Günese Yolculuk
Turkey / Netherlands / Germany,
1999, 105 min
Shown in 2000
CREDITS
- dir
-
Yesim Ustaoglu
- prod
-
Behrooz Hashemian
- scr
-
Yesim Ustaoglu
- cam
-
Jacek Petrycki
- editor
-
Nicolas Gaster
- cast
-
Newroz Baz, Nazmi Qirix, Mizgin Kapazan, Nigar Aktar
- source
-
Celluloid Dreams, 24, rue Lamartine, 75009 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-49-70-85-62. EMAIL: celluloid@i-t.FR
-
COMMENTS
Yesim Ustaoglu in person.
OTHER
A striking example of committed political filmmaking by one of Turkey’s most important women directors, Journey to the Sun is a portrait of one space—Istanbul—and of the immigrants, bureaucrats, outcasts and strugglers who make up its disjointed ethnic realities. Mehmet, newly arrived from western Turkey, gains employment in the city waterworks, using his keen hearing to track the exact location of defective pipes and leaks. He befriends Berzan, a politically committed Kurd who sells music tapes and is the frequent target of racist police abuse, and a woman who works in the local laundromat. Mistakenly arrested due to his own supposed Kurdish looks, Mehmet finds himself caught, like his friend, in a web of oppression and discrimination. Forced to leave Istanbul, he decides to make a spiritual voyage eastward, a desperate “journey to the sun.” Arrestingly shot by Jacek Petrycki, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s cameraman, the film revels in a striking street-level vision of reality, drawn from the seething cityscapes of Istanbul and its impoverished, decaying suburbs. Refreshingly avoiding the pitfalls of both melodramatic possibility and overly simplistic political judgment, Journey to the Sun remains both a quiet celebration of interethnic friendship and a powerful indictment of a system which divides, wastes and destroys.
FACTOID #44
Fred Astaire (alas without his top hat and tails) became the first actor honored with an in-person tribute at the Festival October 30, 1966. Astaire so enjoyed his interview with Festival programmer Albert Johnson, the balletic performer danced with his host onstage.
