by Sevgi Soysal
“Ladies and gentlemen, you have watched our show. Although we usually collect our fee in advance, as a courtesy and privilege to you we did not collect money at the entrance this time. Now, please, place in this tray as much as your generosity can afford …”
The acrobat gathered the money, alternating between gestures of humility and intimidation. Mevhibe didn’t have any money on her. Embarrassed, she ran away. Now, for some reason the thought of her son becoming a filmmaker kept reminding her of those acrobats. Actually, being the sophisticated, cultured lady that she was, having attended the theater, concerts and the ballet with her husband, Mevhibe Hanım knew that art was something else of course. But still, she couldn’t help it; for her, the mention of art conjured up a combination of destitution and banality. Ultimately, it was something she equated with that fallen woman and those acrobats who were more like bandits than anything else. Now how could she possibly accept it, Doğan, holding out a collection tray like that? Of course it wasn’t exactly the same thing, but still …
“Don’t be stupid,” Olcay had said. These words only riled Mevhibe Hanım up that much more. “I too know good and well what fine art is, of course I do. And nobody loves a good movie more than me. But, come on, let others make them! It’s a dirty business, you never know how things are going to turn out in those murky waters. Besides, sweetheart, this is Turkey, nobody gives two figs about film-making here. In Europe, sure, fine. But here, nobody would get it. The whole spiel’s run by bandits. And the so-called ‘actors’ are anything but artists; they’re nothing but a bunch of whores. What does Doğan know? He comes from a good family. In the end he’ll be impoverished and disgraced.”
“So if so-and-so can’t do it for this reason, and so-and-so can’t do it for that reason, then you tell me, who’s supposed to make good movies in this country?” Olcay said. “Why not Doğan?”
Oh, and the thought of her son’s former academic success, now that just sent poor Mevhibe Hanım into the very depths of despair.
I mean, if he hadn’t been such a good student, then fine. Maybe then she would have thought otherwise: “Well, seeing as he’ll never finish school, and he’ll never become a proper man anyway.” But why would a boy like Doğan, a boy with such a bright future ahead of him, up and decide to become a filmmaker? As if he were some uneducated kid who hadn’t had a proper upbringing! “What’s wrong with filmmaking?” Olcay countered. “It’s an occupation, and a difficult one at that. Just look at the respect the state theater actors get. Even the president holds dinners in their honor!” “Oh, now I know good and well what I’m talking about,” Mevhibe Hanım replied. When beybaba was an MP, he had taken her to a dinner held at the Çankaya Palace in honor of a foreign ballet troupe that had come to Ankara. He had kissed the hand of the lead ballerina. But Mevhibe Hanım knew that beybaba would never have let his own daughter become a ballerina. Everyone should choose a job that was right for them. The daughter of a beybaba MP could not become a ballerina. “Fine, then who can?” Olcay asked. “Oh, I don’t know, the children of other families, families that don’t give their children proper educations, or children of the divorced, people who don’t give their children a proper upbringing, or talented children of the common folk, I mean, those who have no other opportunities to make their way in life … Of course art is a beautiful thing, but like I said, it’s no occupation for someone from a decent family.”
Even when Doğan failed to change his mind about becoming a filmmaker and it became apparent that this passion of his was not going to fade away anytime soon, Mevhibe Hanım refused to soften up. Although she had upon several occasions sent money to her beloved son so that he could pay off his debts—because she could not stand to have someone of her own blood in debt to everyone and his brother—she adamantly refused to send him money so that he could pursue his passion. Finally, Doğan, after having picked up enough about art and cinema in the cafes of Paris and having seen enough decent films, had no choice but to return to the homeland, bearing a bevy of books about cinema and an amateur camera he had bought using the last bit of money his mother had deigned to send him.
For some time he wandered the shantytowns of Ankara, wielding that camera. He became an active member of Sinematek. He wrote a few articles about cinema for a couple of literary journals. In a short time word that “he knew his stuff” spread among cinema lovers. Together with a few amateurs who shared his mindset, he started a film collective. And then they started publishing a journal in order to disseminate their ideas about cinema in general, and their thoughts about Turkish cinema in particular. A few female university students who, though they shared their passion for cinema, didn’t know enough about it to make films themselves, but who nevertheless were enthusiastic participants in the collective, willingly took on the duty of selling the journal. The girls succeeded in doing so with the help of their extensive circle of acquaintances and also the help of those who were too bashful to turn them down. As their first activity, the collective decided to organize a week of screenings during which they would show a few of their amateur documentary films. That way, they would be able to both make a case for their assertions regarding filmmaking and sound out the response to their beliefs in public opinion. To this end, they would have to rent a cinema for a week and find spectators. The money earned from the journal wouldn’t be enough for this purpose. Again with the help of the assisting girls, they tried to gather money and sell the tickets for the screenings beforehand. Finally, borrowing money from a variety of sources, they managed to gather enough for the screenings. Doğan had managed to get his mother to cough up a small amount by telling her that it was for something else.
For the opening they had produced a brochure of declarations full of ambitious and assertive statements. The brochure contained a ruthless criticism of Turkish cinema, followed by views regarding the place and duty of cinema within society, as well as information about contemporary cinema, and concluded by calling upon Turkish filmmakers to perform their duty vis-à-vis the Turkish people. The evening of the screening, frequenters of the Sinematek and a few bookstores that had advertised it, in keeping with their habit of making sure they weren’t omitted from such events, filled the cinema. Finally, after a forty-five minute delay, the screening began.
Before it began though, Doğan and his friends mingled in the foyer with spectators, most of whom they already knew, and repeated the statements that they had put forth in the brochure in even more fervent sentences. They became so caught up in their own statements that the show was only able to go on after a few impatient spectators whistled.
They had not done a trial run for the showing that night with the projector they had rented from one of the summer cinemas in Küçükesat. Their friends who had agreed to show the film were unable to get the projector to work. The lights went out several times. Each time the lights came back on, Doğan and his friends dashed over to the projector, but they were incapable of doing anything but looking at it, their hands firmly planted in their pockets. Finally, their friends who had assumed the duty of doing so were finally able to get the projector working. The lights went out again, and the film began.
It was a documentary about Altındağ. Doğan had spent six months wandering the neighborhood of Altındağ, camera about his neck, and it was there that he had used up most of the raw film he had brought over from France. In his head he had a scenario that he’d finally crystallized after ample discussion and debate with his pals in the collective. The film was going to depict in detail the people of Altındağ; their butt-naked children playing outside, laborers heading off to work at the crack of dawn, women rushing to feed and clothe their children before dashing off to serve someone else, old people napping at front doors, chicken coops, kelims woven of old scrap cloth, a funeral in the middle of the neighborhood, a circumcision celebration, an imam-blessed marriage, and this and that. Doğan would narrate the film with the voiceover of someone who did not live there but was touched by the sights. There w
ould be a stark, irreconcilable contrast between the narrator, who presented the images in what he himself deemed a beautiful, poetic narrative and the actual images on the screen. The viewer, sensing this irreconcilable contrast, would think of how impossible it is to explain these places, of how they could only be experienced, of how insufficient mere spectatorship was. The documentary would conclude with a quatrain on the guilt of the spectator. Doğan had heard this quatrain from a young poet friend of his in Paris, and liked it a lot. While the quatrain was being read, the camera would draw closer and closer to the face of a mother crying in the wake of a coffin of a child who’d died from deprivation, and as the voice of the person reading the quatrain softened, the sound of the woman’s weeping would become louder.
Following hours of discussion with his friends, Doğan had made some modifications to these ideas of his. Consequently, when he put his film in his camera and went to Altındağ to record, he was of the firm belief that he now knew very well what he was going to do. As soon as he arrived in the neighborhood, he found himself surrounded by kids. Before he was able to capture the images that he had already laid out in his mind, he himself was captured by the children, to the point that he could neither take a single step, nor look left or right. He had come here as someone concerned about them, so of course he could not reprimand them. For a while he rushed to answer the series of questions the children threw at him. Once he was convinced that he had done all he could, he tried to leave. But the children, who had ruthlessly besieged him, had no intention of letting him do so:
“Film me, brother …”
“No, not him … film me brother …”
“Film us brother ….”
All of them were hopeful, as if this was their chance to become movie stars and escape this neighborhood, to become famous like Ayhan Işık and possess enormous homes and fancy cars. This was such a hope, such a rare boon that had fallen at their feet, that they had no intention of being so stupid as to let it escape. The children’s begging and pleading soon became contagious, and the bigger kids joined in too. They also drew in closer, to see if the good luck might rub off on them. Doğan began to sense that those surrounding him would not let him do a single thing here until they had wrenched away the rights that they were so determined to obtain. Next came the mothers. They too had spread their wings like falcons over the rights of their children. It was absolutely clear that they would not allow filming of either themselves or their front-or backyards, so long as the hearts of their children remained discontented. Doğan, thinking that he would never be able to film the things he planned to film, like circumcision ceremonies and funerals, unless he made sure he was in the good graces of the neighborhood folk and, arriving at the conclusion that he had no other choice, he succumbed to the will of the children. But in doing so, he made one of the gravest mistakes of his life. The children’s requests knew no end. They all wanted him to film more of themselves. Just as he would be getting ready to film one of them, another would pose with his plastic pistol and start tugging at his pant leg, while another would be shoving aside the kid he was filming and thrust himself in front of the camera. One of the kids silently watched Doğan for some time, water pistol in hand, his silence punctuated by occasional outbursts of talk and laughter with his pals, in an attempt to attract attention. The boy’s initial silence was really only to size Doğan up. It was a characteristic that most of the children here possessed. When confronted with a stranger, they would first stare him down, and then they would follow him for a while, and once they were convinced that the stranger they were trailing was not a tough guy and would not beat them up, they’d start badgering him, knowing good and well how to get him to do their bidding. And so once he had completed the surveillance phase, the boy with the water pistol latched onto Doğan’s jacket:
“Make a movie about me too, brother!”
At that moment, Doğan was preparing to film the boy with the plastic pistol who was wearing a hat made out of newspaper. He had just started filming when the kid who had completed his surveillance routine soaked Doğan good with his water pistol. The lens of his camera also got wet in the process. While Doğan was drying off the lens, this time the kid whose recording had been interrupted came up and started yanking at his jacket. Now certain that it was his turn, the kid with the water pistol soaked the boy with the plastic pistol this time. The boy’s paper hat was ruined, which infuriated the hatted boy, so he pounced upon his adversary, snatched the water pistol from his hand and chucked it into a nearby chalk well. The two boys dug into each other full force. Suddenly the fight grew. It spread throughout the mass of the children. They started throwing stones at one another. One of the stones hit Doğan in the head. Doğan, who up until that point had just been standing there dumbfounded, uncertain as to whether to shield himself or his camera, had blood streaming down his head. The children’s mothers too had become engaged in the battle. Hurling unspeakable curses at one another, they too began to take part in the competition that was raging between their children; each of them wanted her child to be filmed. They had no intention of seeing the rights of their own children being usurped by some twerp, and in the belief that you can beat the treat out of another’s mouth, they cheered their children on, urging them to land their punches first. Meanwhile, they also cautioned Doğan, who was busy wiping away the blood streaming down his forehead, not to deny their own children’s right to be filmed. Finally Doğan, now thoroughly fed up, decided to film all of the children together. Everyone marched over to a nearby field, and the children sat on the grass. This time, they wouldn’t sit still; they kept trying to get in front of one another, and the ones behind kept giving donkey ears to those in front. It was a daunting task, but Doğan finally managed to film the children. He hadn’t the strength to see or film anything else. Meanwhile, the children and their mothers, having joined forces to guarantee the future of their film careers, hurled questions at him right and left:
“When’s this movie going to play in the theaters, brother?”
“Brother, did I make into the movie too, huh, brother?”
“What theaters is it going to be shown at, brother?”
“Brother, when are you going to film again?”
“Brother, you’ll tell us when it hits the theaters, won’t you, huh, brother?”
Meanwhile, the hour was approaching evening. Several men returning from work also took an interest in Doğan. A few of them invited him to their homes for coffee. Doğan, unable to bring himself to refuse their polite invitations, sat and had coffee. He responded to their never-ending litany of questions with a heap of fanciful lies. For he had quickly discerned that honest responses would make no sense to the bearers of the questions. They were expecting a concrete, tangible movie like the ones they watched at the neighborhood theater. One young man asked, “Whose life is the film gonna be about, brother?” Doğan, pleased to have an answer for that question, replied, “This neighborhood.” One of the men gave Doğan a suspicious look. “You must take us for a bunch of idiots, brother,” he said. “A place doesn’t have a life.” A frustrated Doğan replied: “I mean, I’m going to film the life that is lived here.” This time, another one of the men took offense: “Just what is it about our life then, son; you can’t go messing in people’s private lives.” Doğan, by now worn ragged, let the words slip from his mouth, “I mean, for example, I want to film your funerals and stuff.” This response upset the man even more. “Now look here son, you don’t want things to get ugly. A funeral’s no theater. That’s blasphemy!” Doğan fell silent, and so did the other men sitting with him. There was no way he’d get to film the funeral bit now, that much was obvious. Now that the feeling of discord between him and the locals had become quite concrete, he didn’t have the courage to ask if there were any circumcision ceremonies on the horizon. He thanked them, took his leave, and headed home. He was tired.