PRESS CONFERENCE
HERO OF ALL SEAS / THE NEW SAINT /
DIVINE PIG / THE OTHER TOWN / DEAF JAM
Directors Nefin Dinc (The Other Town), Allard Detiger (The New Saint), Hans Dortmans (Divine Pig), Talal Derki (Hero of All Seas) and Judy Lieff
(Deaf Jam) gave a press conference on Monday, March 14, 2011, in the framework of the 13th TDF.
What connects Greeks and Turks? According to Nefin Dinc, director of The Other Town, the answer is their mutual prejudice. “I started to realize that when I was an undergraduate student, but also later, as a postgraduate student in Scotland, where I had made many Greek friends. I realized that we both said the same things about each other. To be more precise, we repeated the things we had been taught at school”, said the director. Mrs. Dinc worked on a screenplay by Herules Millas. They spent a year shooting at the Greek town of Dimitsana and at the similar Turkish town of Birgi. “We recorded history classes at schools of both towns, as well as their national and religious holidays, trying to locate the source of the mutual prejudices. The people answering our questions do not realize how sad or ridiculous the things they say are”, commented the filmmaker. She also argued that the tensions between the two countries are not so much a reflection of their past but rather a product of modern-day nationalistic attitudes and education. The director expressed the view that rapprochement will take time, although she acknowledged a change of attitudes in the past decade. “Turks visit Greece and Greeks come to Turkey, and it is also important that artists have started talking about these issues”, said Mrs. Dinc.
Prejudice can be directed against animals as well, Hans Dortmans jokingly said. The protagonist in his film, Divine Pig, is Dorus, a little pig living in the backyard of Gerard, a free-range butcher. Gradually, a special bond of love is forged between them, and Gerard faces the dilemma of whether to slaughter the pig or not. The director revealed that as a child he had developed an almost passionate love for pigs, growing up in the rural environment of his grandfather’s farm. “The pig is an animal with which people have a love-hate relationship. It is considered impure by many religions, which forbid consumption by believers. At the same time, pork is the most consumed type of meat. There are people who love pork and believe that its meat is tastier if it comes from a pig which had a good life. But there are also others who are having difficulty relating to an animal destined to wind up on their plate”, explained the filmmaker.
Allard Detiger was inspired to make The New Saint after he read a report in the newspaper about the mythical status given to the story of a young Russian soldier, who was taken captive in Chechnya, refused to convert to Islam and in the end had his life taken. Russian society not only made a hero out of Yevgeny Rodionov, but proclaimed him a martyr, while for many Russians he became an unofficial saint. “Following the collapse of communism, Russians need new idols and Yevgeny was perfectly suited for this role, combining love for the country with love for religion - a major pillar of the latter, in the orthodox tradition at least, is martyrdom”, said the director. The protagonist in his documentary is the mother of this “new saint”, who is trying to deal with her grief by taking an active part in the movement developing around Yevgeny by orthodox priests, motorists’ gangs and Russian soldiers. “In my film, there are many who think of Yevgeny as a saint or hero, but he was not a special person. He is just satisfying the need of the people to believe in someone”, explained the director.
The Kurd Abo Yashar is also a hero in the eyes of his compatriots. His story is narrated in Talal Derki’s documentary, Hero of all seas. Yashar made the crossing from the Turkish coast to Greece after swimming for 15 consecutive hours. “His story makes you realize what it means to be an illegal alien”, said the director. Commenting on the issue of Kurdish migration, the filmmaker said: “The troubles of the Kurdish people in the past forty years force them to abandon their mountainous abode. But they don’t come to Greece to become Greeks; they don’t want to become Europeans. They dream of a day when they will be able to live a normal life in the land of their ancestors, speaking their native tongue”. His film and the recent events with the 300 immigrant hunger strikers in Athens prompted a question to the filmmaker about his opinion on the possible solutions to the issue of immigration. “The solution will not be found in the measures taken by European countries within their own frontiers. The key is to support the countries of origin”, he replied.
Judy Lieff’s Deaf Jam focuses on the fruitful and auspicious meeting of two different personalities. The protagonist in her film is a deaf teenager being introduced to sign language. She then boldly enters the scene of word slam, a contest of oral poetry in hip – hop style. When the young girl meets a hearing Palestinian slam poet, the two of them embark on a unique collaboration, and become a duet – an allegory of the complex reality shared by both sides. The director met her protagonist while teaching video production to deaf-mute children in Los Angeles. “The rhymes used by deaf-mute people have nothing to do with the sound, it is more like dancing!”, explained the filmmaker. The biggest obstacle she faced while making the film was translating the language of the deaf. “I initially tried to give a voice to the poem, but the outcome was not authentic. So I used graphics and animation, and the words are moving on the screen without sound. I wanted to avoid any hint of degradation of the poetry of deaf people”, concluded the director.
