Balkan documentaries in 2006
Regional docs capture
complex history, fluid present

Balkan filmmakers are producing local stories that unravel human tales, both old and new, traditional and contemporary, funny and sad.

Village life
After presenting the project at the 2005 EDN pitching event in Thessaloniki, Sinisa Juricic is now shooting "Dead Man Walking". The "tragicomedy" begins in a Bosnian village with the reappearance of Hizmo Muratovic, presumed dead ever since the village was terrorized by war in 1992. Hizmo's name is removed from the plaque commemorating fellow Bosnians who died, and so begins his difficult re-entry into village and family life.

"The Mosquito Problem & Other Stories" is another village tale in production. It is being directed by Bulgaria's Andrey Paounov, known for internationally-acclaimed "Georgi and the Butterflies". Once a concentration camp, now a city with a nuclear power plant, the village tries to come to terms with its dark past. Its pre-buyers include More4/Channel 4, HOS, YLE Teema, ETV, LRT and RTSH.

Doc bridges
Boris Despodov's "Corridor #8" is a geographic tale in pre-production, with its look at life along the Corridor #8 infrastructure project connecting the Adriatic and Black seas, and linking Bulgaria, FYROM, and Albania.

Filmmakers and writers become subjects of the documentary eye in three Bulgarian films now being made: Valentin Valchev's "Us 4 Revisited"; Elka Nikoloa's "Binka: To Tell A Story About Silence"; and Christo Bakalshi's "All At One Table". Valchev's film follows the footsteps of Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens and American scriptwriter Marion Michelle, who spent 1947-49 filming in Eastern Europe. Nikoloa shows us the life and work of Bulgaria's first female feature film director, Binka Zhelyazkova. Bakalshi scrutinizes the life of Bulgarian writer Angelika Schrobsdorff.

Adela Peeva, of award-winning "Whose is this Song?" fame, looks at "Divorce Albanian Style". That project was presented at EDN's 2003 Thessaloniki pitching forum. The lives of eight Bulgarians are chronicled in Zornitsa Sophia Popgantcheva's "What is a Guy Like You Doing in a Place Like This?", a film in post-production that explores the pursuit of personal legends in the most picturesque of locations.

Turkish realities
In Turkey, documentary filmmakers are making stories of women, race, and history.

Two films inquire into the practise of "honour killings". Melek Taylan's new "Dialogues in the Dark" introduces women living in fear of their own male relatives, and Berrin Balay Tuncer's "Requiem for Women" (in post-production) talks to organizations, politicians and survivors, and aims to spread awareness. ''Requiem…'' will be at the Amnesty International and Istanbul film festivals.

Women and work feature in Emel Celebi's "Housekeepers", which focuses on women working in Istanbul homes. It is now being edited. Elvan Kivilain is in post-production with a project that introduces two female DJs, both mothers of 11-year-old boys.

Behice Boran, a former leader of the Workers Party of Turkey, is the subject of a film now being shot by a group of filmmakers, including Kaya Ozkaracalar and Sinan Onelge. Onelge also has a documentary about Turkish homosexuals in post-production.

Greek and Turkish relations are studied in two films now underway, including Mustafa Unlu's "The Old Town's Newsmen", which looks at the Greek presence in Istanbul's multicultural past and present, and Enis Riza's To Have a New Homeland" that explores the legacy of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey via two mirror towns, Turkey's Makri and Greece's Nea Makri.

Finally, Nurdan Arca explores the world of a medieval Turkish-Muslim thinker in "Bedreddin of Amovuno (Simavna)" (now being edited), while Hasmet Topaloglu introduces the politically-vocal Turkish punk group in now-in-production "Rashit".

Kathryn Koromilas

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