The entire building for rent

Ayse told me to document these old buildings, and so I do.

Another demolition on my street

Emek protestolari sürüyor

Beyoğlu Belediyesi önünde eylem. Cuma aksam 7 biraz gec bir saat gerci.

My office view

This is probably one of the things that gets me out of bed and out the door in the morning.

40s apartments

My street was full of these, but they're all being torn down to build semi-identical hotels. This is probably next to go.

Day 16: Dogtooth, Emek Demonstration

(the very last festival entry - finished on June 29, 2010)



I had been hearing about Dogtooth, the festivals-favorite from Greece, since it premiered in Cannes last year, where it started racking up the awards. The film has been likened to von Trier (only Idiots, really) and Haneke on the IFF website. The premise of three siblings isolated in a house with their parents is indeed interesting, but takes too long to command the attention of the viewer (of this one, anyway). I won't go into detail to avoid spoilers, but I actually have a friend who was planning to teach her children wrong words to see how they would react to the outside world. In this case, the idea is similar, but there is never an outside world. It's a world of false consciousness, very well made, I just wish it could have been more succinct.

The main event on the last day of the festival was the march to save Emek, with a big crowd, lots of noise and plenty of fun. The update on Emek is that the plans have been suspended for now, until a report from a court expert. Ascourt experts are notoriously unreliable, there are occasional protests to keep the issue alive.

IFF Day 12: Save Emek!

No movies on Day 12. Instead, I went to a town-hall type meeting about an old movie theater (Emek) that is planned to be torn down - sorry, "moved to the eighth floor of a multiplex without being torn down." Whatever. Until the meeting (which had a representative from the company that's planning the deed, someone from the Architects' Council, Director of IFF and a representative from Istanbul 2010 Agency), I wasn't against the project just for the sake of protest, and I was ready to listen to the guy from the company. He, however, spent about an hour saying nothing, lying to our faces, and grinning shamelessly. There was a lot of (mostly pointless) shouting, but in the end, it was god to show that there was a strong group of people against the project. One of the major points for me was that the theater has already been declared a cultural protection site, and is not supposed to be torn, changed or moved anywhere. We actually should not even be having this discussion. Another was that it's owned by Social Security Institution, so it's public. Why is it then being handed to some people so that they can make a profit off of it, without even a competitive bidding? Who are these people? And my favorite: 'the guy' tried to convince the audience that his company had good intentions to protect the cultural integrity of the building. The bottom three floors of the complex will be occupied by a museum: Madame Tussaud.

For more information, see the website.

I feel dirty

It's like going to a McDonalds. It's fun while you eat, but afterwards, you feel all that heavy and greasy crap inside your digestive system. That's what Mission Istaanbul feels like. It's so incoherent and inane, there's no point in even trying to review it. The story makes absolutely no sense, acting is not even there, product placement is infuriatingly blatant. The (Turkish) cops speak to each other in Turkish in some scenes, in English in others. Sometimes they switch mid-sentence. It's impossible to tell who is Indian and who is Turkish, and it doesn't even matter really, because everyone speaks fluent Hindi. Oh, and George W. Bush is in it.

I must admit that the film makes really good use of Istanbul though, every inch of the city is covered.

See it only with friends. Preferably in Istanbul. Preferably drunk.