Cinema in the heartland of ancient civilisations

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Chilean movie No won the Best Film award at the Malatya International Film Festival.

I had never heard of Malatya in Turkey. Having travelled to and around Istanbul, Ephesus, Izmir, Antalya but never to Ankara, I had the impression that Malatya was a district in Ankara.

But everything about Turkey is fascinating so when I was invited to the jury of an international film festival in Malatya, I said “yes” immediately without even googling it! I thought the flight would be to Ankara but when the ticket came I found it was to Istanbul and a full day there with a late evening flight directly to the town of Malatya.
It turned out to be one of the most rewarding and enriching of experiences. I had thought that going — a few years ago — from Damascus to see Ugarit, the ancient Phoenician city tracing its roots to several thousand years BC, where the first written alphabet in the world is thought to have been discovered, was the most exciting, but on this trip to Malatya, being taken at 2 am by car to witness the dramatic sunrise from the top of Mount Nemrud with its gigantic statues, was a heart-stopping moment. THIS is where civilization is thought to have been born, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and as the red sun rose leapt above the horizon, lighting up the river below, you felt you were witnessing the birth of the world.
It is only a couple of hours by car from Malatya, a relatively “modern” town (19th century) built on the site of a town known in Hittite times as Milidia, in Roman times as Melitene, and which still shows traces of its past in Old Malatya — now renamed Battalgazi. Being only about a hundred years old but surrounded by ruins of ancient civilisations, and now celebrated as the apricot capital of Turkey with its zillions of trees laden with luscious apricots, Malatya decided three years ago to launch its own international film festival.
It turned out to be a large and charming festival with some very good films, in the different competitions, for features and shorts, as well as the other sections. Lifetime and Honorary Awards went to four Turkish actors and directors, including the still stunning actress Turkan Soray, with one to John Sayles, the celebrated American director, author, also occasional actor who, in the early 80s, was part of the independent cinema movement in America. He and his producer-wife Maggie Sayles, have long been wanting to come to India — especially to re-visit Kerala. With the burgeoning film festival scene in India now, this should certainly be possible.
There was a homage to the lovely and very talented Iranian director Tahmineh Milani who was also the president of the international jury. Some of her films — The Hidden Half, Two Women, The Fifth Reaction, are known worldwide and have at the same time, provoked sharp disapproval at home. But she is indomitable and carries on with remarkable courage.
Being an exile, or being caught up in political situations over which you have no control, is the tragedy that too many people have become trapped in. Suha Arraf, Palestinian by birth, living in Haifa, has written scripts for some Israeli directors, notably Eran Riklis for whom she also wrote The Syrian Bride and the multiple award-winning The Lemon Tree.
A member of the jury in Malatya, her documentary Women of Hamas about three women who were actively involved in the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections was made two years ago. Ironically, its scheduled screening was held the day before the latest Israeli attack on Gaza. Suha Arraf had received funding from Israel for this film, but she cannot apply for support from the number of Arab films funds that have now come up, notably in Abu Dhabi, because she carries an Israeli passport.
In the National competition were two remarkable films — Reis Celik’s Night of Silence which has also been nominated for Best Script for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA). It is a deeply disturbing film about a marriage arranged in a remote part of Turkey between a very young girl and a much older man. On the wedding night, set entirely in the room in which they are closeted, it slowly reveals the anguish of the man and the flowering of the young girl as she sees his dilemma, but ends with a tragic question mark, leaving the audience to find its own answers.
It is a film that stays with you for its use of space, colour, time, for the questions it leaves you with. Emin Alper’s Beyond the Hill achieved recognition in the First Feature section of the Berlin film festival earlier this year and won the Best Film award in Malatya in the national competition. In a remarkable performance by Tamer Levent as the grandfather at a family reunion in an austere landscape in rural Turkey, it gathers momentum as the family conflict escalates.
The sections included one on four Masters — Bertolucci, Kiarostami, the Taviani brothers and Haneke — one on Middle Eastern cinema, one on Chinese cinema and several more.
The international competition was an eclectic mix of countries, film genres, styles of filmmaking — even of a docudrama among the features. Films came from Argentina and Chile, Sarajevo and Israel, Canada, Ireland, Greece, the US.
One of the two Canadian films was set in the Congo, the other had as its protagonist an Algerian immigrant; the Greek film was set entirely in Turkey with Turkish actors, though the funding came from Greece and the UK. In fact, all the films without exception, were coproductions by more than three countries each. Under the circumstances, it becomes impossible to restrict any film to one country. It is only the director who has a single nationality, but even there it becomes difficult when someone like Suha Arraf prefers to say she is Palestinian but carries an Israeli passport.
The Best Film award went to the Chilean film No which had won an award at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in May this year. It is a brilliant juxtaposition of the story of the resistance against General Pinochet with shots of the real “No” campaign which ousted him from the Presidency of the country. There is no exciting visual quality to the film but the emotional impact it makes as the campaign by thousands of mainly young people accelerates, leaves the audience “with whoops, cheers, and seemingly unstoppable applause” as one critic wrote from Cannes after its premiere there. The Best Director went to an amazing American film Beasts of the Southern Wild, the first feature by short filmmaker Benh Zeitlin. This film had won the Golden Camera prize at Cannes 2012, and several others after that including the Grand Jury prize at Sundance. As the film starts, one is totally disoriented, wondering what part of the world, what era is this? Melting ice caps and floods, ramshackle huts, unkempt and distinctly odd people. What happened to our “civilised” world, one wonders? But the magic of the sets and the wonderful performance by the six year old little girl faced with her sick father capture the imagination. It is one of the most highly original films to emerge on the screens in recent memory.
The Best Actor went to Israel’s God’s Neighbours — a film that leaves one deeply disturbed about fundamentalism, and Best Actress to the 12-year-old protagonist of the even more disturbing War Witch, a Canadian-produced film directed by Kim Nguyen in the Congo, where a young girl is made to commit the most devastating acts by the rebels in the raging war.
So many films, so much to see and experience, in three short years, Malatya has established itself as a festival on par with the many others in Turkey. And in addition, the ancient sites surrounding it, make a visit to the Malatya International Film Festival memorable.