Güney’s films to hit the road in America, Canada

Güney’s films to hit the road in America, Canada

17 August 2011, Wednesday / TODAY’S ZAMAN WITH WIRES, İSTANBUL

A selection of the works of the late Kurdish actor and film director Yılmaz Güney are to be screened in the United States and Canada as part of a travelling cinema tour set to kick off at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque this Friday.

A feat realized by the joint efforts of US-based Turkish curator Ercüment Akman, the Yılmaz Güney Foundation and the Turkish Embassy’s Culture and Tourism office in Washington, D.C., the Güney bandwagon will continue on to Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Houston and Berkeley/San Francisco before wrapping up in Washington next year.

A total of eight of the controversial director’s most acclaimed titles will be screened, including “Yol” (The Way), “Umut” (Hope), “Sürü” (The Herd), “Seyit Han,” “Aç Kurtlar” (Hungry Wolves), “Arkadaş” (The Friend) and “Zavallılar” (The Miserables), the Anatolia news agency reported on Tuesday.

In what is hoped to be a comprehensive introduction of Güney’s works to American audiences, the eight films are also set to be added to the winter and spring programs of a number of American universities as well as being featured in the Turkish Films Screening program to be held at the world’s leading performing arts center, the Lincoln Center, in early 2012. The final stop in Washington will include academic discussion on the works in the form of symposiums to be held at the George Mason and Georgetown universities.

Speaking to Anatolia, curator Akman said that important film institutes and academics have been trying to get Güney’s films to America for a long time now. Explaining how the event eventually came about he said: “Earlier in the year private screenings of these eight films were shown at Harvard University over a period of five days. During the interim, where the films were waiting in the university archives to be sent back to Turkey, myself and the director of the Yılmaz Güney Foundation, Hüseyin Karabey, contacted the ministry and began our negotiations to push for the screenings.”

Akman further commented that he feels that such programs endorsing the works of one director are more useful in promoting Turkish cinema than film festivals, adding that talks are in place for similar feature events on the works of directors such as Reha Erdem, Fatih Akın and Semih Kaplanoğlu.