Films by Muammer Özer

Decolonisation – Debt – Migration: JORDMANNEN tells the story of an immigrant from Anatolia who moves to a new country in hope of a better life. The everyday reality of this nameless protagonist, who is depicted as a clay figure, is marked by alienation, racism and exploitation. This grim portrayal of an economic migrant in an affluent Western society is representative of many others: the unqualified worker’s worth is determined solely by his performance, and he is not embraced as a new member of this transnational society. The various narrative styles of the film, which moves between documentary and fiction, blend into one other. Structured as a series of episodes, the story is narrated sometimes in the first and sometimes in the third person, making use of dolls, toys and live-action actors and alternating between black-and-white and color film. Filmmaker Muammer Özer was granted asylum in Sweden in the 1970s. His film was produced with the support of the Stockholm Film Workshop (Filmverkstan), which supported films by immigrant filmmakers. The print being screened here was restored by the Swedish Film Institute. ULKOMAALAINEN was Muammer Özer’s ambitious project about the situation of a Turkish immigrant in Finland. The film was originally shot in Finland during the 1970s when Özer attended film school. He lacked, however, the means for finishing the film until he moved to Sweden in the late 1970s. ULKOMAALAINEN differs from typical immigrant narratives in that what the protagonist has left behind and returns to in his mind is not an existential home of the past but a distant political setting. This is also reflected in the plethora of found footage used by Özer, as well as some rare super-8 footage of demonstrations in Turkey. INVANDRARKVINNOR is a documentary made in collaboration with IFFI, the International Association for Immigrant Women in Sweden. Özer’s film is a rare document of the work of IFFI and recounts both painful and empowering stories of immigrant women. (Can Sungu)

Films:
Ulkomaalainen/Utlänningen/Yabanci Muammer Özer
Sweden/Finland 1981 DCP OmeU 38 min.
Invandrarkvinnor Muammer Özer Sweden 1984 DCP OmeU 18 min.
Jordmannen Muammer Özer Sweden 1980 DCP OmeU 27 min.