Happening: Istanbul Film Festival

Financial Times (USA Ed) Wednesday, March 28, 2012, p. 11

Arts

What : New Turkish films and Hollywood movies at Turkey’s biggest cinema event.

When : March 31-April 15.

Where : Seven cinemas around the city.

Details : Hollywood comes to town with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel , The Deep Blue Sea and others, but this festival is less about glitz than about morally committed film-making.

More than 200 films are divided between 20 categories. « Human Rights in Cinema Competition » includes films depicting violations in Franco’s Spain, occupied Poland and present-day Iran. Simurgh (directed by Ruhi Karadag) chronicles the 1996 hunger strikes that proliferated in protest against the notorious Turkish F-type prisons. Crulic – the Path to Beyond (directed by Anca Damian) is an animated docudrama about the Romanian prisoner, Claudiu Crulic. Crulic died inside a Warsaw prison in 2008 while on hunger strike; he always protested his innocence.

Iran’s 2009 « green revolution » and the subsequent crackdown is the subject for Fragments of a Revolution , a collage of amateur and official footage, private emails and public speeches pieced together by anonymous Iranian exiles. The film comes as part of a new category, « Filming Revolution », which also contains Tahrir-Liberation Square , an account of Egypt’s popular uprising, directed by Stefano Savona.

World premieres of Turkish films and a 15-hour screening of Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film: An Odyssey round off the festival.

film.iksv.org