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First New York Kurdish Film Festival A Cinema Across Borders
October 21 - 25, 2009
The First New York Kurdish Film Festival: A Cinema Across Borders is the first-ever film festival of Kurdish cinema in the United States. Bringing together an exciting range of films and documentaries from across the Kurdish region and the Kurdish diaspora, he festival will feature ten short films, a documentary and eight feature films, including the US premiere of The Storm by Kazım Öz (Ax, Fotograf). In addition, the festival will include a Filmmakers’ Panel with six prominent Kurdish filmmakers from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and the diaspora to connect directly with New York audiences, and post-film Q&As with the filmmakers, providing potential new routes for understanding and dialogue. Situated in the heart of the Middle East, Kurdish cinema intersects with many of the great political conflicts of our age. These diverse films provide powerful and unexpected insights into our common world through stunning cinematography, rich narratives, and deeply humane storytelling.
All screenings will take place at the NYU Cantor Film Center (36 East 8th Street, NY, NY) and the NYU Hagop Kevorkian Center (50 Washington Square South at 255 Sullivan Street, NY, NY). Tickets can be purchased for $10 general admission through SmartTix on www.smarttix.com or 212-868-4444. Tickets for the Filmmakers’ Panel, Cinema Shorts, Yol, and Close Up Kurdistan are free, but reservations through www.smarttix.com are strongly advised. For more information, please visit www.nykff.com.
The First New York Kurdish Film Festival: A Cinema Across Borders is directed by an independent organizing committee, presented by the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU, ArteEast and The London Kurdish Film Festival and supported, in part, by the Center for Religion and Media at NYU, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the French-American Cultural Exchange, the Norwegian Film Institute and by public funds from New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
To arrange pre-festival phone interviews with film directors or in-person interviews between Oct 21-25, or
to obtain screeners, please contact Rosey Strub on 718.857.0013 or rosey.strub@gmail.com.
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Half Moon
directed by Bahman Ghobadi
October 21, 2009
A haunting film about the clash between human resolve and political reality, Half Moon, directed by internationally renowned Kurdish auteur Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, Turtles Can Fly), provides a sophisticated vision of the new realities of the Kurdistan region after the US invasion of Iraq. Mamo, an iconic Kurdish musician in the twilight of his life and in failing health, must lead a dozen of his sons to Iraq for a concert to celebrate the fall of Saddam Hussein and the end of his repression of Kurdish music. Their increasingly tortuous journey across a maze of borders proves by turn dangerous and surreal, paralleling the predicament of Kurdish identity in a hostile political world. This outstanding new film from Bahman Ghobadi won the top prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival together with awards for writing and photography. More
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Cinema Shorts: Women in Kurdish Cinema
This program includes short films made by and about woman, created by Kurdish filmmakers from the diaspora:
October 22, 2009
Totico by Khadija C. Baker (Syria/Canada, 2007, 2 mins); Dengbej Women by Women’s Collective of Atölyemor/ Filmmor Women's cooperative (Turkey, 2006, 22 mins);The Seed by Müjde Arslan (Turkey, 2009,13 mins); Oven by Ashkan Ahmadi (Iran,14 mins) and Border by Sattar Chamani Gol (Iran,2008,10 mins).
Müjde Arslan, director of The Seed, will lead a post-film discussion. More
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Crossing the Dust
directed by Shawkat Amin Korki
October 22, 2009
In this striking post-9/11 road movie set in Iraq during the 2003 American invasion, two Kurdish peshmerga (resistance fighters) find a lost five-year-old Arab boy, named Saddam. Amidst the chaos of the war raging around them, they attempt to find a safe haven for the boy with villagers, mullahs and Americans. Simultaneously, the boy's parents search frantically, anxious because the boy’s name is now taboo. More
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Kurdish Visual Media
(Book Signing & Reception)
October 23, 2009
Writer/Filmmaker, Mujde Arslan, photographer Susan Meiselas and human rights campaigner Kerim Yildiz present three groundbreaking books documenting the Kurdish experience and the visual arts: Mujde Arslan introduces her new book, Kurdish Cinema (Agora Bookhouse, Istanbul, Turkey. 2009), the first book on this topic ever to be published; Susan Meiselas will discuss her seminal book Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (Random House, 1997), which traces the history of the Kurds through photographs and accounts by colonial administrators, anthropologists, missionaries, journalists, and others who have traveled to Kurdistan over the last century; and Kerim Yildiz and Susan Meiselas will discuss their work featured in Kurds: Through the Photographer’s Lens (Trolley Ltd., 2008), a unique book of photographs, poetry and writing commissioned by the Delfina Foundation to mark 15 years of the Kurdish Human Rights Project. More
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Cinema Shorts: Identity, Loss & War
October 23, 2009
Combining abstract and realistic narrative styles, these short films represent each part of Kurdistan and address the destruction and desolation wrought by war in Iraq: Cheeese... Hope Dies Last! by Hüseyin Tabak (Turkey/Germany, 2008, 12 mins); Shadow and Wind by Arin Inan Arslan (Turkey, 2006, 15 mins); The Border by Zahavi Sanjavi ( Iraq, 2005, 27 mins); My Beautiful Son Will Be The King by Salem Salavati (Iran, 2008, 9 mins). More
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My Marlon and Brando
directed by Huseyin Karabey
October 23, 2009
Based on the true story of the post-invasion cross-border romance between renowned Iraqi Kurdish actor Hama Ali and his Turkish actress girlfriend Ayca Damgaci, My Marlon and Brando stars the two real-life lovers in documentarian Hüseyin Karabey's fiction-feature debut. A moving statement on war and the confining artificiality of borders, My Marlon and Brando also reveals the eye-opening journey Damgaci takes as a Turk attempting to be with her Kurdish lover, learning firsthand the grim racism and repression faced by Kurds in her own country and across the borders of Iraq and Iran. More
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Yol
directed by Yilmaz Guney
October 24, 2009
Winner of the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1982, Yol remains a masterpiece of Kurdish – and world – cinema. Written and directed by virtuoso filmmaker Yilmaz Güney from behind prison walls (through laborious directorial notes sent to his assistant Şerif Gören who did the actualshooting of the film), Yol paints a stark portrait of Turkey in the aftermath of the 1980 Turkish coup d'état the stories of five prisoners who are given a week's home leave. More
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Filmmakers’ Panel
October 24, 2009
Seven major figures in Kurdish Cinema from Iran, Iraq, Turkey and the Diaspora will discuss their work and the current state of Kurdish film and Kurdistan. Filmmakers are Müjde Arslan, Bahman Ghobadi, Hüseyin Karabey, Kazım Öz, Jano Rosebiani, Hiner Saleem, and Hisham Zaman. More
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The Storm
directed by Kazim Öz
October 24, 2009
Set amidst the political upheaval on Turkish college campuses in the early 1990s, The Storm follows Cemal, a bright young Economics major from a village in southern Turkey, on a journey to political commitment. After befriending a group of revolutionary Kurdish students, Cemal’s eyes are gradually opened to Turkish state repression as he witnesses police violence, arrest and torture firsthand. More
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Close up Kurdistan
directed by Yuksel Yavuz
October 25, 2009
In this personal story of immigration, Yavuz documents his journey from Hamburg to Stockholm to Turkey, and finally to the refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. Here, he meets old friends, some of whom have become guerrilla fighters, gone into exile, or chosen to stay in their villages and face persecution because of their fight for Kurdish rights. Featuring 1987 Nobel Peace Prize nominee Ismail Besikci, who spent 17 years in prison for his courageous academic work on Kurdish culture. More
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Jiyan
directed by Jano Rosebiani
October 25, 2009
Five years after the 1988 gas attack on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja, which killed 5,000 Kurds and maimed thousands more, Diyari – an Iraqi Kurd who now lives in America – returns to his homeland to build an orphanage. He befriends Jiyan, a shy ten-year old orphan and a survivor of the chemical attack. Loosely based on testimonial accounts, Jiyan includes a number of survivors as cast members in the film. More
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Bawke & Winterland
directed by Hisham Zaman
October 25, 2009
Bawke – (Iraq/France, 2005, 15 mins)
Crafted with deft handheld camerawork, Bawke traces the harrowing story of an Iraqi Kurdish father and his young son - illegal immigrants crossing Europe – as they weave their way through a maze of life-threatening situations in their attempt to get to a safe country and secure refugee status. Bawke’s impeccable pacing adds to this haunting tale of refugee isolation and fear.
Winterland – (Iraq/Norway, 2007, 52 mins)
With great humor and stunning cinematography, Winterland tells the story of Renas, a well-adjusted Kurdish refugee who lives in a godforsaken part of northern Norway. Renas has everything he wants, except a wife... but soon his special princess, Fermesk, will be joining him from Iraq. Though the couple has never met, they have already fallen in love from looking at each other's photographs – though Fermesk is now a much bigger woman, and Renas isn't quite the handsome young man of that photo taken years ago... More
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Vodka Lemon
directed by Hiner Saleem
October 25, 2009
Set in a remote Kurdish village in Armenia Vodka Lemon tells the gentle love story of an ex-army officer, and a vodka-lemon stand barmaid, who meet during their daily trips to visit their spouse’s graves. Director Hiner Saleem intercuts the love story with surrealistic vignettes and dark humor to reveal a bittersweet portrait of people in precarious times. More
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Totico
directed by Khadija C. Baker
October 22, 2009
“Totico”("crazy" in Kurdish) is a short animation by Canadian-based Kurdish visual artist Khadija C. Baker. Using melted chocolate and henna to hand-draw images onto glass, Baker creates a bewitching tale of two roosters. More
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Dengbej Women
by Women’s Collective of Atölyemor/ Filmmor Women's cooperative
October 22, 2009
In 2004, Atölyemor started its way with a cinema workshop that meets women’s opportunities, experience and information and shares all of them. It includes film reading, preparation, script- oral history, shotting and editing, film critique with consultancy of instructors and women and every year approximately 15 women have the opportunity of having information and experience about cinema.
Every year, women produce films and experience cinema information from film critiques to film making in our workshop. Workshops had been done in Istanbul in 2004, 2005 and 2007 and it was done in Diyarbakir in 2007. In all these workshops 9 film was shot and one critique was written.
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