Siirt 2nd International Short Film Festival

The second Siirt International Film Festival also took place last week. The first is generally an important initiative, an undertaking, and requires crazy courage, and generally leaves no energy for the second, exhausting all one's strength. But if the second too has been held, then the possibility has arisen for this activity to become traditional, even institutionalized and settle into a certain routine. Routine also produces and develops its own possibilities, opportunities, platforms, relations and habits.

Cinema is an art that, integrating ever more with the possibilities of technology developing more every day, allows more original productions. It is an art field in which, with the development of technology and its becoming accessible and reachable by everyone, both production and participation have become easier. But of course the matter does not end with technology alone. The camera, sound, light and the composition of the flow of events are an art in themselves, but the human dimension of the work, drama and acting, is an entirely separate art. What emerges from the integration of these places the artistic performance in cinema in a very special position among today's arts.

The first Siirt Short Film Festival was held in early May 2018. 415 works had entered. It had coincided with the time of Siirt's Şihr'il-Bayf festival and had to some extent recalled the atmosphere of that festival, breathing from the atmosphere of that festival. This time too, the festival, to which 435 works applied and 32 of which reached the final, was completed on Friday evening with the award ceremony.

For 5 days, at the Siirt Provincial Directorate of Culture and Siirt University, artists held talks on cinema, held workshops, and film screenings were held. Meanwhile, directors, producers, screenwriters and cinema artists virtually mingled with the people on the streets of Siirt and in its districts, and were welcomed very warmly with the warm interest and hospitality of the people of Siirt.

The screening of Yılmaz Güney's film Sürü in Pervari, where it was shot, with the participation of Fatoş Güney, was an event worth watching that added a whole different meaning to the festival. The Botan Valley, beginning from Pervari and extending to Siirt, and the lived epic stories wandering among the kalyons around it and the settled and nomadic communities, and the rich imaginations about them, are an extremely rich and virgin source for cinema. The screenwriters and producers who took part in the festival did not miss this source with their wide-open and receptive eyes, and took plenty of notes.

The First Prize at the festival went to the animation Avarya directed by Gökalp Gönen, second prize to Cahit Kaya Demir's Fegere, and third prize to Emre Sefer's Mahallenin Bazı Kedileri, while the Jury Special Prize went to Kadir'in Gecesi directed by Abdülkadir Ocak. All the other films were carefully evaluated by the jury, which included strong names such as Sermin Hürmeriç, İlhan Şeşen, Bülent Bilgiç and Erkan Bektaş, but the story of this last film was truly very moving.

To Kadir, a real street kid who stayed in a children's home until the age of 18 but found himself on the streets when his age came, the director Ocak gave a camera and had him film an ordinary day of his. A film like a slap about the ongoing lives that we are unaware of in that lovely city, Istanbul, where we live every day in our own comfort, but that, when we become informed of them, would make us ashamed of ourselves, our comfort, our humanity. If we can call those lives life, of course. Kadir, a street kid, who has not gone through regular education but has read life well, has interpreted the world in depth in his own way from the streets, through the eyes of homeless and destitute people. Of course he has also gotten involved in crime, that is, in acts that the comfortable world calls crime. He has a finalized sentence of 4 years, and right after shooting this film he went and surrendered of his own will to serve his sentence.

With the special prize it appreciated, the jury is, in my view, giving all of humanity from the Siirt Short Film Festival a quite meaningful message. To the world of those who live sated and comfortable while their neighbor is hungry, outdoors, in the cold, in distress, it says what the Prophet of Mercy said.

Another special prize of the Siirt Film Festival was given to Yağmur Olup Şehre Düşüyorum, directed by Kasım Ördek, in the name of İbrahim Hakkı. To think of a cinema award in Siirt in the name of this wise historical and spiritual figure is a great gesture in itself. Let us say may the same come true for fine cinema products inspired by his wisdom to emerge as well.

I congratulate the General Directorate of Cinema and Promotion of the Ministry of Culture, which has given the strongest support to the Film Festival from the very beginning, starting with the first in Siirt, all the participating artists, DİKA and the Governor of Siirt Ali Fuat Atik, who displayed hosting magnanimously without recognizing any obstacle or difficulty, Siirt University, and of course my dear friend Baran Meyda, the greatest laborer of this event from the beginning, and his team, for their successful organizations, and of course the people of Siirt for embracing this festival..