57th THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
November 3-13, 2016
ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ PRESS CONFERENCE
November 3-13, 2016
ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ PRESS CONFERENCE
The director’s loneliness and how literature helped him escape it, as well as the filmmakers’ moral duty and art that “is above languages and religions” were some of the issues the Turkish cinematographer Zeki Demirkubuz talked about in a press conference that took place on Wednesday, November 9, 2016, as part of the 57th Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
A co-founder of the new Turkish cinema, pioneer of independent cinema and political prisoner for three years after the 1980 coup, Zeki Demirkubuz attended the 57th Festival, on the occasion of the full retrospective presented this year for the first time globally, in TIFF’s section “Balkan Survey”.
At the beginning of the press conference, the director of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Orestis Andreadakis, noted: “We are happy to host a great cinematographer, neighbor and friend of the TIFF. We are even happier because his films are so appealing to viewers, who discuss so much about them after the screenings. This is the biggest pleasure for us”.
Dimitris Kerkinos, TDF’s head of Programming and head of TIFF’s “Balkan Survey” section, thanked the Culture and Tourism Office of the Turkish Embassy for supporting this retrospective and added: “I am happy for having a great filmmaker with us and for presenting all his eleven films. Many of those films were screened in the Festival in the past, in fact this is the fourth time that Demirkubuz attends the TIFF within twenty years, he is a real friend of the Festival”.
On his part, Zeki Demirkubuz thanked the Festival for hosting the tribute to his work and stressed that he was especially happy for having been characterized as TIFF’s friend. Speaking about his work, he made a special mention in the director’s moral responsibility: “Looking at myself and my films, I see the totally pure and introvert way in which I began to make films. To do the things a person wants is a moral issue in my opinion. This is how I began to make films, almost like doing monologues. I am lucky to have completed 11 films and I feel happy for having achieved this. Not only in Turkey, but throughout the world, even in France or Iran, great directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, say that making such films is like soliloquizing. Having this work accepted by the societies where you live is very difficult. After two or three such films you begin to feel isolated, then you invoke financial reasons as an excuse and eventually you abandon cinema. Many directors of my generation as well as of the previous ones made their debut films with similar innocence and when they found themselves faced with reality either abandoned filmmaking or made films that did not reflect their standpoint. What we call individuality, personal style, poses the risk of isolation. Some friends and I have managed, with personal struggle, to keep on looking at our inner world, no matter the risk of not being loved, or even of being hated”.
Asked about the modern Turkish cinema conditions, the director noted: “People who fight in this field are my colleagues. In Turkey, though, these things are not so easy. The political and social situations generate difficulties. The only way to overcome this is to look inside you and safeguard some individuality. Many directors get easily tired, easily politicized, see their own reality and become shocked by the society’s reality”.
Demirkubuz made a special mention to the old Turkish director Zeki Okten, his mentor in the beginnings of his career: “It was thanks to Okten that I became involved in cinema. He loved me and gave me advice. As to technical matters, such as the use of wide angle, I wasn’t listening to him. But it is from him that I learnt the ethics of shooting a film and respecting the viewer as if they were you. Lying to the viewer is equally horrible as lying to yourself”, he noted.
The influence of literature, especially from writers as Dostoevsky and Camus, is particularly obvious in Demirkubuz’s film universe. As he underlined about this matter: “Literature is what I love the most. When I was a kid, I started to have questions on my mind and that was making me feel very lonely. I was a child full of curiosity, I was asking things all the time and thus my destiny changed. Then I realized that my family, my teachers and the society had been lying to me - well intentioned, of course, but still lying. I declare it, I was fooled. Growing up I realized that either I had to believe them and forget my vision, or fight my loneliness and get closer to my inner reality. No one helped me. That changed when I was in Metris prison. Someone told me I was trouble and was acting like a psychopath, and gave me a book. It was “Crime and Punishment”. When I finished reading it I was surprised, because it affected me deeply. I loved it, and asked for a second one. And the truth is I felt deeply shocked because that very loneliness I was reading about in a book written by a nationalist Orthodox Russian 150 years ago, was what I was experiencing in prison, among my companions on death row. The reality I hadn’t been able to share, I experienced it in those books. Later I got involved with cinema, I became a film director, and the loneliness I had experienced till then ceased to exist. I got to know writers as Balzac and Camus. I understood that, as Kiarostami and other filmmakers say, art is above languages, religions, it is above everything. It is surrounding people and makes them meet one another, breathe the same air”.
Asked about the situation in Turkey, especially in relation to artists, Zeki Demirkubuz replied that he is not perfectly aware of it, but from conversations one hears can realize that problems must exist, in fact big ones. He added that art must be discussed as part of reality in a country.
Zeki Demirkubuz considers himself a fan of ancient Greek literature. “In prison, one of the topics we were discussing was ancient Greek philosophy. I then read Homer’s Iliad and discussed it with my fellow prisoners. I am interested in Greek literature; I believe the Turks and the Greeks have incredibly much in common”.
As to the Turkish state’s support to cinema, the director said: “To be honest, so far the biggest support to cinema was provided by the state. And I say this as a director who was supported the least by the state. I only had support for five of my films; the other six I made them by myself. But I don’t know what is going to happen from now on, I hear bad things and I hope they’re not true”.
For Zeki Demirkubuz, the roles he is called upon to undertake as a citizen and director are totally distinct. “Dostoevsky, who influenced me deeply as I told you, is maybe one of the greatest nationalist Christian Orthodox authors. Perhaps he hated Turks and Muslims, but when he was writing, he was thinking of his moral duty towards humanity. He had been able to judge and understand Christ as no one else did. On my part, my responsibilities as a citizen are different than those I have as an artist. I could be an Islamist, but when I grab the camera I have to do things which are beyond all this. In Turkey, a work of art can also be seen as a means of propaganda”, he said. And added: “When a work of art is being used as a means of propaganda, nobody knows who is going to use it better. It is a weapon that any uneducated person can use. As a citizen, I am good in opposing authorities, and I don’t mean those that change in the course of time. It is my principle to oppose any authority, and that is a moral issue. As an artist, though, I cannot accept such a responsibility”.
Changing mood in the conversation and replying to a relevant comment, the Turkish director said he is a fan of Besiktas, and that he would like to make a film about the Turkish football club, but he still has not found a powerful story. Football brings him joy and as he revealed: “Yesterday, PAOK FC gave me a jersey of the club, with whom Besiktas is brother club, and that made me feel happy”.
With the support of the Culture & Tourism Office of the Turkish Embassy in Athens:
All sections of the 57th TIFF as well as the Agora/Industry are financed by the European Union - European Regional Development Fund under the ROP of Central Macedonia 2014-2020.
