main idea. So, I was searching for something to express my love to him. Also, we always had problems hugging each other. I didn’t hug him and I called him Cahit but not father in the first three weeks. So, I thought of buying him a motorcycle and teaching him how to drive. This would be great idea for overcoming this reluctance to hug each other. My team told me not to do it, they said “it is very dangerous, you can’t.” But it was our chance. I know that it was a big responsibility because he was 72. I was very positive. I asked him and he said yes. When I taught him I asked him if he wanted to sit in the front. “There is no problem because I will hold you.” And then he suddenly wanted to drive alone. And he did the exact same thing I did as a child. I was riding a bicycle with one hand and saying hello to my mum with my other hand. He did the same thing when he was on the motorcycle.

It is genetic.

Yes, the funny thing is that I told him to put the motorbike in his house, not to touch it until I came again. My father is a free thinker. He took his motorbike and when I came the next time with my son and my wife, my father came to the bus station by the motorbike. Also, his village is far from Mengen so it was a second idea to buy him a motorbike. There is no bus for transportation. If he wants to go to Mengen he has to take the post bus and there is one post bus a day. Thanks to the motorbike he can be a bit mobile. Otherwise he is only sitting. But the main idea was to express my love. I asked him so many questions. Somehow I wanted to be more silent than criticize him. But somehow he is criticizing. He had to do all these though. In the movie it is important that the audiences see that I love him.

Yes, we understood it and they love you too. In the screening some audiences asked the name of his wife.

Mekhufe.

Yes but in the documentary we didn’t hear her name. Audiences reacted to it.

Yes.

Audiences reacted to two things when the film was screened in the festival. In the Arabic song part, they were very sensitive. “We are not an Arabic country,” they say. And the other one was that we didn’t hear her name. At the end of the movie, in the lobby, everybody was saying congratulations to your father and your father was a star. But Mekhufe Hanım was alone and we wanted to say something to her. She hugged us and said “thanks for coming.” Like we were the guest and she was the host. She was so sympathetic.

This is great. She is great. Also how she is conversing with her husband… There is a lot of humor, if she has a chance to speak. In one interview she said everything in a very direct way. I think she is a very very strong woman.

And their conversations are very funny. They needle each other. Your idea to shoot 8 mm turns us to the past.

I want to say something. If I am making films I never see other related films before. The theory of filmmaking is very interesting. If I see other films or filmmakers… knowing a lot of films and being involves in the film business is very important. You can learn so much about filmmaking and certain stages in society. Because filmmaking reflects the society. But my personal secret as a filmmaker is exactly the opposite of it and every film tries to do without knowing anything about what other pople did. If I see too many films related I have problems making the film. There are very good films and they were all done. I can’t compete with that. So, it is important for me to be almost naive while going into the story or into the film.

You can make another film “my life is a film” like your father says in the film…

(He is laughing)

Yeni Film/ Issue 16/ 2008