Famous Kurdish director Hiner Saleem. Saleem has four feature films. These are "Long Live the Bride-Liberation of Kurdistan" (1997), "Beyond Our Dreams", "Vodka-Lemon" (2003) and "Zero Kilometre" (2005). Also he is completed his latest feature recently, which is titled "The Drum-2006".
In particular, Saleem's two films, 'Vodka Lemon' and 'Kilometre Zero' have drawn international attention at film festivals including Cannes. I did not have a chance to watch his last two films, 'Kilometre Zero', 'The Drum' and his earlier film 'Beyond Our Dreams'. For this reason I cannot make any comment on them yet.
However I did watch "Long Live the Bride-Liberation of Kurdistan" on SBS TV in Australia a few years ago. So I'll be talking about this film which is a mixture of political satire and comedy. It reflects the life of Kurdish migrants living in France.
The film's main languages are French and Kurdish although French weighs more. In the film, Ceto, a Kurdish migrant, chooses a beautiful Kurdish girl from her video image to bring her to France to marry. Interestingly, the arriving girl happened to be to some extent "ugly" Mina, the sister of the girl Ceto had been chosen. Film develops around this idea, at the end Mina comes out to be a very beautiful girl but for Ceto, now fall-in-love with Mina, it is too late for everything.
"Long Live the Bride
Liberation of Kurdistan" takes place in France, though there is some images from Kurdistan. However the topic is the life of Kurdish migrant in France and the director is Kurdish, because of its considerable French language, I can not easily classify this film as a "Kurdish film". It lacks, from my perspective at least, the most important element of Kurdish film, namely the Kurdish language.
The other point is that, the film is shot from a Kurdish-French perspective not a pure 'Kurdish' perspective, though I do not suggest that it is not part of Kurdish Cinema movement. When I make that statement I'm aware of the fact that "Long Live the Bride
Liberation of Kurdistan" has created by a Kurdish director living in Diasporas, and set in France not in Kurdistan. It looked to me more a France film (could be French too) about Kurdish migrant living in Paris than a Kurdish film about Kurds. To some extent I felt uneasy watching Saleem's portrayal of Kurdish characters in "Long Live the Bride
", I'll try to explain my uneasiness in detail below.
By saying that I do not deny Saleem's films' "Kurdisness", as I said I'm only talking about the specific film here, nevertheless I do not see his films as Kurdish as Ghobadi's films. Besides, although the director is not Kurdish, Samira Makmalbaf's "Blackboards" (2000) looks to me more Kurdish than Saleem's "Long Live the Bride
" not just because of it's topic but also because of its language.
Samira's "Blackboards", thanks to its style and topic, language and location, the film is an insider's look to Kurds' plight following Halabja massacre in 1988. To me, "Blackboards" is all about Kurds and Kurdistan, it is shot from Kurdish perspective and especially noteworthy is the scene in which an old man asks a teacher to read the letter he got from his sons. Neither the old man nor the teacher would be able to read the letter because they do not know whether it is written in Turkish, in Arabic or in Farsi.
Nonetheless, I should state that in terms of representing Kurdish identity and culture, the plights of Kurds and reflecting the life in Kurdistan, Ghobadi is far ahead than other Kurdish directors." devrim kilic editor in chief www.kurdishcinema.org
