SaturDox 2015

28 March – 30 May 2015

FACING THE PAST AT SATURDOX

In 2015 Depo is hosting a series of exhibitions which deal with the Armenian memory in Turkey and in the world. The projects within this program are being prepared by Armenian artists and researchers both from diaspora and Turkey. Depo has been organizing exhibitions about the lost history of Armenians in Anatolia, since its opening in 2008. Through these projects we aimed to integrate obscured parts of the past into public memory, to help overcome the lack of awareness and misinformation around the topic, and to open up a space for dialogue.

Within this scope, we decided to dedicate this year’s program of SaturDox – Documentary Screenings event, which is being co-organized with Documentarist for five years, to films with the theme of genocide. SaturDox 2015 will take place between 28 March and 30 May, and 7 films which deal with different genocides from around the world and struggles for facing the past, will be screened. Two panel talks will also be held following the first and the last screenings. These films and discussions, also aim to bring forward the question regarding the role and function of documentaries in facing the past.

SATURDOX 2015 SCREENING PROGRAM

28 March Saturday 17:30

Watchers of the Sky
Dir: Edet Belzberg, USA, 2014, 121′

Talk: Genocide, Facing the Past, Resposibility

Devrim Sezer – İzmir Ekonomi University Dep.of Political Science and International Relations
Özgür Sevgi Göral – Hakikat Adalet Hafıza Merkezi

Before German lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the word in the late 40s, the term “genocide” didn’t exist. Of course the acts that it described did; but there was no way to properly explain them and no definition by which to punish those who committed them. Lemkin, who lost 49 family members in the Holocaust, devoted his life to campaigning for international laws that would forbid genocide. He asked himself this question during the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian who had assassinated Talat Pasha: “Why is the killing of a million a lesser crime than the killing of an individual?”. This gripping film explores the critical work of the late Lemkin, as well as four modern day activists who continue his crusade against violence and hate.

Inspired by Samantha Power’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem From Hell, the film takes us on a provocative journey from Nuremberg to The Hague, from Bosnia to Darfur, from criminality to justice, and from apathy to action.

4 April Saturday 19:00

Diyar
Dir: Devrim Akkaya, Turkey, 2014, 71′

Devrim is a yoga instructor based in Istanbul. She takes part in a form of therapy that investigates the effects of family traumas, especially of migration, child death, murder and rejected individuals on future generations. Here, she discovers that one of the reasons for her feelings of loneliness, lack of belonging, resistance to starting her own family is inherited from her great grandfather who was adopted by her family during the 1915 Armenian Genocide. The Armenian identity has never been sufficiently investigated by her family. When she shares this with her family, she learns that the grave of her great grandfather Yusuf is in the cemetery of the nameless in an unknown spot.

18 April Saturday 19:00

Back to Ararat

Dir: Jim Downing, Göran Gunér, Per-Åke Holmquist, Suzanne Khardalian, Sweden, 1988, 117′

“It was May 29th, 1985, the day of my documentary film Gaza Ghetto about the Palestinians premiered in the United States. After the movie, a young, dark-haired man approached me and said: ‘Now it’s time for you to make a movie about us, the Armenians.’ That is how I met Raffy, one of the main persons in Back to Ararat.” Per-Åke Holmquist

Back to Ararat was the first feature length documentary to tell the story of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. The film has been shown on many festivals, TV-stations and won many prizes.

2 May Saturday 19:00

Missing You…
Dir: BIRN, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, 42′

Missing You… follows the stories of several people searching for missing members of their families. For the past 22 years, Fikret Bacic has been searching for the remains of his wife and children, who were killed in Prijedor. Blazenka Djumic also lives in hope that she will find her daughter who went missing four years ago. They are just a few among many who are seeking lost loved ones. “I came back to BiH not just to find my family’s bodies but to make sure those who killed them are brought to justice,” says Bacic.

The film charts the search for missing persons in detail, follows key actors and highlights their roles, and explains how DNA analysis is carried out. It draws attention to the issue of missing persons not just as a result of armed conflict, which was the case in the former Yugoslavia, but organized crime and human trafficking as well.

I am A White Mercenary
Dir: Taha Karimi, Iraq-Iran, 2011, 64′

Saeid Jaf, a mercenary commander of Iraqi Baath Party, is now on trial on the new Iraqi Court, accused of attending the Anfal Genocide Campaign against Kurds. 182,000 Kurds have been buried in mass graves within Anfal campaign. Saeid Jaf comes to the Iraqi Kurdistan villages carrying a video camera. He believes that he saved more than 1000 people within the Campaign. He’s now wandering around just to find some witnesses whom he saved from Baathists and asks them to tell the true story in front of his camera. He believes that there is only one man in history he can be compared to, and that’s Oskar Schindler, the man who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during the Second World War.

16 May Saturday 19:00

The Reckoning
Dir: Pamela Yates, USA, 2009, 95′

Late in the 20th century, in response to repeated mass atrocities around the world, more than 120 countries united to form the International Criminal Court (ICC)-the first permanent court created to prosecute perpetrators (no matter how powerful) of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. The Reckoning follows dynamic ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo and his team for three years across four continents. Among various arrest warrants and trials, there are also charges for Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir with genocide in Darfur, challenging the UN Security Council to arrest him. As this tiny court in The Hague struggles to change the world and forge a new paradigm for justice, innocent victims suffer and wait. Will the Prosecutor succeed? Will the world ensure that justice prevails?

30 May Saturday 17:30

The Look of Silence
Dir: Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark, 2014, 99′

Talk: Aesthetics of Terror

Tümay Arslan – Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi Dep. Sociology
Bülent Bilmez – Bilgi University Dep.of History and Tarih Vakfı
Necati Sönmez – Documentarist

Following the heart-breaking, surreal yet all-too-real The Act of Killing in which Joshua Oppenheimer closely introduced us to the killers who participated in the mass murder of communists in the 1960s in Indonesia, in The Look of Silence, we meet Adi, whose older brother was murdered five decades ago during the bloodletting, and who discovered how his brother was murdered through Oppenheimer’s work with the perpetrators. The Look of Silence follows Adi confronting each of his brother’s killers – all of whom remain in positions of power and continue to harbour suspicions about communists. His is an extremely courageous act, no doubt, and also one that throbs with the dignity of his silence. Adi is a warrior cutting through the underbrush of fear, seeking closure for an unspeakable trauma, apology and healing for a collective nightmare.