DVD Release / Satışı

TALKING PICTURES / WHISPERING MEMORIES

http://amzn.com/B0031TZXRC

KONUŞAN FOTOĞRAFLAR / ANADOLU'DAN FISILTILAR

On composing for "Talking Pictures" - Paolo Poti

Composing music for "Talking Pictures" was a great experience. I had the chance to work with a lot of freedom and with some bonds at the same time. I had freedom because with Mehmet and Caner, the directors, we started talking about music before the actual editing started, just getting inspiration from the story, which I consider a very touching one. At the same time I had a bond, because I was asked to use "Cilicia", a famous Armenian song which was originally composed by Kapriel Yeranian. "Cilicia" served as the main source of the musical material we would hear in the film. We had the recording of one of the characters singing Cilicia, so I even used some audio material and composed a piece that could fit that singing, with new harmonic and timbral solutions.

For another sequence in the movie, where Ghazaros and Vivian travel to Turkey, I was asked for a simple piano piece, but with different tempo speeds that could fit different visual speeds. The song is called "Why are we visitors now?". In this blog, we are making this song available to readers as an appetizer to the film.

files.me.com/mehmetbinay/b74jpo

Another piece, "I'll be back" is a sort of classical quartet version of Cilicia, where the sorrow and the despair of the original song gives way to a calmer and limpid meditation. Also, having the chance to travel to Istanbul and to work alongside the team of Talking Pictures added quality to the final result, apart from making it a wonderful human experience.

In CAM Film's studio we worked side by side with Mehmet, Caner and Jasmin, the editor of many successful documentaries. We would sit and watch the images and then I would go back to my desk and keyboard, editing and changing my score according to the changing needs of the movie. Then I would give Jasmin the new audio file and again we would comment the effect of the music on the images, in a process of action and reaction, until we reached the desired solution.

That's why I really enjoyed the whole process and I am very happy with the artistical result.

Paolo Poti

http://www.paolopoti.com/

Filmmaker Interview with Mehmet Binay & Caner Alper / ARPA International Film Festival

Filmmaker Interview with MEHMET BINAY & CANER ALPER Films: “WHISPERING MEMORIES” and “TALKING PICTURES” ARPA International Film Festival

Mehmet Binay & M.Caner Alper

Screening: Oct. 24th, 12:30 pm Egyptian Theater - Hollywood, LA

“Whispering Memories” is not a story of Armenians who had to leave Turkey but of those who stayed behind and silently became Muslims: they are now called the ‘Converts’. This film documents ‘Armenian Converts’ and how they survived 1915 by remaining in the small village of Geben, in the Taurus mountains of Anatolia.

“Talking Pictures,” is the sequel to Whispering Memories. It shows the photographic journey of Ghazaros Kerjilian returning to his paternal home town of Geben, Turkey – and his search for his lost great uncle in 1915.

1. Tell us a little about yourself and where you have lived, highlighting any major cultural identities that define, influence or challenge you in your life.

We come from different backgrounds; Caner Alper, an engineering graduate but a self-taught screenwriter and Mehmet Binay, a political science graduate with professional experience in TV journalism. We’re trying to incorporate the power of fiction and non-fiction by getting inspired from real life and weaving these facts into dramatic stories.

Our family roots are also from different parts of Turkey. Mehmet has got roots in the Balkans and in Central Europe whereas Caner was born in the most western city of Izmir into a family of eastern Anatolian descent.

We’ve also been spending half of our time traveling in Asia, North America, Europe, the Caucasus and the Middle East for business and inspiration. One requires a stranger’s point of view to life and people in order to be able to create compelling stories which few have noticed before. We need to alienate ourselves to our own culture, people and traditions for objectivity and creativity. This is how we define our way of story telling.

2. How did you come to be a filmmaker, and where/how did you learn the “craft” of filmmaking?

Caner is a published writer and a self-taught screenwriter and he’s always been a cinema lover whereas Mehmet learned the craft of filmmaking in television productions. Reading non-fiction and literature is also a very important component of creating stories because your imagination in written texts has no limits but you face the challenge of turning these into visuals. Filmmaking is an art form where your imagination constantly needs to evolve and it needs to be supported with new techniques.

3. What prompted the idea for your film and how did it evolve?

“Whispering Memories” developed from a number of visits by Mehmet to Geben, a mountain village in southern Turkey, where village youngsters showed a desire to learn about their local history and, while investigating, came across Armenians who used to live in the area until 1915. Some of the witnesses of this era and members of the local Oral History Project were saying that some people in this village are direct descendants of converted Armenians who either silently or by force became Muslims to be able to avoid deportation in 1915. Mehmet’s initial journalistic instinct was to keep a distance to these rural historic conversations by using the camera as an observer only. Caner, later on, helped establishing strong cinematographic links by integrating a three-day rural wedding into the visual story and having it serve as a leitmotif throughout the film…

The sequel “Talking Pictures” to “Whispering Memories” showed us that documentaries are always alive and they evolve within time…”Kerjili” was the only Armenian name villagers of Geben in “Whispering Memories” remembered clearly and they told us how he left the village in 1915 and never came back. Soon after our premiere at the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Armenia, we received an email from someone telling that his father was from Geben and that he always wanted to go back there. The email was from Ghazaros Kerjilian which really surprised us because it immediately reminded us of the name “Kerjili” in Whispering Memories.

Our short documentary “Talking Pictures” tells the photographic journey of Ghazaros Kerjilian returning to his paternal home town of Geben and his search for the lost great uncle in 1915. In “Talking Pictures”, we used a different filmmaking technique and used only still photographs to tell our story. We took nearly 7.000 pictures and created continuous sequences after a long process of colour grading. We believe that photographs from archives and still photographs mix well together and they leave an eternal mark in people’s memories and we wanted to instigate that feeling among our viewers.

At the same time, music also plays an important role in our creative process serving as an indispensable part in our stories. In “Talking Pictures”, we worked with an Italian film music composer who listened to the Armenian song “Cilicia” which we’d recorded by one of our protagonists while shooting the documentary. Composer Paolo Poti carefully rearranged the music and based the entire soundtrack on this famous Armenian song with a classical approach. We are very excited about the international debut of “Talking Pictures” at ARPA International Film Festival in LA and we’re hoping to receive a lot of feedback from the screening.

4. What is your single favorite line from your film?

From WHISPERING MEMORIES: “A coward, a real coward is one that is afraid of one’s own memories.”

From TALKING PICTURES: “I had to go, I had to find out…”

5. What movies would you say have transformed or changed the way you see the world?

So many! We basically love movies that cover many aspects of the identity issue. Some of the films that have influenced us are: Europa, The Edge of Heaven, Baader Meinhof Komplex, Le Dernier Metro, Hable Con Ella, The Reader, Tous les matins du Monde, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, City of God, Remains of the Day, Bicycle Thief, Sophie’s Choice, Constant Gardener, Reds, Being There, Lives of Others, The Crying Game, The City of Lost Children, A Short Film about Killing, Delicatessen, Ice Storm, Wedding Banquet.

Listen without prejudice

Long before we started filming WHISPERING MEMORIES, it was well agreed that there should have been no voice over to tell the story of “Converts”.

Being in a remote village in southern Turkey, in a harsh environment, trying to persuade people talk about the past which have been silent for almost a century, kept us quite... We decided to let the people talk.

When Ghazaros found us last year, it was obvious that he would want to talk about his past and search for his lost family history. He’d brought pictures from his family album which started giving us hints to his barb-wired history.

Hence we developed the idea of taking still photographs and editing them in a motion picture film along with Ghazaros’ family album. The result was a documentary called TALKING PICTURES.

I believe that not only the truth but also the future lies in between the lines of TALKING PICTURES only if we can watch the pictures move along and listen to what they say, without prejudice.

M.Caner Alper

Director / Talking Pictures

A letter from 1915

When you make films, you’d think your job is done once the editing is over, and the story is out and ready for screening. This was how I felt when Whispering Memories first met with the Turkish audience thanks to a national TV broadcast on CNN Turk, and the first international festival screening at the Golden Apricot in Yerevan, Armenia in July 2008. This is how we started telling the story of a tiny and hidden village in the Taurus mountains of Turkey to the outside world. A documentary film about ‘Armenian Converts’ and how they survived 1915 by remaining in this small village in Anatolia.

Soon after my visit to Yerevan, I received an email through my producer M.Caner Alper. He’d also included in his note that I should have a close look at it because the sender was mentioning that his father was from Geben, the Turkish village where we’d filmed ‘Whispering Memories’.

I started reading the email word by word and spotted the name Ghazaros Kerjilian as its sender. I first went into silence and then I could not avoid crying because ‘Kerjili’ was the only Armenian name in Whispering Memories, villagers of Geben remembered clearly. They’d told us the story of how he left Geben as the last person from the Armenian community. And now, I was receiving an email from someone carrying the same name and he was saying that his father was from Geben and that he always wanted to visit Geben until he died, only four years ago at the age of 97.

Our correspondence continued with mutual excitement and passion until Ghazaros came out to Toronto from upstate New York to meet me and my producer Caner at the Pomegranate International Film Festival. There, we sat next to each other while we watched -once again- how villagers described in detail his grandfather leaving Geben in 1915. Ghazaros had also brought his father’s picture to Toronto for us to see. As soon as we caught a glimpse of his father’s face, we both said to each other that he has a peculiar similarity to the Old Imam in Whispering Memories, a first hand witness of 1915.

Over the winter months, we slowly and cautiously planned Ghazaros’ journey to his fathers village in the Taurus Mountains. Yasemin, the Convert girl in Whispering Memories and her family warmheartedly welcomed our intentions and offered us their hospitality without any conditions. In Geben, we would stay at their home and be witness to the reunion of “Turks” and “Armenians” of Geben for the first time after almost a century since their separation. Furthermore, there could also be family relations to be unearthed between “Turks” and “Armenians”...

...

Pictures leave a life-long mark in our memories regardless of how important movies are in modern times. This is why we decided to document Ghazaros’ journey by taking continuously shot still photographs. Over 6.000 pictures formed the basis of a 14 minute long documentary film enriched by interviews recorded in the field. Italian composer Paolo Poti prepared the soundtrack based on the famous Armenian song “Cilicia” in a classical approach. This is how our short documentary “Talking Pictures” came into life with its international debut to be taken place at the ARPA International Film Festival between 23-25 October 2009 in Los Angeles.

Herewith, we’d like to thank you for your interest in Whispering Memories and our evolving documentary story. The teaser of Talking Pictures can be found in Youtube, Vimeo and Facebook; related links are provided below. Information about screenings at upcoming festivals and digital platforms will be constantly updated via our blog, Facebook group, and the official site of CAM Film.

Please help us in sharing our story with the world.

Thank you.

Mehmet Binay / M.Caner Alper

8 October 2009

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For more information:

Talking Pictures is the photographic journey of Ghazaros Kerjilian to his paternal home in the Taurus mountain region in Turkey and his search for the lost great uncle in 1915.

A short documentary by Mehmet BINAY / M.Caner ALPER

Post-production by Jasmin GUSO

Photography by Huseyin ONAN

Music by Paolo POTI

Narrated by Mehmet BINAY

© CAM Film 2009

TALKING PICTURES

Teaser on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k25jBGcljhQ

Teaser on Vimeo:

http://www.vimeo.com/6926352

Facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=30514440135