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Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz
Seven Films by Breakthrough Turkish Director
September 19 - 24, 2007
NEW YORK, August 17, 2007—Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz will be onstage throughout the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s new series devoted to his work, Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz, running Sept. 19–24 at the Walter Reade Theater and co-presented by ArteEast and Moon and Stars Project, in collaboration with Altyazi. All seven of Demirkubuz’s fictional features will be screened in the series, including the New York premiere of his most recent film Destiny and all three films that make up the director’s acclaimed “Tales of Darkness” trilogy: Fate, Confession, and The Waiting Room. On Saturday, Sept. 22, at 3:00 p.m., the Film Society will host a special panel discussion on Demirkubuz and the rise of Turkish cinema. The director will be in New York from Sept. 16 to Sept. 25.
“Together with Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Yesim Ustaoglu and a handful of others, Demirkubuz has been leading a revolution in Turkish cinema for the past decade,” says Richard Peña, program director at the Film Society. “This new cinema has offered us a far more complex, nuanced portrait of a society whose role as an arbiter of East-West cultural and political divisions grows each day.”
Demirkubuz was born in Isparta in 1964. Politically engaged at an early age—even spending a term in jail as a teenager—he graduated from Istanbul University’s Department of Communications and became an assistant to director Zeki Okten, who he has often credited as his mentor. Demirkubuz established a strong, personal style as a writer/director up front in his debut feature, Block-C (1994), a powerful exploration of a woman whose marriage is falling apart. His follow-up films, Innocence (1997) and The Third Page (1999), earned Demirkubuz his first notices among critics after screening at several international festivals.
A notably personal filmmaker, Demirkubuz has taken over nearly every major aspect of his productions, working at various times as the producer, actor, editor, cinematographer and set designer for his films. In 2002, he received the very rare distinction of having two films screened at the same Cannes Film Festival, Fate and Confession, for which he also won a pair of FIPRESCI prizes at the 2002 Istanbul International Film Festival. He added The Waiting Room to that duo to create the “Tales of Darkness” trilogy, “each a completely separate film but also part of an overall portrait Demirkubuz offers of the concept of morality in the contemporary world,” says Peña.
Destiny is Demirkubuz’s newest film, a study in the parallel romantic obsessions of two characters––salesman Bekir for nightclub entertainer Ugur, Ugur for the disreputable Zagor. Demirkubuz won the 2006 Istanbul International Film Festival’s Best Turkish Director prize for the film. It will make its New York premiere in Mental Minefields, screening at the Walter Reade Theater on Friday, Sept. 21, at 6:15 p.m., with a second screening on Sunday, Sept. 23, at 8:15 p.m.
Additionally, a special panel discussion on director Zeki Demirkubuz and Turkish cinema will be held at the Walter Reade Theater on Saturday, Sept. 22, at 3:00 p.m. The discussion is free with the purchase of a ticket to any film in the Mental Minefields series.
Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz is co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, ArteEast and the Moon and Stars Project in collaboration with Altyazi.
In conjunction with this film series, Altyazi, ArteEast and the Moon and Stars Project have published a new book, carrying the exhibit’s title and introducing English-speaking audiences to the austere and brilliant cinema of Zeki Demirkubuz. With articles by international film critics, translated for the first time from Turkish and French, this collection places Demirkubuz’s work in the context of Turkish cinema and the wider world of international art cinema. Featuring a comprehensive critical essay and a new extensive interview with the filmmaker, the editors of Altyazı, the cinema magazine published in Turkey, deliver a book designed as a guide for those intrepid enough to travel the minefields and dark tales of Demirkubuz’s rich filmography.
The series has been made possible by generous grants from Turkish Cultural Foundation and the American Turkish Society. Additional support has been provided by Ayse Celem Design, Graphis Printing, Turkish Kitchen, FedEx Turkey, Ramerica International, Inc. and Turkish Culture and Tourism Office.
Single screening tickets for Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz are $11 for adults; $7 for Film Society members, ArteEast members, and students with a valid photo ID; and $7 for seniors at weekday screenings before 6 p.m. They are available at both the Walter Reade Theater box office and online at www.filmlinc.com. |
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Bloc C
(C Blok), by Zeki Demirkubuz, 1994, RT: 90 minutes, Color, Turkey, 35mm.
Tulay, a woman whose marriage is slowly disintegrating grows restless. She decides to come to terms with many of her traumas. Halit, a resident of her apartment complex watches her incessantly. A number of enigmatic encounters between Tulay, her maid Ash, and Halit blur the lines between fantasy and reality and heighten the sense of uncertainty. More
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Fate
(Yazgi), by Zeki Demirkubuz, 2001, RT: 119 minutes, Color, Turkey, 35mm.
Musa is a middle-aged man who has largely given up on the idea of free will resigned to living without a sense of direction and designed course. As fate would have it, that course includes death, marriage and imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. Take the Camus’s “ennui”, the Bresson’s soul and the unwavering gaze of Kiarostami and you might get something like Zeki Demirkubuz's Fate. Screened in the 2001 edition of the Cannes Film Festival at the official selection’s ‘Un Certain Regard’. More
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Confession
(Itiraf), by Zeki Demirkubuz, 2001, RT: 100 minutes, Color, Turkey, 35mm.
Harun, a rich and successful engineer, finds out that his wife Nilgtin is having an affair. Scared of losing her, and in disbelief, he does not confront her. Time begins to pass very slowly and painfully. When the situation becomes unbearable, he initiates an all-night inquisition. The husband and wife, married for seven years, cannot recognize one another as they delve in the darkness of their souls. Harun is in for a surprise. Screened in the 2002 edition of the Cannes Film Festival at the official selection’s ‘Un Certain Regard’. More
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The Waiting Room
(Bekleme Odasi), by Zeki Demirkubuz, 2004, RT: 94 minutes, Color, Turkey, 35mm.
The concluding film in the filmmaker’s Tales About Darkness trilogy that includes the previous two features. It tells the story of Ahmet, a widely esteemed film director but who nonetheless feels worthless and struggles to wrap up his adaptation of Dostoievsky’s Crime and Punishment. The prospect of work fills him with torpor and he is indifferent in his relationship with his girlfriend. He’s momentarily moved when he toys with the notion of casting a burglar he caught breaking into his place as the a that asks whether a man ruled by egotism and arrogance can deliberately choose positive values such as spirituality and solitude. Can the exalted status that used to be granted only to heroes, as reward for their suffering, be taken on by the selfish, morally troubled anti-hero of today? More
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Destiny
(Kader), by Zeki Demirkubuz, 2006, RT: 103 minutes, Color, Turkey, 35mm.
Presented as the prequel to Masumiyet, with Kader Demirkubuz resurrects the characters and drama of the feature film that earned him international recognition. Bekir is mad for Ugur. Ugur is enamored with Zagor and Zagor is can’t help committing crimes. Zagor is released from jail. On a sultry summer night, one mishap follows another and a murder is committed in the neighborhood. That same night, Ugur vanishes.
Although foreboding of the dark and cruel days awaiting Ugur's young and pretty mother, his paralyzed father and his little brother who have lived under the wing of an affluent young man named Cevat until then, this homicide becomes the hope for deliverance from his mad love for Bekir. He marries the girl his family has picked for him and sets forth for a new life. Some months later Zagor is jailed for killing two policemen, and Ugur returns to Istanbul. Bekir is, again, hopeful. A deadly chase of merciless loves begins, Ugur trails behind Zagor and Bekir follows his beloved Ugur across nightspots, cheap hotel rooms and dope bashes, town after town, for years. Hearths and homes are destroyed, children were orphaned, but innocence never lost. More
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Innocence
Innocence (Masumiyet), by Zeki Demirkubuz, 1997, RT: 105 minutes, Color, Turkey, 35mm.
Yusuf is released from prison after serving a ten-year sentence. Fearful of the world outside, all he has is an address given to him by a fellow prisoner. After unexpected problems at his sister’s house, he finds himself in a cheap hotel in Izmir where he meets a woman, a man, and a child who will complicate his life in unexpected ways. Yusuf, trying to survive in this unknown city, finds himself entangled in an extraordinary love triangle. More
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The Third Page
(Üçüncü Sayfa), by Zeki Demirkubuz, 1999, RT: 92 minutes, Color, Turkey/Italy/France, 35mm.
Isa, a walk-on in movie productions, is blamed for a fifty-dollar robbery in a world ruled by mafias. He is badly beaten and given twenty-four hours to return the money. The next day, instead of finding the money, Isa finds a gun. He decides to write a note and commit suicide. Just when he is about to pull the trigger, the doorbell rings. More
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