Kurdishaspect.com - By Devrim Kılıç / Izmir-Turkey
A first book on Kurdish Cinema is published in Turkey by Agora Bookhouse based in İstanbul-Turkey. The book –published in Turkish language- titled in Turkish; Kürt Sineması; Yurtsuzluk, Sınır ve Ölüm (could be translated into English as Kurdish Cinema; Rootlessnes, Border and Death) is an edited book goes for 337 pages.
Edited by a young Kurdish director-writer Mizgin (Müjde) Arslan, the book has four 5 chapters. The first chapter talks about the history and development of Kurdish Cinema, the second is about Kurdish director Yılmaz Güney, the third is about Bahman Ghobadi, the fourth talks about Kurdish Cinema in Diaspora and the fifth is titled ‘Young Kurdish Cinema. Also there are a cronoloji and a filmograhpy of Kurdish films at the end of the book.
16 Kurdish and none-Kuridsh writers, directors, academician such as Tim Kennedy, Devrim Kılıç, Müjde Arslan, Jano Rosebiani, Mehmet Aktaş, Mustafa Gündoğdu, Artsvi Bakhchiyan and Bijan Tehrani and more, have contributed to the book with their 25 articles on different aspects of Kurdish Cinema and the proverb has written by Prof. Hamid Dabashi.
I believe this book has a great importance for Kurdish Cinema which is a yound-developing cinema lead by Kurdish directors like Bahman Ghobadi, Hıner Saleem, Kazım Öz, Jano Rosebiani and so on. Although the term ‘Kurdish Cinema’ is still discussed within cinema circles, I must say, with the coming of this book this discussion has come to an end. The existing of 337 pages book means Kurdish Cinema does exist and now we can talk about the characterictic of this cinema which this book also talk about it.
As we know Kurdish cinema received too much interest in recent years. It was a turning point for Kurdish cinema when Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi won the Golden Camera Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 for his film "Dema Herspen Serxwes" (A Time for Drunken Horses). With this film and award the term ‘Kurdish Cinema’ has circled repeatly around the world and yound Kurdish Kurdish filmmakers started to shoot short films and documentaries one after another. And hopefully this book will be another turning poing for Kurdish Cinema and it will help to establish a cinema culture within Kurdish society.
Now we have more than hundred Kurdish filmmakers around the world producing feature and short films as well as documetaries. We have Kurdish Film Festivals in different cities of the world, the biggest is of course London Kurdish Film Festival. We have Kurdish film and distrubution companies and hopefully the first İnternational Kurdish Film Conferance and Festival will be held in Diyarbakır Turkey in November 2009.
İt is stated that the publisher, Agora Kitaplığı (Agora Bookhouse) is looking for a coorparation to publish the book in Kurdish and English languages as well.
Here title of some articles from the book;
‘The rise of Kurdish cinema’ written by Devrim Kılıç
‘The Kurdish colour in Armenian Cinema’ written by Artsvi Bakhchiyan
‘The state of cinema in Federal Kurdistan’ written by Jano Rosebiani
‘The role of Kurdish Film Festival in Diaspora’ written by Mustafa Gundogdu
‘Kurds as a divided nation and Cinema of Yılmaz Güney’ written by Tim Kennedy
‘The cinema of Yuksel Yavuz’ written by Isıl Cobanlı Erdonmez
‘Babak Amini; Kurdistan is full of untold stories’ interview by Bijan Tehrani
