The 46th Berlinale Forum will show a total of 44 films in its main programme, of which 34 are world premieres and nine international premieres. This year’s Special Screenings will be announced in an additional press release.
One regional focus of this year’s programme is the Arab region. Films shot by often young directors from an area that stretches between Egypt and Saudi Arabia explore both the past and present of their homelands.
Mavi Boncuk |
Toz bezi (Dust Cloth) by Ahu Öztürk, Turkey / Germany – IP
turkey 2014, 35mm, 100’, colour
director Ahu Öztürk
script Ahu Öztürk
production Ret Film, Çiğdem Mater, Nesra Gürbüz,
Sofyalı Sok. Hamson Apt. 20/7 Asmalımescit Beyoğlu 34430 Istanbul T +90 532 291 1211
cigdemmater@gmail.com
Producers Nesra Gürbüz[1], Çiğdem Mater[2] (Ret Film), Co- producers Marie Gutmann (Meroe Film), Stefan Gieren (Storybay)
Nesrin (30) and Hatun (37) lead very similar lives, shuttling back and forth between Istanbul’s slums and the bright lights of the city. Both are cleaning women whose daily routine takes them out of their own homes to the private space of another and back again. Nesrin lives in a one-room home the floor below Hatun. While trying to find her husband who has left her, she dreams of a better life for her daughter, Asmin (5). As for Hatun, she finds escape from her obligatory marriage to waiter Şero (45) and their unpromising son, Oktay (13), in Asmin, the daughter she never had. She also dreams of buying a house like the ones she cleans and, with no security or benefits in her job, saves obsessively to this end. Trailing between their own impoverished world and that of the middle or upper-class, Hatun and Nesrin are confronted with many crucial issues from identity to class and being a woman to perceptions of good and bad - but they give little thought to them.Ahu Öztürk (Istanbul, 1976) studied philosophy and cinema. In 2004, she directed her first documentary, Chest. In 2009, she took part in the Festival on Wheels inspired ‘Tales from Kars’ project, directing the short film, Open Wound. This film has since been shown at numerous international film festivals, among them Rotterdam, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Sarajevo and Beirut. Her first feature film project Dust Cloth has been selected to Istanbul Film Festival, Meetings on the Bridge, and won the CNC award. It also received the EAVE Producers’ award at the Sarajevo Film Festival, CineLink. Dust Cloth was one of the three projects that have been selected to Holland Film Meeting. It also received the Ministry of Culture Production support in November 2012.
Nesrin (30) and Hatun’s (37) lives are like a railcar wagon riding between poor ghettos of Istanbul and the glamour of the city. These two cleaning ladies’ routine consists of leaving their homes to go to somebody else’s house, cleaning its intimate area and coming back home again. Nesrin lives with her daughter Asmin (5) in a house of only one room on the ground floor of Hatun’s flat, trying to find her run-away husband and dreaming of a better life for her daughter. Asmin is like an escapeway –a daughter that she never had– for Hatun, to get away from her marriage with waiter Şero (45) she feels she is obliged to continue and her notso-promising son Oktay (13)-. And she dreams of buying a house like the one she works in. Working without social security assurance, Hatun is obsessed with saving money. While working in middle to upper-middle class houses, they witness many vital issues but they don’t think much on them. One day, money left under the carpet for testing her annoys Nesrin, another day Hatun, feeling no offence wears her poor clothes in combination with the old clothes given by the hostess. Asmin witnesses a remote life in the houses she goes with her mother. Although they make fun, with a slight touch of grudge, of the middle-class arrogance made evident to them even in the houses they are treated well, Hatun and Nesrin don’t care for moving to a higher class. Except for Hatun’s dreams of buying a house. The relationship between Hatun and Nesrin is more of sisterhood rather than being merely neighbours, though their friendship involves a hierarchy within the same social class they belong to. While Hatun abstains from loaning money to Nesrin, Nesrin becomes more frustrated with life, and one day, with a bold decision she makes, she goes away and leaves Asmin behind. Time passes by and no news come from Nesrin or Cefo. Hatun includes Asmin into her family until theday Nesrin’s sister comes and takes her away. After a while, Hatun desperately goes to Nesrin’s sister and says that she wants Asmin to live with Şero, Oktay and herself. Nesrin’s sister accepts this request in silence. Now in the absence of Nesrin, life for these four persons continues same as before and all over again.
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
It was one of the clearest memories of my childhood. We came to Istanbul to visit our relatives. First stop was my aunt and, one day, she and I made a long journey through the city from her one-roomed flat to a three-roomed one. This was the first time that I became acquainted with the intimate areas of the middle class. As my aunt was cleaning the house, I touched the objects I had never seen before; I was astonished. We were alone; I felt that I was so close to everything, I could even lie on the bed, but there was an imaginary wall which prevented me from doing this. It represented a distance I knew intuitively from my indigent life. Being annoyed of this distance, my mom gave me a secret when we were back home. The secret was that my aunt was a cleaning lady and I should not tell this to anyone. Following my leftist college years, the first indication of carrying that secret was my class resentment. Afterwards, when I started working, conversations of my colleagues about their problems with their cleaning ladies reminded me of this feeling again. They hired a cleaning lady because they saw this as a symbol of the class that they wish to belong and these long conversations were the highlights of this mentality.
So, where was I? Two years ago, when another cleaning lady relative of us came to visit us and said that she is a Circassian, I was shocked. I knew that this woman whose mother had died without speaking any language other than Kurdish, was staying in front of me like a surreal character without being defeated to any rational explanation. This helped me understand that the Kurdish identity can be experienced very differently in Turkey and the point that we can touch upon reality is hidden in this heterogeneity. I thought a lot about my desire to narrate this story of my aunt. First, I made sentences from its cultural, political, ethical points of view. After all of these, what I reached deep down was shame. I was not ashamed of these women of my family; I was ashamed of the feeling of shame.
So I decided to write the story, knowing that it is the only way of recovery. I tried to build my characters from within the heterogeneity of categories like gender, ethnicity and poverty, because I believe that these belongings and pieces of identities cannot refer to a homogenous category. Generally, the film’s dramatic flow will proceed in parallel with these two women’s ambiguous and contradictional struggle to impose a meaning to their lives and their subaltern situations. Their struggle to hold and scrabble with open wounds, their controversies with the society and with themselves and their confrontations / non-confrontations settled on the main axis of the film. The cyclical existence of subalternity finds its place in the hierarchy between Nesrin and Hatun. As such, the borders between Nesrin’s strategy of life – which is on the edge of the edge – and that of Hatun’s, as well as the borders between them and their higher class fellows, became clear. I will use hand-held camera to show our characters’ poor, ambiguous and sometimes suffocating worlds and a fixed camera in the houses they go cleaning, which will be like a furniture recording from the place it stands.
I believe that this technique can help visualization of the distance the film tries to narrate. Scenes will be short sequences and cuts in order to show the rush of everyday life. The glamour of the houses they go for cleaning will contradict with the matchless darkness and stuffiness of their shanty houses. Ultimately, I want to make this film in order to get over my burden of shame and attempt at bringing into view poverty, which I do not belong to anymore, and subalterns, who are literally invisible.
[1] Nesra Gürbüz studied international relations and cultural studies. Between 2010-11, she was the production coordinator of Armenia Turkey Cinema Platform’s “Films Beyond Borders”. She worked as executive producer of the 3 films made within the scope of the Platform. She works in Anadolu Kültür as project coordinator.
[2] Çiğdem Mater studied film and media sociology. She worked for the international media including ABC News, ARTE and Los Angeles Times. She was the program coordinator for Anadolu Kultur. She was the associate producer of ‘Majority’ by Seren Yüce. Mater is the coordinator of Armenia Turkey Cinema Platform since 2009.
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