10.02.23
Events
10 February, 19:00h
Belonging, 70 min.
A Topography of Memory, 30 min.
Q&A with Burak Çevik
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.
Belonging / Aidiyet
2019, 73’, Turkish
Turkey and Canada
Premiered at Berlinale Forum
A murder investigation is flipped inside out in Burak Çevik’s second feature, a spellbinding and surprising work that questions whether we can ever truly understand criminal motives. We begin in the present as an unseen narrator recounts the assassination of his lover’s disapproving mother, accompanied by hauntingly vacant images of urban alienation and garish city lights; we then flash back to witness the first encounter between the lovers-turned-accomplices, their mutual attraction and world-weariness emerging across a sleepless night and morning after. Çevik imbues the proceedings with a stylistic confidence and willingness to bend the conventions of cinematic form to arrive at a complex, gripping double meditation on love and death.
A Topography of Memory
2019, 30’, Turkish
Turkey
Premiered at Locarno Film Festival then screened Toronto Film Festival’s Wavelenghts section and looped 2 days at 57th New York Film Festival’s Projections.
This subtly expansive new work by Burak Çevik (Belonging, ND/NF 2019) combines CCTV footage of urban Istanbul with audio of a family heading to vote in the controversial June 2015 Turkish general election. As talk ranges from domestic matters to political affiliations, shots of the city’s skyline, coastal architecture, and religious landmarks captured the day after the election slowly scroll past. Underlying these eerily serene images is the knowledge that in a follow-up vote five months later, the right-wing government would regain power.