Image & Protest – Panel Discussion
Rüya Arzu Köksal, Emel Çelebi, Sedef Özge, Güliz Sağlam
How can citizens’ protests and art be brought together in an expedient manner? What role do video and photography play in this context? These questions will be discussed using visual images of artists and activists who take a critical stance towards political and social developments in Turkey. Among others, we will be showing the short animated film Animate Gezi by a young female artist who has stated that: »I plan on making more of the similar kind of animations under Animate Gezi account. Since Turkish government is bringing even more strict internet regulations it is better to be anonymous for now«. The video had 80,000 hits in the days following its release and was first of all taken from the Net because of false copyright claims.
Rüya Arzu Köksal has used her documentary films on many occasions to take a closer look at the catastrophic ecological and social consequences of the construction boom in Turkey. This is no different in The Shore, which can be seen in this year’s country focus. Filmmaker and festival director Emel Çelebi is responsible in Istanbul for the organization of the Human Rights Film Festival as well as the documentary film festival Documentarist, which is dedicated to looking at political issues. Sedef Özge is a filmmaker, feminist and LGBT activist. During the Gezi protests, she set up the online platform Videoccupy with a group of creative media people, with the aim of giving the protests a public forum. With Tarlabaşı – On the Edge of Transformation, the photographer Sedef Özge has documented the destruction of a city district in Istanbul. The Dortmund | Cologne International Women’s Film Festival 2014 will be showing this exhibition.
moderated by Betty Schiel
Rüya Arzu Köksal
Rüya Arzu Köksal was born 1972 in Ankara. After graduating from Tarsus American School, she received a B.A. in linguistics from Hacettepe University in 1994. She works as a tourist guide based in Turkey and heads cultural trips to Central Asia, India, Nepal and Tibet. Her travel articles have been published in a number of newspapers and magazines. She completed an educational documentary film-making programme in Istanbul in 2003 but she got most of her education working in the field of documentaries. Ms Köksal is the founder of Turkishmoon Films.
Films by Rüya Arzu Köksal (Selection)
A Few Brave People 2011 | An Argonaut in Ordu 2010 | Eski Foça’da Yeni Hayat (New Life in Old Foça) 2007 | Yollar Çimen Bağladı (Forsaken Paths) 2006
Emel Çelebi
Emel Çelebi was born and raised in Istanbul. She has studied English literature. She worked in various magazines as editor, interpreter and writer. Her first film Housekeeper has won the Best Documentary Award in 43rd Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival and the First Prize in 9th Women’s Film Festival in Seoul. Her second documentary Sisters of Lilith has won the »Best Balkan Documentary« award in 8st Dokufest Documentary and Short Film Festival in Prizren, Kosovo. She is also among the organizers of DOCUMENTARIST-Istanbul Documentary Days.
Sedef Özge
Sedef Özge was born in 1973 in Ankara. She holds BA and MA degrees in Sociology. She has participated in the Photojournalism Program in Galata Fotoğrafhanesi Academy of Photography in 2011–2013. She worked with coachmen and their horses for five months in Istanbul, and her resulting project titled The Coachman was exhibited in Istanbul and Diyarbakir. She has worked as a photojournalist and reporter for Ajans Tabloid online news portal. She is currently working as a freelance translator and keeps shooting photo-stories.
Güliz Sağlam
Güliz Sağlam studied at the University of Marmara, Department of Social Sciences and Administration. She had been working as assistant director for several feature films and since 2007, she is an independent documentary maker and a video-activist. She was involved in Filmmor Women’s Cooperative between 2005 and 2009. Her work consists of independent documentaries on various problems, such as immigration, women workers conditions, women workers’ strike and resistances in different parts of Turkey and the solidarity campaigns of women organizations with women workers resistances, the encounter of feminists with women labour, LGBT and feminist activism.
