Kurdish filmmakers Berivan Alothman, Azad Azizyan and Ali Fuat Şengül introduced the coming New York Kurdish Film Festival and three of its selected films during a broadcast on a CUNY TV program, where they were guests of Kurdish Executive Director Xeyal Qertel.
They began by introducing the New York Kurdish Film Festival, founded in 2017, which will take place for the 8th time in autumn 2024. The aim of the festival is to showcase diverse and thought-provoking films that address Kurdish culture, history, and current issues.
Diving into the history of Kurdish cinema, Ali Fuat Şengül, born in Diyarbakır (Amed), mentioned the 1982 Cannes Film Festival win of legendary Kurdish director Yılmaz Güney’s film “Yol” (The Journey) and the holding of several Kurdish film festivals in Europe. He noted that the NY Kurdish Film Festival had emerged from the need for representation of Kurdish cinema in America.
Berivan Alothman, a filmmaker from Kobani (Kobanê) in northeast Syria, explained that Kurdish cinema reflects the Kurdish identity through the art of entertainment and raises awareness about the “sad and tough reality of the Kurdish people.”
Ali Fuat Şengül added that Kurdish filmmakers aim to record what is “missing and under attack constantly”, stressing that “filmmaking as a cultural production is resisting geopolitical destruction”.
Asked about the role of Kurdish filmmakers, Azad Azizyan, originally from the Eastern Kurdish Merivan region, described the importance of representation in Kurdish cinema and how Kurdish people represent themselves in film.
The forthcoming NY Kurdish Film Festival will be held in autumn 2024 and will include cinematic showcases, question-and-answer sessions, Kurdish music and dance exhibitions, and workshops.
The TV programme went on to introduce three of the films that will be showcased during the festival:
The first was “Yar” (Beloved), by Aram Hassan Abdullah, a Kurdish filmmaker from Suleymaniyah (Silêmanî) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
His film explores the life of the Yarsans, a people with their own religion who perform prayers and worship using a traditional string instrument called the tanbur. The tanbur is an ancient musical instrument with a special crafting ritual. “Yar” details the crafting process of the tanbur and its use in the religious rituals of the Yarsans.
They went on to introduce the short animated film “The Pattern” by Azad Jannati, produced in 2018. “The Pattern” was inspired by real events during the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja, a Kurdish town in Iraq. In this poison gas attack, carried out by Saddam Hussein, over 5000 people were killed, including many women and children.
Using various patterns, the film captures the final moments of a traditional rug being woven, as the weaver reflects on her feelings and experiences while the poisonous gas from the attack spreads around her.
The last film presented was “In Between” directed by Ali Kemal Çınar, produced in 2018. It tells the story of Osman, a car mechanic who can understand his mother tongue Kurdish but cannot speak it, and can speak Turkish but cannot understand it. By the end of the film, his life changes when a customer finds a solution to his problem. Osman realises that his situation is not personal but due to the forced assimilation of the Kurdish people in Turkey.
