Festival on Wheels 2008

Festival on Wheels has changed its route!

The 14th Festival on Wheels, which is organised by the Ankara CinemaAssociation with the support of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism andthe Municipality of Kars, will start its journey on 7 November in Kars and then stop in Artvin from 14-16 November. For the first time in 13 years, the festival won’t stop in Ankara, but invites all cinema and festival-lovers from the capital to Karsinstead. The festival will travel beyond the borders of Europe this year, venturing into the new territory of the United States, Mexico, Argentina and India, as well as Germany, Denmark and Sweden closer to home. Audiences will be able to pick from a programme of 156 films, which are spread across thegenres of feature, short and documentary.

THE GOLDEN GOOSE COMPETITION THIS YEAR

Ten films which comprise examples of contemporary worldcinema will compete once again for the GoldenGoose, the Silver Goose and the SİYAD Awards in the Third International Golden Goose Competition. The best film to be determined by the InternationalJury will win the Golden Goose Award, worth 20,000 Euros, which will be presented by the Municipality of Kars. The film to win the Silver Goose Award, on the other hand, will receive 5,000 Euros.

The spectacular line-up of competition films includes Cloud 9 (Wolke 9), which caused controversy first in Germany, then atother festivals where it screened; Moscow,Belgium (Aanrijding In Moscou), a Belgian film; The Snow (Snijeg), a co-production between Bosnia-Herzegovina,Germany, France and Iran; The Hunger,a memoir of the IRA Hunger Strike in Maze Prison in 1981 under the leadership of Bobby Sands; Lake Tahoe, a Mexican film which won a string of awards in the Berlin, Cannes, Copenhagen and Sundance film festivals; Goran Markovic’s latest film The Tour (Turneja), which earned him a Best Director award at Montreal as well as a Fipresci prize; Three Wise Men by well-known director Mika Kaurismäki and another Mexican production, RodrigoPla’s The Desert Within  (Desierto Adentro).

Two films from Turkey will also be competing: Semih Kaplanoğlu’s highly anticipated film Milk, which follows the earlier Egg, and Özcan Alper’s first feature film Autumn.

Turkey 2008

The titles making up Turkey 2008 are as follows: My Marlon and Brando directed by Hüseyin Karabey who received Best Director award at New York’s Tribeca FilmFestival; Derviş Zaim’s latest feature Dot; Pandora’s Box, written and directed by Yeşim Ustaoğlu; ThreeMonkeys, which brought Nuri BilgeCeylan the Best Director Award at the 61th Cannes Film Festival,and Seyfi Teoman’s feature Summer Book which has won Turkish cinema a succession of awards this year.

Italian Political Cinema: Elio Petri

This section, dedicated to Italian political cinema, features two films by Elio Petri: The WorkingClass Goes to Heaven (La Classe Operaia Va in Paradiso), which won Cannes the Golden Palm Award in 1972, and Possession Is Not Theft (La Proprieta Non é Piu Un Furto). Both films will be screened with the generous contribution of the Italian Cultural Institute.

Nation and Its Fragments

Festival audiences will have the chance to watch SergeiEisenstein’s 1938 classic AleksandrNevsky with a commentary by Murat Belge; Ken Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss(2004) with background from Ferhat Kentel and Lars Von Trier’s Europa with a review by Fatih Özgüven. All three writers frame their reviews in the context of nationalism, the theme of this section. There will also be a panel discussion on ‘Nationalism’ in Kars,which will be attended by Murat Belge, Ferhat Kentel and Mesut Yeğen.

Fake Documentaries: Mockumentary

These films will be shown for the first time in Turkey and although they tell stories that purport to belong to the documentary genre, they are more fictional than fiction itself. For all their fakeness, however, they speak of a surprising number of realities.

Punishment Park directed by PeterWatkins; This is Spinal Tap directed by Rob Reiner and Achero Manas’s November(Noviembre) will reflect the ‘real’ world as represented by fake documentaries on screen.

German Film and Television Academy

This special selection comprises the films Ich Nichtand Der Eine-Der Andere by Wolfgang Petersen, a graduate of Berlin’s German Film and Television Academy (aka ‘The Berlin School’), Hannes Stöhr’s short film Berlin Is In Germany and a selection of short student films made by leading contemporary German directors such as Detlev Buck and Angela Schanelec.

One-TakeFilms

This section is made up of feature films, medium-length and short films all shot in a single take. The titles will also serve as a basis of discussion for the ‘One-take’ Workshop, a sidebar event taking place during the festival.

Short Is Good and The Video Room

Just one film in the section Short Is Good is set to receive the ShortFilm Audience Award, worth 1000 Euros, based on the votes of Festival viewers.

Localproductions in video format will be available for viewing in the video room,which will be set up with the aim of enabling local and international guests to watch new work coming out of Turkish cinema.

ShortlyRomania

Festival on Wheels also has a section allocated to Romania cinema, one of the risingstars of recent years. The section will serve as a showcase of recent shortfilms made in Romania.

In addition, a Romania-Turkey Co-production Panel Discussion will be held during the festival withthe participation of Romanian and Turkish producers, directors and cinemainstitutions.

Children’s Films Latvia / Estonia

Children don't go forgotten in the festival either... Still, this section features a selection of kids’ films from Latvia and Estonia that have as much appeal for adults as they do for children.

From Liberties To Losses and Afterwards

The eponymous volume, written specifically for the Festival by Tül Akbal, Necla Algan andAyla Kanbur, focuses on that part of the cinematographic experience which comes with watching films, discussing them critically, writing about them, discussing them again and lecturing on them at schools and other institutions. Here are three academics and colleagues with abundant first-hand experience of both the process and each other.

CINEMA MEETINGS IN KARS

Festival guests from different countries and cultures around the world meet in Kars in order to watch films together, share their experiences and create. The busy program, packed with a variety of events including panel discussions, Q&A sessions, workshops andconcerts, will blow the festival wind all over Kars throughout the week.

GalaPremieres

The gala premierespromise to be one of the highlights of the Festival, not only bringing a numberof big-name Turkish directors and actors to Kars, but featuring some of themost recent award-winning examples of contemporary Turkish cinema. In this section there are films such as My Marlon and Brando by Hüseyin Karabey, Dotby Derviş Zaim, Pandora’s Box by Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Summer Book by Seyfi Teoman and Three Monkeys by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

International festival agents in Kars!

International festival agents will also be among the guests of the Festival on Wheels thisyear. Ludmila Cvikova from Rotterdam Film Festival, Freddy Olsson from Göteborg Film Festival and Aude Hesbert from Paris Cinema Festival are coming to Kars to select films for the Turkey sections of their festivals.

Lets Talk Cinema in KarsIII Workshop Activities

The ‘Let’sTalk Cinema in Kars’ meetings are held for the third time this year, the pointbeing to bring together amateurs and professionals of the film world for the exchangeof experiences and ideas. Film students and cinema lovers from many cities aroundTurkeywill attend a programme of workshops during the week with the best tutors intheir fields, as well as taking part in the Let’s Talk Cinema meetings.

Five Different Workshops for Young Film makers

This Festival,there are again several workshops targeting young people from different disciplines and encouraging them to produce joint projects. This year Reha Erdem will give a film directionworkshop for three days. GökhanTiryaki, the director of photography for Climates and Three Monkeys, will lead a digital cinematography workshop; NataliYeres, who was art director for Journeyto the Sun, A Saint in Laleli, In NowhereLand andDerviş Zaim’s latest film Dot will host a workshop on art direction; ÇiçekKahraman, who edited The LittleDoomsday, The Break and Summer Book, will give an editing workshop; Nurşen Bakır, known for her experimental film work, will perform lead a workshop on experimental filmmaking. The workshops are aimed at groups of 10 people.

Cinema classes open to all

In addition to these workshops, a series of cinema classes will also be given within the scope of the Cinema Meetings. Reha Erdem will lead a panel discussion on the experience of film directing and producer Leyla Özalp a discussion on filmmaking.At the same time, Belmin Söylemez,Somnur Vardar and Elvan Kıvılcım of Filmist, whose latest documentary What A Beautiful Democracy? has screened at many festivals in Turkey and abroad, will lead a panel discussion on contemporary documentary making in Turkey.These meetings will be open to everyone.

BrieflyKars in “OneTake”

One-TakeWorkshop

The NISI MASA European Youth Cinema Network, which made a series of short films inspired by Orhan Pamuk’s novel ‘Snow’ at last year’s Festival on Wheels, will also be a guest of the 14th Festival on Wheels with a new filmmaking project. In the scope of the ‘one-take’ workshop, short filmmakers from several European countries will meet in Kars to produce several short films made in a single sequence. The resulting films will be shown within the festival in Karson 13 November 2008.

Your daily festival newspaper from Nisi Masa

Nisimazine Kars

NISI MASA wil llead two workshops at the 14th Festival on Wheels. Young amateur film critics from Turkey and Europe will publish a daily festival newspaper in Kars. Reviews and critiques of the festival films, interviews and articles on the festival sections and guests will be presented in the newspaper, which is designed bilingually in Turkish and English.

Cinema For Peace

The Anatolian Culture will organise a workshop study under the title ‘Cinema For Peace’ with the Corporation of Gyumri City Research Center. Three young filmmakersfrom each country, namely Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijanand Turkey, will attend the workshop, which will present examples of pacifist documentary cinema from the contemporary world.

DocuTravel

Now in its second year, the DocuTravel Documentary Workshop targets film students and young documentary makers from Turkey, Armenia, Georgiaand Ukraine and presents short documentaries that seek to explore and gain understanding of the history, culture and current position of Kars.Workshop films is an opportunity for young filmmakers from the same region to meet in the city of Kars and create together. Their output will be shown in Kars on 13 November 2008. The workshop is to be led by tutors from all four countries: Turkey, Armenia, Georgiaand Ukraine.

Stop Motion Animation Workshop

This year, as in previous years, Dutch animation director Petra Dolleman and her assistant Hasan Cemal Sargın will hold a Stop Motion workshop with primary school students in Kars.

Concerts

Festival evenings in Kars will be galvanised this year by a line-up of glittering live performances. This year’s gigs include names such as Baba Zula, Replikas and Kırıka, as well as several musicians from Hungary.

This year’s Festival poster is illustrated by BehiçAk and designed by Yeşim Demir asit always has been since the inaugural Festival on Wheels.

FehmicanGözüm, Mert Kızılay, Ömer Kasımoğlu and Candaş Şişman co-directed the teaser for the Festival.

For more detailed information:

Pınar Evrenosoğlu

Phone: +90 312 466 34 84

E-mail: pinar@festivalonwheels.org

http://www.festivalonwheels.org