09.02.23
Events
9 February, 19:00h
While Cursed by Specters, 10 min.
The Pillar of Salt, 70 min.
TALK/PRESENTATION / Making an independent first feature film in Turkey
Kino ARMATA is proud to present a film showcase of Burak Çevik, an experimental filmmaker from Istanbul, Turkey, between 9-11 February 2023. Burak Çevik (1993, Istanbul) founded Fol Cinema Society and curated experimental and arthouse film screenings. He was lecturer on Non-Fiction between 2018-2020 at Istanbul Bilgi University. His films The Pillar of Salt (2018), Belonging (2019) and Forms of Forgetting (2023) premiered at Berlinale Forum. His video works have screened at various festivals, such as Locarno Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival.
While Cursed By Specters
2020, 10’, without dialogue
Turkey
Premiered at 58th New York Film Festival
Burak Çevik’s film reworks the stark black-and-white compositions of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s 1984 film Klassenhältnisse (Class Relations) in which German locations stand in for the imagined country of Kafka’s unfinished novel, Amerika. Here, however, depopulated interiors and desolate outdoor spaces carry the phantasmic traces of humanity – voices, shadows, photographs, cars – but never let them appear, suggesting a world in which all connections to the social have come untethered.
The Pillar of Salt / Tuzdan Kaide
2018, 71’, Turkish
Turkey
Premiered at Berlinale Forum
A pregnant young woman who lives in a sort of cave is looking for her vanished sister, yet this plot summary hardly does justice to the charm, richness and radical nature of Burak Çevik’s first feature – all of which a result of the liberties he takes in creating an extravagant cinematic world to tell this story. The protagonist leaves her almost fairytale-like cave to set out across a river, taking up her sister’s trail. This trail leads her to a botanical garden, a bird shop, and a darkroom. The photo lab technician compares the effect of photographs to God turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt because she couldn’t resist the temptation of turning around to see Sodom be destroyed. Captured for eternity, transfixed for eternity – should we take it at face value when the protagonist tells the boatwoman that she is a part-time vampire? The dreamlike way in which the film digresses to show us a plant, a strip of negatives, or a table tennis match contributes considerably to the strange fascination it develops. Some things remain mysterious – which only makes us even more curious about what they might be referring to.
—Anna Hoffmann