We meet the faces behind Chronicle of a Revolt - One Year Instanbul German-Turkish directing duo that produced the documentary about the riots in the Turkish capital reveal the inside story behind the project.
The directors of Chronicle of a Revolt – One Year Instanbul, the German-Turkish duo Biene Pilavci and Ayla Gottschlich, came to the festival’s headquarters to talk to us about the production of their documentary about the revolts in the Turkish capital in 2013.
What gave you the idea to pick up your cameras, head to the streets and start filming the public demonstrations in Istanbul in 2013?
Ayla – When the riots broke out, the Turkish media was hardly showing anything. The German media explained some of the events, but not until one week after they had happened. But we knew that through social networks news would travel much faster, and this could be a crucial way of informing the Turkish community of what was happening. Since we still retain our strong connection with Turkey, through family and friends, we wanted to follow close-hand what was going on there. And, since we’re filmmakers, we decided we would make a film about it.
Did you consider yourselves directors, observing the events from the outside, or protesters, right there in the middle of the action?
Ayla – It’s impossible to differentiate. We were all there, in it together.
Biene – Perhaps we could say that at the start we were simply observing, but day by day we became more and more part of the discussion, the drama and the debate.
In Brazil, during the protests in 2013, the majority of the activists were anti the presence of journalists, the media and communication networks in general. Sometimes journalists were subject to violence, on the part of both protestors and police. Because of this, direct coverage of what was happening at street-level was usually mediated through “independent channels”. We can see this happening in many protests across the globe. In Turkey was this also the case?
Ayla – I’m not sure I’d say it happened in the same way. The protesters were happy to have us there. Since they knew we had come from outside Turkey, they wanted to export these images from inside the country elsewhere. I think they were grateful. Many of them didn’t want to show their faces on screen because they were afraid. We followed four or five people while we were filming who really did not want to appear on camera for fear of what might happen once the film was shown to the public.
Some people interpret the protests that shocked the world after the crisis of 2008 as a sort of “global outrage”, a phenomenon that occurred on an international scale, but varying from country to country. There might have been some common ground, however, in the form of the rejection of public and private institutions, like governments, traditional political representatives, the large media corporations, among others. How do you feel about this in relation to what happened in Turkey?
Biene – The protesters were outraged at what had happened to the country, what the country had become. They wanted to blame those responsible, in order to make them feel guilty and ashamed. Not just on social media, but in the streets. They blamed TV channels, newspapers and the media in general for having done nothing. But, also, we should remember the protesters also had the support of normal citizens. And they’re still receiving this support.
Ayla – There’s lots of corruption in Turkey. Mostly, the media is prey to this corruption. In fact, the Turkish media did try to speak out against the government, but there were many bureaucratic restrictions on their freedom of speech, and pressure to portray only one official narrative. Every day people were losing their jobs and being taken into police custody. In this difficult environment, social networks were crucial in showing all this, questioning what the broadsheets and main TV channels were publishing, asking: “What are you putting on air? Are you crazy?” And then someone posted on Youtube what was really going on for the world to see. This couldn’t have happened ten years ago. Now, it’s impossible to simply turn a blind eye.
By Fernando Flack, translated by Gill Harris
Read the original interview in Portuguese here.
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