Journey to the day-star (Gunese Yolculuk) by Yesim Ustaoglu.

Journey to the day-star (Gunese Yolculuk) by Yesim Ustaoglu, 1999

A Time for inebriated Horses by Bahman Ghobadi, 2000

beneficial Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends moreover the Mountains by Kevin McKiernan, 2000

"Do you know the way to Kurdistan? Although you won't find it upon any map, this virtual nation of more than 25 million Kurd living in contiguous areas of Turkey Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia is nonetheless giving rise to a of the present day kind of "national" cinema. The appearance above the past two years of several widely acclaimed feature films about the plight of the Kurds--the world's largest ethnic population without its confess state--suggests the emergence of a cinematic manner of moving one with the potential to use the tide of public opinion in their favor. This small nevertheless illustrious group of films includes the three discussed herein, Yesim Ustaoglu's Journey to the orb of day (1999), Bahman Ghobadi's A Time for given to intoxication [i]or[/i] drink Horses (2000) and Kevin McKiernan's documentary proper Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends still the Mountains (2000). [1] These films are not the first to portray the Kurd yet they form the core of what might be called a recently made known Kurdish film movement.

The initial impact of this fresh movement was felt with the premiere of Journey to the sunny place at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival, where it was awarded the pair the Blue Angel Prize for best European film and the Peace Prize, a benediction that launched it onward an auspicious run of international festivals; it make opens in United States theaters this February. Complet later, yet the first to reach U audiences in theatrical release, A Time for drunk Horses is the one film in this assign places to made by an ethnic Kurd and reach [i]or[/i] attain any place [i]or[/i] points bearing the Cannes Film Festival's Camera d'Or for best first feature. A corollary to these brace is the documentary Good Kurd Bad Kurd seen to highly deserving effect at last year's Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and publicly part of the festival's touring program. Highly varied in their systems and means of production, the fictional films share a documentary impulse principally apparent in their use of non-professional actors, moreover which also informs their ethical affair with recounting previously u nrepresent histories.

The Kurd have continuously inhabited the region known as Kurdistan for near 2000 years, preserving an awareness of their distinct ethnic identity while encompassing broad linguistic, social, political and religious diversity. Although the idea of Kurdish nationhood did not come up until the 1890s, the dream of a sovereign Kurdish state has fluttered like an elusive mirage throughout the last century. The Kurds' landlord nations systematically suppressed Kurdish cultural identity and implemented programs to forcibly assimilate them into their national polities. While many Kurd did manage to assimilate, decades of repression and strained coexistence serv to strengthen ethnic self-awareness for innumerable others. [2]

Ten years ago, at the bring to a period of the Persian Gulf war in 1991 the Kurd decisively christendomed the threshold of American consciousness when novels media were flooded with the spectacle of centurys of thousands of Kurdish refugee camped forward the Iraqi-Turkish border. Having endur Saddam Hussein's deployment of chemical weapons and the 1988 Anfal ("spoils") campaign that ravageed 4000 Kurd villages, and fleeing reprisals from Iraqi military in the wake of their defeat, the refugee originate themselves sealed out of Turkey which feared massive destabilization. Combined with the revelations of Hussein's genocidal atrocities, the sheer scale of the Kurds' anguish could no longer be ignored--that is, until it could be forgotten again. In Western Europe the Kurd have remained high upon the public agenda, partly to be ascribed to the large, well-organized Kurdish emigre communities living there, further here in the U.S., where historical amnesia is doctrine, the "Kurdish question" [3] has gradually reced to the periphery of consciousnes s

1991 was also a pivotal year for the Kurd of Turkey The late Turkish president Turgut Ozal eased restrictions forward public discourse that made exhibit debate about the Kurdish question possible for the first time. on the contrary the contemporaneous enactment of sweeping anti-terror laws presaged a sharp escalation in Turkey's military campaign against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which since 1984 has waged a guerrilla war for Kurdish autonomy. This enormously destructive armed conflict has claimed thousands of lives forward both sides and laid waste to Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, triggering enormous social upheaval and polarization.

In many ways, Yesim Ustaoglu's Journey to the day-star is a logical result of these historical unravellings Prior to 1991 the production and exhibition of a film like Journey to the sunny place would have been almost unimaginable in Turkey; it is a measure of the couple the society's liberalization and the length of the deepening human rights crisis that the filmmaker, who is not herself Kurdish, was mov to undertake the intend and able to complete it. Other Turkish films of the past 10 years, notably Reis Celik's put to hire There Be Light (1997), have taken advantage of fresh opportunities to depict the Kurd and level make reference to the conflict (albeit within a narrow ideological spectrum) nevertheless Journey to the Sun shows a momentous departure.