Gezinema World Cinema Documentaries, Q&A Session I

The Gezinema World Cinema Documentaries series was held in the context of the Gezi - 10 Years After program at the Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin, from 26 May until 25 June 2023. The program took the 10th anniversary of the protests in Istanbul as an opportunity to analyze the current political upheavals and hoped-for revolutions. Following the presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey, we ask: what state do the people, does the republic find itself in at the moment, especially after the catastrophic earthquakes? Gezi was and is a symbol for working together to build up a country worth living in. Together with participants active in Gezi and now living in exile, primarily in Berlin, GEZİ – TEN YEARS AFTER attempts to trace this legacy for the future.

In the GeZinema series, co-curated by Şirin Fulya Erensoy and Necati Sönmez, the goal was shed some light on resistance movements of the past decade from around the world, as well as their effects. We screened films that were shot in the epicenters of the protests from Chile to Lebanon and bear witness to the stories of their protagonists. Following each screening, conversations with experts, including filmmakers, activists and scholars, contextualize the films and enabled an understanding of the real events. In the process, they offered the opportunity to discuss the representative and emancipatory power of the medium of film. The audio recordings from the Q&A sessions were transcribed and edited. All speakers accepted to have the conversation published in this manner. 

This is the Q&A with film director Rüzgâr Buşki, moderated by Şirin Fulya Erensoy.

The series GeZinema was created in collaboration with the H2020 MSCA-IF project, VIDEOACT, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101025524.