Ten Turkish films that will compete at the 17th Golden Cocoon International Film Festival were launched at a press conference Monday.

The 17th Golden Cocoon International Film Festival will be held from Sept. 20 to 26 in Adana. Ten Turkish films made within the last year earned the right to compete in the festival’s competition for national feature films while the event will also feature contests for student-made films as well as entries from Turkey’s Mediterranean neighbors.

In one of the city’s most anticipated cultural events of the year, Adana is preparing for the 17th Golden Cocoon International Film Festival, during which 10 Turkish films will headline the event’s National Feature Film Competition.

“The festival has become one of he most important cultural events in the country. Our goal is to continue this festival for many years,” Festival General Coordinator Ozan Aksu said Monday at a press conference in the southern city to promote the event, which runs from Sept. 20 to 26.

Aksu said the Golden Cocoon Film Festival, which was organized for the first time in 1961 under the title Golden Cocoon Film Feast, had improved greatly since then, showcasing much richer content.

Forty Turkish films made within the last year applied to the festival’s National Feature Film Competition, National Feature Film Competition jury member, scriptwriter and director Işıl Özgentürk said, adding that 10 gained the right to compete.

Özgentürk said a monetary award would be given to the films in the competition. “It is very expensive to make a film. More contributions will make the Turkish cinema sector more diverse.”

The films this year include Semih Kaplanoğlu’s “Bal” (Honey), Onur Ünlü’s “Beş Şehir” (Five Cities), Atıl İnanç’s “Büyük Oyun” (Great Game), Nesli Çölgeçen’s “Denizden Gelen” (Brought By The Sea), Hakan Algül’s “Eyvah Eyvah,” Selim Demirdelen’s “Kavşak” (Intersection), Seki Demirkubuz’s “Kıskanmak” (Envy), Levent Semerci’s “Nefes: Vatan Sağolsun” (The Breath), Melik Saraçoğlu and Hakkı Kurtuluş’s “Orada” (There) and “Ümit Ünal’s “Ses” (The Voice).

Competition and participation

Meanwhile, the Mediterranean Countries Short Film Competition is open to countries from around the sea and includes documentary, experimental, fictional and animation categories, said Hilmi Etikan, a director for both the Mediterranean competition and the National Students Films Competition.

Etikan said 368 films from various countries applied to the Mediterranean competition, adding that 11 documentary films, eight experimental films, 28 fictional films and 14 animation films were selected for the event.

At the same time, eight documentary films, seven experimental films, 10 fictional films and eight animation films will compete in the student competition, to which undergraduate students studying at cinema and television departments of Turkey’s communications and fine arts faculties were eligible, he said.

Guest of Honor and Honorary Awards

As part of the festival, Greek director Theo Angelopoulos will attend as the guest of honor. Actress Müjde Ar and film critic Atilla Dorsay, meanwhile, will be presented with lifetime achievement awards during a ball for the guests of honor on Sept. 23. A selection of Ar’s films will also screened during the night.

The festival will also showcase selected works from the wider world of cinema as part of its “Fipresci: Critics Don’t Miss It!” and “Palestine-Longing For Peace” events.

Turkish artists Sibel Can, Zuhal Olcay, Göksel and Erol Evgin will also perform at the festival.

Organizers originally planned to stage the festival from June 7 to 13 but later postponed it due to the May 31 Gaza flotilla raid by Israel that killed nine aid activists in the Mediterranean and a terrorist rocket attack on the İskenderun Naval Base.

At the time, Adana Deputy Mayor Mustafa Tuncel said, “We can’t have fun while people are crying.”

Actress Türkan Şoray is the guest of honor in the festival

The annual film festival in Datça, which begins Friday, is making the leap to becoming an international event this year, offering an enriched program to movie-goers in the Aegean province of Muğla.

Kuyu (1968)

Metin Erksan’s most controversial film, Kuyu/The Well (1968), considered as one of the classics of Turkish cinema, is a rural drama that focuses on a relationship, founded on male obsession and female resistance, which culminates in tragedy.

Based on a newspaper article, but decorated with the fantasies of Erksan, the film displays the helplessness of an oppressed but level-headed young village woman against the perverse determination of a man obsessed with her.

The film opens with Osman watching Fatma bathing in the river, the classic narrative convention that generally forewarns the audience of imminent sexual violence. Osman steals Fatma’s clothes and, pointing a gun to her face, delivers an ultimatum: ‘Be my wife or I’ll kill you.’ When she resists, he ties a rope around her waist and pulls her through the arid landscape to coerce her, but she does not want to give herself to a man she does not love. When she escapes, runs after her, grabs her and pushes her to the river. ‘Water cleanses all sins’, he says. As she lies down on the grass in silent defiance, the camera views Osman from her perspective telling her that the woman is created from the tiny little bone of the man and that is not without reason. There is a reason behind everything God does. He did that for the woman to walk behind her man. Women should always obey men!

Osman is arrested, and Fatma returns to the village where men gossip about her. On his release from jail, Osman again points a gun at Fatma’s face and rapes her (the scene is not shown). She escapes again. Osman is arrested once more. Fatma’s mother finds her a husband, a middle-aged fat man called Ibrahim. After all, not many men want to marry a girl kidnapped twice.

There is a long shot of Fatma on horseback as a bride, but then she runs away. The groom blames the mother, using an old proverb: ‘One who does not beat her daughter beats her knee.’ Another man declares that ‘the meat that the dog smelled should not be eaten’. The mother blames her black destiny. As Fatma is getting ready to hang herself, Mehmet, a fugitive from death row, saves her. The camera distances itself as the two lie on a rock in the sun. The rural police kill Mehmet, and Fatma returns to the village still wearing her bridal headgear. Her mother kicks her out for disgracing the family and she finds a job serving in a cheap bar. Osman comes out of jail and kidnaps her a third time. He tells her he is determined to marry her even if she is a whore. She says he made her a whore and she’ll never say ‘yes’. He ties her up again and the same desperate journey begins.

When Osman climbs into a well to wash his face, Fatma throws stones at him. In a dramatic shot, her head is framed within the circle of the mouth of the well with the light behind, while he is groping in the dark below. Fatma’s patience culminates in revenge, albeit with violence, after which she has no choice but to kill herself.

The Well is structured around the obsession of a man, but the woman is not a passive character. Within her limita­tions she stages a resistance. Perhaps she is not able to win a physical battle against the brute force of her aggressor, but she succeeds in wounding him at his Achilles’ heel, his manhood. For someone like him to be refused by a woman, a creature of the lower species, is tantamount to losing his manhood, which must be restored at all costs. That is why he kidnaps her repeatedly. At the end, his death by water is a kind of relief. Water cleanses all sins.

For a large part of the film, Fatma is literally tied to Osman with a rope and dragged up and down the slopes, but Erksan’s master narrative saves this motif from becoming monotonous or even ridiculous. The rope becomes a symbol of men’s sovereignty over women for centuries, especially in the rural milieu, the paradisiacal landscape of arid mountains and gushing rivers alluding to the Garden of Eden. The woman, who constantly tries to cut this rope, is freed only when the man dies and then she cannot stand living alone.

From an artistic point of view, the film is one of the masterpieces of Turkish cinema. The minimalist narrative works in repetitions; the characters of the two protagonists who are both loners in an indifferent world are developed meticulously and with special concern for human psychology; societal dynamics are sharp; and the characters that are offsprings of such a society very accurately drawn. The photo­graphy and the camera angles are beyond reproach. However, the film’s graphic display of male brute power is controversial. While many consider Kuyu as an important representative of the cinema of resistance and argue that Erksan has brought a special sensitivity to the situation of women in Turkey, the feminists condemn it as the sexual fantasies of a macho man. Erksan claims that the film takes its inspiration from the message in An-Nisa, Sura IV— ayet (verse) 19 of the Koran, which states that it is not lawful for men to possess women by force. They should consort with them in kindness because if they hate them, they hate a thing wherein Allah has placed much good – Gönül Dönmez-Colin

Cast and Production Credits

Year - 1968, Genre – Crime, Country -Turkey, Language – Turkish, Producer(s) - N/A, Director – Metin Erksan, Cast - N/A