Int’l documentary days come to city

Nationally and internationally acclaimed documentary films will be screened June 2 to 7 as part of the second edition of Documentarist / Istanbul Documentary Days, organized by the Eurasia Art Collective.

The event, which will be held at five different venues - the Goethe-Institut Istanbul, the French Culture Center, the Embassy of the Netherlands’ Union Church of Istanbul, the Pera Museum's movie theater and the Kadıköy BEKSAV Movie Theater - will also bring together many documentary directors. Films in the festival program will be screened in other cities upon request.

This year’s edition of the festival, which last year highlighted the famous BBC documentary "Storyville," will focus on Northern European and Finnish films, with selections from the most important works in Finnish cinema comprising the main attraction. The screenings will include both recent Finnish films as well as the classic movies "Three Rooms of Melancholia," Gracious Curves" and "Revolution."

Cinema Class with a documentary master
The famous Finnish documentary maker Iikka Vehkalahti will lead the Cinema Class, which was taught last year by Nick Fraser. Vehkalahti, the documentary section manager of Finnish state television YLE since 1998, will share his experiences with carrying out a documentary project in various African cities and India, and show films produced as part of the project. Before working for YLE, Vehkalahti directed several award-winning documentaries, including "Past is Present," "Man From the Shadows" and "Daughter of a Terrorist." The Cinema Class will be held on Sunday, June 7.

Vehkalahti also consulted with the YLE in compiling a selection of international documentaries to contribute to the Documentarist 2009 festival, including some of the most successful documentary films in recent years: "Darwin’s Nightmare," "A Decent Factory," "Up The Yangtze," "Unmistaken Child" and "Stranded." The YLE selection will be accompanied by films from the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Other highlights of this year’s Documentarist include "Burma VJ," last year’s winner of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, or IDFA; "Blind Loves," which was screened at Cannes; "The Heart of Jenin," which has drawn acclaim at a variety of international festivals; and "Carmen Meets Borat," which reveals how Romanian villagers were fooled in the making of the comedy film "Borat."

As part of the festival, there will also be a special screening of one of the classic films of cinematic history, Robert Siodmak’s 1929 movie "Menschen am Sonntag" (People on Sunday), which was brought to light some time ago and restored. Other interesting movies will be found in the National Documentary Selection, which will screen the candidates for the Turkish Film Critics Association, or SİYAD’s, 2009 Documentary Awards. In addition to showing some 50 foreign documentaries, made in countries from Chile to Russia and from India to Morocco, and 20 Turkish ones, the festival will also host exhibitions of documentary photography and other related events.

After its Istanbul run, Documentarist 2009 will continue in İzmir from June 9 to 12. For more information, visit www.documentar-ist.org/2009.