Turkish filmmaker's documentary provides fresh look at history
Saturday, July 26, 2008
YASEMİN SİM ESMEN
ISTANBUL – Turkish Daily News
A lot has been said about Armenians who left their homes in 1915, but not much has been said about those who stayed. It is this often overlooked aspect that documentary filmmaker and journalist Mehmet Binay tackles in a new film, “Whispering Memories.”
“Today, we need to prove that we do care about our past and we are ready to confess [our] mistakes, whatever geopolitical reason they might have had. I think filmmaking is a great way to reconcile with Armenians, who are an important part of our imperial past,” said Binay in an interview with the Turkish Daily News. He added that the events of 1915 resulted in a majority of Anatolian Armenians being wiped out from their ancestral homeland. “A significant cultural, social and economic element of our society was taken out of Turkey's mosaic, which we kept mentioning as a stronghold of our culture and identity throughout the centuries. 1915 was a terrible human disaster causing economic, social and political imbalances in eastern Turkey, while its effects still dominate our problems there.”
Binay comes from a family that migrated to modern-day Turkey from their ancestral land in the Balkans. With stories of migration in his past and a fascination with the richness of history and the mystery of eastern Turkey, Binay has traveled extensively in eastern Anatolia. “Its authenticity, complexity and the sorrow in people's eyes had been striking me while I was on my photographic journeys along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which I've documented extensively since the 1990s,” said the filmmaker.
Discovering a unique village
It was during this journey that he came across ancient gravestones located in many spots in the village of Geben in the Taurus Mountains of Kahramanmaraş province. “[They] had struck me with their unknown origin and the sheer size of them standing up against time,” said Binay. “Whispering Memories” developed from a number of visits by the filmmaker to Geben, 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 widely until 1915. “Some of the witnesses of this era and members of the Oral History Project were saying that some people in this village are the descendants of converted Armenians who either silently or by force became Muslims to be able to avoid deportation in 1915,” said Binay.
“Whispering Memories” brings a fresh look at the facts, wrote Taraf columnist Amberin Zaman.
“My initial journalistic instinct told me to keep a distance to these rural historic conversations by using the camera as an observer only,” said the filmmaker, who decided not to lead the interviews but just to listen to them in order to sustain objectivity. The documentary's producer and drama advisor, Caner Alper, then helped establish strong cinematographic links between the conversations and the filmmakers by integrating a three-day rural wedding into the visual story and having it serve as a leitmotif throughout the film.
Binay said he believes that honesty and neutrality are the strongholds of “Whispering Memories.” “We are able to understand economic and social links between Armenians and Turks prior to 1915 thanks to sincere conversations between village elders and youngsters,” he said. He said he believes that the wedding, the story of which is told in the film, helps viewers understand that story of “The Converts,” as marriage is a perfect way to mix different cultures, ethnicities and religions.
“Yet memories remain and live throughout generations if not condemned or discriminated just because of their being different. This is exactly how this small village in the Taurus Mountains was able to develop a liberal, open and peaceful society without getting too much polarized throughout the 20th century. Geben is a perfect example of how different roots and cultures can live peacefully together or side by side even today,” added Binay.
“Whispering Memories” was filmed over two years. The wedding was filmed in 2006, while preparations for rural history conversations were filmed in 2007. It took both Binay and village youngsters much effort and time to convince people to speak about those times in an open and frank way. Shooting the film in two years had some drawbacks and difficulties. “Village youngsters leading oral history conversations were present at the wedding a year ago but they'd grown up or changed, so we needed to make sure the audience didn't feel disturbed by those visual changes. The entire filming process required a lot of planning regarding time and lighting so we could fit those different segments in a natural flow,” Binay said.
The documentary was broadcasted on the Turkish news channel CNN-Türk on June 27, 2008, prior to its screening in the Golden Apricot Film Festival. In the period leading up to the documentary's broadcast on CNN-Türk, the documentary's makers set up a blog, a Web site, and a group on social networking Web site Facebook. Binay said the audience in Turkey was generally impressed by the objectivity and the lyrical flow of the storyline. “I received feedback from Turkish historians appreciating our work to find out honest and open remarks about 1915,” he said and added, “I also think documentaries are a popular and successful way to convey facts and figures about our history to the general public.”
The film's two screenings in Yerevan drew attention and the audience requested a long question and answer sessions afterwards, during which Binay was asked whether he was scared to film such a documentary in Turkey. “They also asked me why I filmed this documentary as a filmmaker with no Armenian or eastern roots. Armenians today do not know modern Turkey besides the fact that intellectuals such as Hrant Dink can be killed by ultra-nationalists simply by talking about the Turkish identity and accepting 1915 as genocide. They do not expect Turkish filmmakers to make fair and objective films or documentaries about 1915,” said Binay. He said “Whispering Memories” impressed the Armenian audience in Yerevan by providing a fair and objective look into historical events.
“Also some people in the audience [in Yerevan] told their own memories of converted grandmothers and other family members. They got very sentimental at certain points but they also laughed a lot during some of the wedding scenes,” said Binay.
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