SaturDox 2010-2011

27 November 2010 – 14 May 2011

Organized by DOCUMENTARIST and DEPO, SaturDox will begin its second year of documentary screenings every other Saturday. The screening program at DEPO titled SaturDox is accompanied by presentations by professionals and academicians working in related fields. Like last year, a selection of noteworthy examples of international documentary cinema from the DOCUMENTARIST archive and the work of local documentary filmmakers will be included in this year’s program.

Focusing on various issues, this year’s agenda ranges from the extremists in Serbia, toxic wastes of Sweden, nuclear future of Bulgaria, and survival in the slums of Mumbai, Mexico City, New York and Moscow. The films point at oil rocks in the midst of Caspian Sea, streets full of garbage in Cairo, migration to Europe from a village in Turkey, and recount stories of women resisting in strikes, workers under extremely difficult conditions, people who have died or disappeared in massacres and coup d’etats in Turkey and Argentina, as well as the story of Jaffa oranges from Palestine.

* Admission is free of charge.
** The discussions will be held in Turkish.

27 November 2010 – 19:00

Megacities
Michael Glawogger, Austria, 1998, 90′

Discussant: BİRAY KOLLUOĞLU (Bogazici University, Dept. of Sociology)

Mumbai, Mexico City, New York, and Moscow. Streets, night clubs, factories, dumpsites, train stations, restaurants and inside of the houses of these four cities where people are struggling to make a living. In this highly staged and manufactured documentary, the director Glawogger, illustrates that despite the different rhythms of the Megacities, life is not much different for the ones who are trying to survive in the slums.

11 December 2010 – 19:00

Heated Blood
Marko Mamuzic, Serbia, 2009, 52′

Discussant: OZAN ERÖZDEN (Yıldız Technical University, Dept. of Political Science and International Relations)

Years after the fall of Milosevic’s regime and the revolution of October 5th, Serbia is still a largely isolated country where extreme right-wing parties are getting stronger every day. As such extremities become more frequent and more public after 2000, the film aims to point out and warn against the expansion of dangerous phenomena such as fascism and Neo-Nazism.

25 December 2010 – 19:00

The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories
Andrey Paounov, Bulgaria, 2007, 100′

PANEL: Özgür Doğan (filmmaker), Zeynep Dadak (filmmaker), Yüksel Aksu (filmmaker), mod. Necati Sönmez (filmmaker)

Hopeful citizens of a Bulgarian town are about to embark on a bright new journey. Massive rusty cranes, foreign investors, and the joyful chants of cheerleaders carry the dream of a great nuclear future, while the townsfolk is disturbed only by gigantic stinging mosquitoe. The tales of characters whose lives intersect in a sinister past, nuclear future and the stinging mosquitoes flying through time, sealing their fate together.

8 January 2011 – 19:00

Toxic Playground
Lars Edman, Sweden, 2009, 70′

Discussant: ÜMİT ŞAHİN (Green Party)

Swedish Lars, 23, is studying film in Chile, when he finds that hundreds of kids in Cerro Chuño have fallen badly ill because of toxic wastes sent from his home town in Sweden. Lars tries to find out whether the mining company involved, is accountable for what has happened to Yoselin and the other kids. So a unique story about waste trade, responsibility and guilt begins.

22 January 2011 – 19:00

Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork
Eyal Sivan, Israel France Belgium Germany, 2009, 88′

Discussant: Initiative of Boycott Against Israel for Palestine

Sivan’s latest documentary narrates the visual history of the famous citrus fruit originated from Palestine and known worldwide for centuries as “Jaffa oranges”. The close reading of the Jaffa brand’s visual representation is a reflection on western orientalist phantasms surrounding the ‘holy land’ and the ‘State of Israel’. The history of these oranges is the history of this land.

5 February 2011 – 19:00

Cairo Garbage
Mikala Krogh, Denmark, 2009, 55′

Discussant: SİBEL YARDIMCI (Mimar Sinan University, Dept. of Sociology)

Today, Cairo’s population is estimated as 20 million. Garbage is piling up in the streets and the piles are growing. Despite various views, nobody really knows what to do about it. “Cairo Garbage” reflects the city life in a remarkable way, through the inhabitants that live amongst the garbage and the Italian garbage disposal operators brought in to tackle the problem and teach the city dwellers rational garbage habits.

19 February 2011 – 19:00

Hope / Miraz
Rodi Yüzbaşı, Turkey, 2010, 52′

Discussant: NAZAN ÜSTÜNDAĞ (Bogazici University, Dept. of Sociology)

A village that has lived through a lot during the last century, like the Russian war, exile of the Armenians, Geliye Zila, Agri Resistance and lastly, the ongoing war in the region. Miraz is about the youth, who has found the hope of a better life in going to Europe through illegal ways, and about the expectancy of a mother and a father for their children who are refugees in France, with the hope that one day they would come back.

5 March 2011 – 19:00

The Zone & Women on Strike / Bölge & Kadınlar Grevde
Güliz Sağlam, Feryal Saygılıgil, Turkey, 2010, 40′ + 23′

Discussant: NECLA AKGÖKÇE (Feminist activist, Petrol Is Women’s magazine), FİLİZ KARAKUŞ (Feminist activist, Socialist Feminist Collective)

“The Zone” covers the working conditions of women in the free trade zones, their experiences, observations and their hopes for the future. The barbed wire fences not only sorround the zones but also accentuate the captivity of women, of women workers. “Women on Strike” presents the organizing experiences and organizing conditions of the Novamed women strikers in Antalya Free Trade Zone, and their fight for their rights.

19 March 2011 – 19:00

Close Up Kurds
Yüksel Yavuz, Germany, 2007, 104′

Discussant: ŞEBNEM KORUR FİNCANCI (Human Rights Foundation of Turkey)

In Close Up Kurds, director Yuksel Yavuz, known for his features Little Freedom and April Children, creates a connection between his personal story of migration and Turkey’s Kurdish problem. He embarks on a journey which takes him from Hamburg through Stockholm to Turkey, ending in the north of Iraq, in the camp Maxmur. On his way, he encounters and speaks to people on all sides of the conflict. The film combines political facts with personal stories and asks critical questions of a complicated and painful history. As the director puts it, the film is an attempt to bring the Kurdish and the Turkish populations together.

2 April 2011 – 19:00

Dersim 38 / Dersim 38
Çayan Demirel, Turkey, 2006, 67′

Discussant: NURŞEN GÜRBOĞA (Marmara University, Dept. of Political Science and International Relations)

“Dersim 38” is a ‘silent cry’ about the massacre that took place in Dersim 70 years ago. Through the eyes of the accused and the witnesses, it recounts what had happened in the region around 1937-1938, during a period when Republic of Turkey wanted to establish the concept of a nation state.

16 April 2011 – 19:00

Our Disappeared
Juan Mandelbaum, USA, Argentina, 2008, 99′

Discussant: MELTEM AHISKA (Bogazici University, Dept. of Sociology)

Through a casual Google search, director Juan Mandelbaum finds out that Patricia, a long lost girlfriend from Argentina, is among the thousands who “disappeared” under the military dictatorship of the 70s. As Juan revisits the dreams of a revolution and the grief of the tragic losses, he succeeds in bringing the energy and the tension of the time and place to life with the extraordinary archival footage.

30 April 2011 – 19:00

Workingman’s Death
Michael Glawogger, Austria, Germany, 2005, 122′

Discussant: AYŞE BUĞRA (Bogazici University, Ataturk Institute and Social Policy Forum)

Is heavy manual labor disappearing or is it just becoming invisible? Where can we still find it in the 21st century? “Workingman’s Death” follows the illegal mines of the Ukraine, sulfur workers in Indonesia, a slaughterhouse in Nigeria, a huge oil tanker being cut into pieces in Pakistan, and Chinese steel workers hoping for a glorious future.

14 May 2011 – 19:00

Oil Rocks – City Above The Sea
Marc Wolfensberger, Switzerland, 2009, 52′

Discussant: M. ASIM KARAÖMERLİOĞLU (Bogazici University, Ataturk Institute)

Commissioned by Stalin in 1949, there lies the first and largest offshore oil town ever built, a vast, sprawling island of oil platforms in the middle of the Caspian Sea. 60 years on, Oil City still stands with its 180 km long bridges and hundreds of platforms, like an oil rig Atlantis. Combining black-and-white archive footage from the Soviet era and the recent pictures, the film tells the story of this timeless place and some of its inhabitants.

The SaturDox program is supported by Open Society Foundation.