2 SIDES SELECTION
Stranger
Yabancı
Pip Chodorov · Romania, France · Experimental, Fiction · 9’
Romanian fairy tales usually start with the sentence: “Once upon a time something happened, if it hadn’t happened it couldn’t be told.” In this fairy tale, a stranger visits the remote mountain village of Slon.
This film was made at an annual ten-day filmmaking residency in Slon. As a stranger myself, first time to Romania, with only four days to shoot and four days to edit, I wrote this modern-day fairy tale to coincide with my fantasy idea of what my unpredictable visit to the village would be like. Connections can be seen between the extraterrestrial and a foreigner, between the box and my camera, etc. And the story of being the last to leave a Romanian party and having to pay for it really did happen to Jonas Mekas at the Moscow Film Festival in 1971.
Blue, Revolution and VHS Tapes
Mavi, Devrim ve VHS Kasetler
Serdar Kökçeoğlu · Türkiye · Documentary · 16’44”
A war pilot, a radical revolutionary, and a cinephile... This is the portrait of a man who left the army and built a successful career as businessman in Europe. Only a few people knew that he was also an undercover member of the resistance movement against Turkey’s military regime in early 1970s. Mekin Gönenç later dedicated most of his life to the movies. When he died after suffering a heart attack while swimming in 2011, he left behind thousands of VHS tapes and meticulously crafted home-made film journals. His death between the two blues he cherished most—the sea and the sky— now give some consolation to his wife. Through archives, we trace the journey of a 20th-century romantic.
Director: Serdar Kökçeoğlu
Producer: Ahmet Gürata
Screenplay: Serdar Kökçeoğlu, Elif Dizdaroğlu
Cinematographer: Tuncer Mert Aydın
Editor: Hazal Bayar
Assistant Director: Yağmur Canpolat
Music: Koray Kantarcıoğlu