Metin Yegin

By Ozlem Oz

Metin Yegin is a film maker from Turkey; after spending a period in prison, he went on hunger strike. Now he tours the world, filming real events and real lives. On Friday June 27th as part of the WOW 2003 Festival he will be in the Unity Theatre for one night only, talking and showing his film F, about the attack by the Turkish military on political prisoners, an attack that killed 30 people and led to the longest hunger strike in world history.

Metin, can you tell me about yourself and your films?

I am a revolutionary. I try to change the world by writing and making films. Changing the world, as Borges says, ‘is like grabbing a handful of sand from the desert and throwing into the air’. I’m trying to change the world. I used to write, but now making film for me is another way. We are making ‘Militant Cinema’. And this is different than other cinema. Firstly, it does not depend on any one financially. Films are made with extremely low budgets, with money earned from grants, support of friends and even by painting buildings, as I am doing now. So there is not any financier that you have to be responsible to or be controlled by while making your film.

Since cinema began, it has replaced peoples own reality. Despite losing this reality in cinema, we are made to believe that what we see on TV is real. For example, when I say something to my friends, they do not believe me, but if they saw the same thing on TV, they would think that was real. Even in our daily life to understand our reality we have to look at pictures or film, to believe we are alive.

If we talk about alienation, we are so far away from the life. We like to see ourselves on TV or photograph to confirm our existence. If we are unable to see that we feel empty. Because we don’t produce, we are out of the production. Still film has reality this is on front of us, and I like to hold on it. Making films is not above or below other things, it’s the same level. I make a film and step aside to watch the film, biting my nails, wondering about people’s reaction.

F and After have been shown in nearly in 40 festivals, but the most important things is that it’s been shown in 17 factories, and that’s great for me. Militant cinema is not for any market. It is to be screened at occupied factories, small classes at universities, and streets. It can be produced on your own technically, but it must be shared with people also during the production. Maybe in a different country, with the locals. It never tells just their stories, it is keen on producing with them. It transmits its excitement to them all. I live and stay wherever they stay; for example in Nicaragua while I was making film with the local fisherman as they harvested shrimps or told the local ways of shrimping. It helped me to understand through experience the difficulties and their expression within their way of life. By living amongst them I able to empathise with the way in which their feeling about issues important for them. Aesthetics is important but never abstain from using a shoot with bad camera movement, if it was taken from a public meeting and carries the soul of the meeting. The camera has to move rapidly because it never takes the side of police that fire. It takes sides, but the street side.

The effectiveness of a protest on the street cannot be compared to any film. If my film shows this effect, it is a good film for me. I want to provoke people to take action. Everyone should take a handful of sand and throw it to air. On one hand militant cinema makes films about issues we are unaware of; but on the other hand, militant cinema made a film about the hunger strike in Turkey, which has happened in front of 70 million people while hunger strikers were dying. 70 million people watched, closed their eyes and intended not to see it. I made a film about the resistance. All of us knew, but we prefer to turn a blind eye because our silence was shameful.

F and After were shown at lots of festivals and received different reactions. After watching the film, European people commented, ‘this is Turkey’s human rights problem. My government is good but Turkey’s government is bad’. Actually, this problem is not only Turkey’s. All oppressors use similar tactics. When you look at the concentration camps, you can see – they look like factories. People are separated into categories of useful, not useful, healthy, not healthy, those who are to live, and those who are to die. First, there were concentration camps, and then cities turned into ghettos. These, I believe, are social concentration camps. Industrial society is heading towards societies of pure isolation. First, this was applied to the prisons. They started in Europe in England, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc. The biggest struggle against it, though, was in Turkey, because people were not as alienated like in big industrial societies, people still had a strong community kinship. After watching F and After, Europeans say that Turkey should stop the isolation prisons. Yet the same societies are becoming more isolated, with thousands of people dying alone.

If we don’t say anything about isolation, our films will be shown after five years but we won’t be able to understand it, we won’t think it’s real. This is the problem of all societies, and we should stand up and say no. Borcert says: ‘we lost our home, relatives, innocence and families, but not our street’.