Can Sungu: How did your relationship with cinema begin?
Korhan Yurtsever: I think my introduction to cinema started when my father took me by the hand and then to the studio of a relative of ours, Uncle Sabahattin. This was usually to calm down a very naughty child. When I went there, Uncle Sabahattin would say, “Let me give you a film” and hand me films cut into small pieces. We would put these film frames behind a glass with my friends and look at them with the light of a torch. I remember when I was 16 or 17 years old, I intended to become a director. I talked to my father. He said, “OK, I won't stop you from becoming a filmmaker, but know that you will never be completely happy in your life. You will make one film. It will be applauded, it will be liked, you will want the next one to be better. Sometimes it won't happen, and when it doesn't, you'll be very sad. If those who don't like the film are stronger, they'll crush you. That's why I don't want you to be a filmmaker, especially a director.”
When I insisted on directing, he took me by the arm and took me to Uncle’s laboratory again. For three months I kept mixing chemicals to wash the film. Then I started printing film from negative to positive in the darkroom. From there I moved on to editing and dubbing. While editing, I met a producer, and he said, “You've learnt enough about this job. Come to our office tomorrow and start as an assistant.” So I started working as a director's assistant. I worked as an assistant on about 50 films. I would work on the set during the day, and in the evening I would go to the studio to edit what they had shot the day before, readying it for the director to watch. That's how I always worked with famous directors like Metin Erksan, Halit Refiğ and Atıf Yılmaz. Then the erotic film craze started. They started to shoot scenes with erotic content that were not in the script and add them to the films. It was thought that there was no other way to make money. At that time I decided to quit the cinema business.
They told me, “Don't get into this business. While everyone is making sex films, you're going to make a village film and you'll go bankrupt.”
How was it possible for you to get back into cinema and make your first film, FIRAT’IN CINLERI?
KY: I ran a boutique selling women's clothes. I hadn't been interested in cinema for a while. At that time, the screenwriter İhsan Yüce invited me to his set and put a script he had written on the table: FIRAT’IN CINLERI. “Read this and then let's talk. You should direct this,” he said. I immediately read the script and I loved it. So I decided to direct the film. I sold the boutique. We took a loan for the rest.
So, very different from the usual film financing system in Turkey at that time, the film was financed by yourself and not by the distributor?
KY: They told me, “Don't get into this business. While everyone is making sex films, you're going to make a village film and you'll go bankrupt.” We shot the film in Siverek in the Southeast of Turkey with a small team and a very limited budget. At the end of the shooting, we didn’t have the money to return to Istanbul. In Istanbul, a film distributor called me and said that he was tired of sex films and would prefer to distribute my film. I hadn't even edited it yet. He put a cheque on the table, and said that he would also give me a share of the earnings. The film was an incredible hit in the Southeast region and won three awards in Antalya. Furthermore, it received an award at the San Remo Film Festival although it didn’t have a certificate to be sent to film festivals abroad. The film went to the Tashkent Film Festival and was shown in three cinemas in Moscow. It was sold to Iran. In other words, FIRAT’IN CINLERIgenerated a great economic success. Then it went to Berlin.
FIRAT’IN CINLERI was shown at the Berlinale Forum in 1979. How did it happened that the film was invited to Forum?
KY: I met Ulrich Gregor in San Remo and he told me that he wanted to show the film at the Forum. Dietrich Stobbe, the governing mayor of Berlin at the time, came to this screening. He invited me to his office afterwards. I bought a suit and a tie and went there. “Would you consider making a film about Turkish immigrants in Germany?” he asked. He also said that he could help with funding and support. I was very encouraged by the international success of FIRAT’IN CINLERIand Stobbe’s invitation. I think back then my feet were too far off the ground.
The screening of FIRAT'IN CINLERI at the Forum was thus decisive for the making ofKARA KAFA. The film is about the Turkish metal worker Cafer, who brings his family from his village to Germany. The main focus here is on the change his wife experiences and the children's adjustment problems. How did you get the idea to tell this story?
KY: There were friends travelling back and forth from Germany. They told me a similar story that had really happened. I thought about it a lot and also discussed it with the scriptwriter Bülent Oran. In ten days we had to leave for Germany. Bülent hadn't finished the script yet. He promised to finish the script on the way to Germany. He asked me to organise a place in the van where he could write. So we did. Then we set off in the same van we later used in the film. Bülent was writing by hand and the people in the back were typing it on a typewriter. We also shot on the highway and arrived in Germany in three days.
In which cities was the film shot?
KY: I actually wanted to shoot the film completely in Berlin at first. But the hotels were too expensive. We even slept on top of a car in Berlin one night. Due to Stobbe’s support we were obliged to shoot some scenes in Berlin. But after shooting in Berlin for a few days, we continued to Duisburg, where we shot most of the film. Of course, we also shot some scenes in Turkey. Apart from the exterior shootings in Cappadocia, we also completed some interior shots in Turkey. While putting these plans together, I benefited a lot from my previous experience in the editing studio.
In the film, we also see an anti-fascist and anti-racist demonstration in Cologne in which many immigrants participate. These are the scenes where fiction and non-fiction intersect, also recording a slice of Germany's migration history.
KY: It was a march with torches at night. I took the actors there and they lit torches too. Of course, these scenes would have been perceived as communist propaganda in Turkey at that time. It was actually a sufficient reason for the film to be banned. I guess I felt a little itchy. I felt that I would be in trouble with the censors, but I wanted to make a different kind of film, to tell a real story.
The censorship board was a group of retired officers, policemen and teachers. They started watching the film. Every now and then someone stood up and swore, “Dirty communist!” They didn't know I was in the back in the projection room.
Another thing that makes KARA KAFA special is that the film was shot with sound. Due to technical shortcomings, limited budgets and the fast production cycle, there are almost no films shot with sound in Yeşilçam. What convinced you to shoot the film with synchronous sound?
KY: I mean, I grew up in the studio, so I witnessed a lot of funny things that happened during dubbing. I wanted to shoot with sound, as it was common in European and American cinema. But I realised the difficulty of shooting with sound during the production in Germany. Machines were working in the factory, coal was being mined below, people were shoveling. That’s why the microphone had to be changed all the time. One actor's voice didn't match the other. The volume level of their voices was very different from each other. That's why we used more film stock than I had ever thought. I would never shoot just for the sake of it, but it felt like a waste. I had finished my previous film with 28 rolls. At one point I asked the cameraman how many rolls we were in. When I heard that we had shot 150 rolls, I almost went crazy!
After the production was over, you returned to Turkey and finished the post-production of the film. Then the film was banned. What happened?
KY: First they asked us where the censorship certificate for the script was. Of course the script never went to the censorship board. Why would it go? We wrote it on our way to Germany and shot it there. The censorship board was a group of retired officers, policemen and teachers. They started watching the film. Every now and then someone stood up and swore, “Dirty communist!” They didn't know I was in the back in the projection room. The film was rejected straight away. There was also a criminal complaint. A lawsuit was filed. The prosecutors started the trial with a 32-year prison sentence. All negatives, posters, etc. were confiscated. They asked a lot of trap questions in the court. At the end of the session, the judge called me to his side and said, “Take your loved ones and get out of here”. Because they would take me in at the next hearing. On the evening of that day, we set off in the van we used in the film, taking the last screening copies of FIRAT’IN CINLERI and KARA KAFA with us. We were going to Berlin. It was August 1980. On the 12th of September the military staged a coup.
How long did you stay in Germany and were there any other projects you were involved in?
KY: We stayed for almost four years. First friends gave us a room, then we found a flat. The lawsuit was dropped, but there was a penalty for taking a censored film abroad. I was a bit afraid of that, and couldn't return to Turkey. I wasn’t able to make another film until 1987. How could I get into another project? During that period when we were in Germany, we were literally in need of bread. I used to fill the trunk of my car with video cassettes and sell them in Turkish grocery stores. Was there no film to be made in Germany? I wrote a script here. A miner falls in love with a window mannequin in a Kaufhof department store. They talk to each other. One day he steals her and takes her home. They start living together. It was my favourite story, but I couldn't film it because of lack of money.
Can Sungu lives in Berlin and is artistic director of Sinema Transtopia, a transnational room for film culture, art and knowledge; since 2020 he is also part of the curatorial team of Forum’s “Fiktionsbescheinigung”.
Translation: Esra Akkaya
