Kazım Öz named his movie Dûr, meaning "The Distant" in Kurdish, which he says not only describes a physical distance between those left behind and those who abandoned them, but also reflects a feeling of being stranded that would touch anyone who has a reproach for memories of the past but is unable to verbalize them or do not know where to direct that reproach.
"It is an elegiac movie trying to reflect a trauma that those who were somehow detached from their habitat are still living," Öz said in an interview with the Turkish Daily News.
Öz filmed his movie over different seasons of the last ten years during his visits to the village and several German cities on different occasions. If there is a need to classify the movie, he prefers to call it a "documentary-drama."
The people speaking to Öz's camera never mention hard times and the reasons that forced them to leave their villages or, for those left behind, the reasons that left them deserted. "It is a documentation of all our villages that have died and of our old values that have died together with those villages as symbolized through one village's story," Öz said.
By Emine Kart
© 2005 Dogan Daily News Inc.
May 15, 2005
TURKEY: Film Records Life in Kürmeş Where Only Elderly Live
ANKARA, Turkey (Turkish Daily News), May 15, 2005:
A life without hearing children's voices is hard to imagine, particularly for people living in Turkey where children's laughter and cries are like musical themes of daily life. Yet there are villages in Turkey where no children's voices are heard, just a solid silence from old villagers waiting for the slightest attention to retrieve those old memories, again and again…
Kürmeş is a sad village where once there were almost 1,000 people living in over 100 houses, but now only 30-40 people over 50 remain. A young movie director from a village near the Pertek county of the eastern Anatolia province of Tunceli, who grew up there until 17, filmed the locals -- both the elderly who stayed behind and those who left them, mostly migrating to Germany for work.
Kazım Öz named his movie Dûr, meaning "The Distant" in Kurdish, which he says not only describes a physical distance between those left behind and those who abandoned them, but also reflects a feeling of being stranded that would touch anyone who has a reproach for memories of the past but is unable to verbalize them or do not know where to direct that reproach.
"It is an elegiac movie trying to reflect a trauma that those who were somehow detached from their habitat are still living," Öz said in an interview with the Turkish Daily News.
Öz filmed his movie over different seasons of the last ten years during his visits to the village and several German cities on different occasions. If there is a need to classify the movie, he prefers to call it a "documentary-drama."
The people speaking to Öz's camera never mention hard times and the reasons that forced them to leave their villages or, for those left behind, the reasons that left them deserted. "It is a documentation of all our villages that have died and of our old values that have died together with those villages as symbolized through one village's story," Öz said.
By Emine Kart
© 2005 Dogan Daily News Inc.
Kazım Öz named his movie Dûr, meaning "The Distant" in Kurdish, which he says not only describes a physical distance between those left behind and those who abandoned them, but also reflects a feeling of being stranded that would touch anyone who has a reproach for memories of the past but is unable to verbalize them or do not know where to direct that reproach.
"It is an elegiac movie trying to reflect a trauma that those who were somehow detached from their habitat are still living," Öz said in an interview with the Turkish Daily News.
Öz filmed his movie over different seasons of the last ten years during his visits to the village and several German cities on different occasions. If there is a need to classify the movie, he prefers to call it a "documentary-drama."
The people speaking to Öz's camera never mention hard times and the reasons that forced them to leave their villages or, for those left behind, the reasons that left them deserted. "It is a documentation of all our villages that have died and of our old values that have died together with those villages as symbolized through one village's story," Öz said.
By Emine Kart
© 2005 Dogan Daily News Inc.
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